GUIDE TO CUSTOMISING (KARVANISTA) - PART 3

At last (and slightly delayed), I’ve selected the candidate for my ongoing custom tutorial – from the recent Flux episodes, space dog Karvaniasta. He’s a good candidate as he involves a lot of different techniques and detailed work, so there should hopefully be a lot to talk about…

 

PREPARING YOUR CUSTOM

The first thing I tend to do is to look for reference imagery. With new series characters, this tends to be pretty easy - Karvanista has plenty of publicity images, from various angles and the episodes he features in area readily available. Handily, he’s also been made into a figurine in the Eaglemoss range - these are hugely useful as a means of examining a figure’s design from every angle. I tend to make up a large image with various useful angles and close-ups of areas I know I’ll need. I can then either have it on a monitor in front of me, or printed out while I work. Below is my image board for this custom

For the base figure, I selected a Fifth Doctor. The height is decent, and the articulation is fair  - shoulder balljoints like the Axon male might have been handy, but I might have had to sacrifice some of the height. And the Cyberman base would have required far more prep work. Plus the baggy cricket trousers are a fair match for Karvanista's clothes which saves a bit of sculpt work. And, of course, Davison is currently in ample supply, having featured in the Earthshock 3 pack (of which I bought a fair few for Android spares).



In terms of preparation, this wasn’t too heavy a job. I removed the jacket and retained it for future use (of which more later in this project - don’t throw these away). To remove it, push the arms out to face backwards, and ease the jacket over the shoulders and down the arms. You could be able to get it off undamaged, though cutting small slits around the arm holes can help. I left the jumper layer on - I sometimes remove these, but given that I’ll be sculpting bulky armour over it, it’d just be extra material to replace.

For customs with slender forms, I often give the whole thing a thorough dremel before starting- in this instance, it wasn’t really necessary. The only areas that needed tackling were the sleeve cuffs, and the shirt collar – I used the sanding wheel attachment and carefully ground the plastic away to leave smooth(ish) areas to sculpt over.



With that done, the figure is ready to sculpt…