SEASON TWENTY-ONE CUSTOMS

 

SEA DEVIL (Warriors)

The Sea Devil was an obvious and easy choice to kick off my Davison customs - I'd started this before the Hartnell wave was even done.

Base figure is obviously a 70s Sea devil, sans fishnet suit and with the head fins chopped off. I sculpted on the torso armour and minor details on the face - more prominent upper lips and a bulging throat.

The helmet was built up from plasticard and sculpted over. The skirt was strips of thin vinyl layered and glued into place. Nice quick job to get me started!

 

SILURIAN (Warriors)

 

The Silurian was a little more involved - if nothing else, there was no 70s version to use as a base. As such I opted for the standard Tennant.

Head and body details were sculpted in, with plasticard pieces for the ear fins and back crest. As with the 70s version, I had all kinds of trouble keeping the fluted crests on the head even.

The hands are casts from my 70s figure fixed into place on the wrists - it loses a wrist swivel, but that's not an essential joint for a figure like this.

MYRKA

Of course there's no point in tackling Warriors if you're not going to be doing the biggest and baddest (in every sense) of the monsters. Oh dear, it's the Myrka...

The production problems bedevilling this costume are legion and well-documented, but I still think there's the germ of a decent monster in here - the head is pretty good, if nothing else. For the figure, I took the same approach as the costume, and stuck two figures together, Human Centipede style (poor Mickey...). I then built up the body area with tin foil and electrical tape to give a base to sculpt over. The big haunches were based on oval pieces of plasticard stuck to the figure's legs.

 

 

 

 For the head section, I fixed a section of plastic tube around Mickey's head, and then a section of arm from an old Marvel figure atop that - this allowed for a neck swivel and up and down motion (handy for a tall monster) I then sculpted over the whole area, taking care to fill in as much of the space around the joints as possible. The finishing touches were a plastic crest on the back of the neck and a tail chopped from a joke shop rubber snake.

 

  

 

Looking at the finished product, it could stand to be a little longer and dumpier around the back half (I should have thought to include more space to reflect that between the two 'operators' of the costume). But it's a decent enough stab at one of Who's more notorious monsters.

 

 

MALUS

 

There has to be one custom in every batch that involves some thinking out of the box, and so it was here. Thankfully it wasn't as horrific a construction job as the War Machine...

 

 

I started with a piece of plasticard cut to the right size, on top of which I sculpted the Malus face, and some of the surrounding broken stone (not all of it - no point in doing the areas covered by the outer wall). Next I affixed two pieces of wood to the sides to act as pillars. On top of these, I stuck thin strips of plasticard covering about half the outside width, and then two more strips covering the whole width. This effectively meant I had two grooves in the side of the pillars.

 

  

I then took another sheet of plasticard cut to the same dimensions as the back wall, and chopped out a central area to reveal the face. This could then be slid down through the grooves on the sides, to act as a false front. Two more pieces of wood fixed to the top of it made for a handle to remove it with.

 

 

 

Given that the Malus is more a statue than a possible figure, I decided I wanted the piece to act as a small diorama, so I also cut a small section of floor and attached this to the bottom of the back wall, with plastic tiles glues on top. Finally, I sculpted some stony texture on the front wall and floor and attached some pillar details (corrugated craft plastic bent to shape) to the outsides of the pillars.

 

 

Getting the right stony paint effect took several round of washing and dry brushing and I'm still half convinced it could have used a few more. The false front is still removable - I'd originally thought I'd create a few alternate versions with smaller apertures to represent the different parts of the story, but decided it was a lot of extra work for something I'd be unlikely to ever display. It's still something I could tackle down the line though.

 

TRACTATOR

 

  

 

One of the first customs I ever tackled, and as such I've lost my original write-up for this. I have also since sold on the original version I made, and built myself an upgrade - new images and a new write-up will be added at that point...