Suzanne Forbes, a New Yorker thriving in Berlin. Crowdfunded documentary art made possible by the generous support of her Patrons. https://www.patreon.com/SuzanneForbes.
Category Archives: Dollhouse and Dollmaking
I have an action figure dollhouse that I built myself over a decade. I also make and customize dolls, usually unpleasant ones.
Image description: Illustration with large red text: “Crip the Vote” above two disabled queer people of color surrounded by flowers. One person is Black, uses a wheelchair and a ventilator, and has a drink with a plastic straw on her tray. A butterfly is resting on her wrist. The other person is Chinese American, fat and uses a cane. They are both smiling and radiating love.”
Learn more at VotersWithDisabilities.org (link in @ndrnadvocate bio) & make a voting plan at bymaskormail.org
The art is used with consent!
Check Micah Bazant out here on Insta and here on their own site.
I wanted to hold up a sign myself!
I don’t have any 1/12 figures of myself, but I do have this wedding cake topper I customized with Apoxie-sculpt and paint and textiles when my hub and I were married in November 2014. I identify as #queercrip, which means I am sexually and romantically moved by all genders and am disabled. My husband doesn’t identify in any particular way, however he has a replacement hip so he qualifies as a cyborg!
Magma, Amara Acquilla, is one of the more problematic New Mutants.
Every character is someone’s favorite, but I personally never felt any emotional connection to her whatsoever. Which is funny, given how much I loved the other original New Mutants.
So while I felt she should be represented in my X-Men dollhouse, along with Rahne and Dani and Shan and Doug and Warlock and Illyana and Bobby and Same and Kitty, I figured I’d put her in the Danger Room.
In the Danger Room, her wild powers would be a great visual.
Since there is not yet a commercially available Magma in 1/12 scale, I had to make one.
I used the old Toy Biz Scarlet Witch as a base, since she has the same chunky glove and boot cuffs as the old school New Mutants. Amara’s costume details don’t show when her powers are active actually – the costume “disappears” because of “unstable molecules” like Rahne’s does – but I thought it would be funny to have them and also help signal who she is.
I’m not a stickler for anything, really.
Including action figure customizer materials protocols! Many customizers use hot glue to form flame and power effects, if they’re not set up for casting resin. But I used UV resin to form Amara’s head spikes. I sculpted them in my beloved Apoxie Sculpt first, then painted the whole figure with artist’s tube acrylics thinned to the consistency of heavy cream. Three isolation coats of Mod Podge helped seal her paint nicely.
Then I added the resin, mixing three colors and sitting in the sun outside and letting it cure on the fly. This was before I had a powerful UV LED resin curing lamp, so to get fast curing the sun was my best plan. It was messy, because UV resin is goopy and hard to control, and I wound up getting thick drops at the ends. I had to sand them down and re-resin!
Next time I’ll use the technique miniaturists use for getting drips and streams of epoxy resin – a bit of clear nylon fishing line for the resin to cling to and follow along.
But this one is close enough for government work, as my editor Margaret used to say when I worked on Star Trek!
Lots of real customizers have done Magmas, do check out how the professionals have visualized her 🙂 I like this one a lot, and this mod using the Carol Danvers head works well. I would have liked her to be clear like the Minimate, but I didn’t care enough to hunt down a clear Sue Storm who would work.
I did buy this amazing Figma base for her.
The crackly lava base is seen here with X-23 standing on it as a placeholder, I’ll have more actual Danger Room shots coming soon! Yes, X-23 isn’t part of “my” era of X-Men/New Mutants, but I love the character, so – don’t care! Not a stickler.
Feat. art by Micah Bazant and canonically disabled and queer Marvel and DC superheroes!
The art is used with consent!
I wanted to hold up a sign myself!
