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.
Customized Black Trans Lives Matter protester action figures!
I bought these wrestling figures years ago with various projects in mind, but they have been sitting in the fodder drawer for too long and it was time for them to blossom!
I bought the figure on the right to customize for Stevie, the New Mutants dance teacher, for my X-Men dollhouse.
But wrestling figures are quite tall for 6″ scale, and she seemed muscular for a former ballerina.
So I made her a skirt out of an actual trans pride flag, with black ribbon added.
Look at this group of beautiful people ready for justice!
My NECA Vasquez looks pissed off and with good reason. Our trans sisters and brothers are more vulnerable than ever as tensions everywhere increase. Support programs like @glits_inc and @theokraproject to get black trans people housed and fed, support @transsexworks here in Berlin to help vulnerable street SW’s, and sign up for the Queer Trans Mutual Aid Berlin Patreon to help queer and trans folx in Berlin get warm meals.
Of course I included red umbrellas, the symbol of support and solidarity with sex workers!
Note the cis white woman at this protest is being useful as an armed honor guard off to the side.
Ready to Protect Black Trans People! Who are significantly more vulnerable everywhere, including at protests.After the protest the ladies feasted while my newly arrived Hasbro Ghostbusters Ernie kept up the protesting!
Commercially available Trans Mermaid Stuffed Doll!
No, you cannot buy a trans mermaid dolly at Tiger or IKEA. Yet. But this is a vision of a world where kids can get stuffed dollies of all genders, BEYOND THE GENDER BINARY. We all deserve a world where trans toys are as common as cis toys. Meanwhile, @mermaidsgender is a great org I like to donate to when she who shall not be named does something hateful.
Much of the art of being an assemblage artist is simply HAVING STUFF AROUND.
Having materials around, having bits of things, having the tools to cut them up and the adhesives to glue them back together. I was at the Dutch store, TIGER, buying markers when I saw this stuffed mermaid doll. I knew, I knew instantly, that I had some black faux fur that precisely matched the doll’s fur. I instantly knew I could make a trans mermaid that would be adorable. So I bought the doll and brought it home. I did a quick look through my materials, knowing I had saved one last scrap of the fur after a project a couple years earlier.
But I could not find it. I have 25 drawers and 12 cabinets of materials and tools. I knew the tuft of fur would turn up eventually, so I put the doll in the Large Doll Parts drawer and moved on. A year and change later, last week, I came across that last tuft of the perfect fur, and glued it on.
It’s like having the plumber come fix your pipe – 1% is banging on the pipe, 99% is knowing where to hit.
As usual these images are licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) for all to share and enjoy!
Yet some more obscure characters still may not get their own full figures. So Hasbro, the toy company that has the mass-market 6″ scale Marvel license, is making kit-bashable assets for fans to DIY.
Marvel Legends Mystique picture from TheFwoosh! which you can now support on Patreon, and I do!
Lilandra, Majestrix Sh’iar, was on the 90’s cartoon, so she’s fairly well known. Well enough to justify making her head and including it with shape-shifter Mystique. (Visit SUPERB action figure site The Fwoosh for their reviewof this fig, which I stole this photo from!)
Mystique was released around the same time as an old school Spider-Man villainess, Silver Sable. Hasbro correctly assumed collectors would combine the two, as even mass-market figures are designed for easy head and hand swaps these days. Hasbro gets to sell two Silver Sables, and collectors get a quick-fix Lilandra by removing Sable’s tactical pouches and adding a cape.
A similar principle is in effect for obscure and weird 80s villainess Typhoid Mary, whose release as a toy is inexplicable until you consider how toy releases are tied to tv/movie deals and behind-the-scenes Marvel Studios machinations.
Typhoid Mary figure pic from OAFE.net, an action figure site worth your visit!
Mary, a character I never liked, is a natural dupe for New Mutants/X-Men foe/ally Lila Cheney, who you can see above with her friend Dazzler, putting on some makeup!
My vision of Lila in full 80s rockstar regalia was exhilarating!
I jumped on it. All I had to do in terms of painting Lila was paint her face so it was an even color, matching her body, paint her hair black, and add some purple 80s makeup.
Her likeness already landed perfectly between Joan Jett and Sage Montclair, who plays Lila in the video you can see a bit further down.
Sculpting wise, I removed the figure’s bizarre forelock, resculpted the ends of her hair, and added a thicker flange around her hip joints so I’d have some surface to attach her skirt to.
If you have love in your heart for the New Mutants and X-Men of the 80s, and you haven’t seen this video, I implore you to watch it.
It is the most charming thing you will ever see.
I’m super pleased with my Lila figure!
Since I am not a professional customizer, I didn’t seal her face – the satin finish of the artist’s acrylic was such a good match shine-wise for her existing flesh areas.
So if she falls over she might get a paint rub on her nose. But since she will live in my X-Men dollhouse where everything is glued down, I hope she will be ok.
The belt stars and studs are little brads from Rio Rondo, the model horse tack supply company, who still haven’t updated their website. the belt is Illyana’s, and the padlock is from ebay. The two sizes of tiny studs on her jacket are from a nail art set I got for like a euro on ebay.
I lost the collar Typhoid Mary came with while removing her head at some point (it happens, with tiny things). I had intended to stud it for Lila’s signature look. Now I have to buy ANOTHER Typhoid Mary figure, which is ok because I can use the parts for other projects. Then Lila’s little star necklace will become a classic 90s “Y necklace”!
For Lilandra, I decided to go the extra mile and use my fave epoxy clay, Apoxie Sculpt, to build out her cuirass, stomach armor plate and hip flanges.
Oh and her boot tops. Oh and her sword arm armor. And paint her dark blue bodysuit. And repaint all her armor in a uniform silver. Since this was my first time painting any body paint on a figure, I was nervous! But sculpting the detail enabled me to paint clean lines really easily.
I used Liquitex Matte Varnish, which is similar to Testor’s Dullcote in performance, to prime Lilandra’s figure and Lila’s head.
It created a surface with good tooth for adhesion of the regular artist’s acrylic I used for the painting.
I did push the boat out and order Tamiya Chrome Silver model paint for Lilandra’s armor, and it was kinda overkill; I think I would have been satisfied with the results from any silver tube acrylic.
Or my universal-surface acrylic craft spraypaint. It’s called Dupli-Color Deco-Matt, but isn’t available in the US. Here’s a good piece on UK sprays for plastic!
Evil but sexy goth-twink figure of Reeve Carney from Penny Dreadful holds his glass of absinthe in one hand and the drying cape of my Lilandra custom action figure in the other.
I have seen real customizers get gorgeous results with proper model paint, but for midnight blue metallic I just mixed the same kinda acrylic interference paint I used in art school in 1990 with blue artists acrylic.
I have said this before, but making one‘s own #actionfigurecustoms is a fool‘s errand, even with a full professional artist setup.
There’s a really good article about interference paints on Golden’s site. It’s super relevant in this time when “color-change” and “chameleon” finishes are so popular.
The tiny learning I have acquired about painting tiny things with a tiny brush: move the paint, not the brush.
You need to have a bolus of fairly liquid paint well towards the tip of the brush and touch that to your piece, then gently move it around with the brush. You really don’t want the tip of the brush to touch the surface, because then the fibers it’s made of splay out. You lose the value of the “point” of the brush, and you lose your control. This is actually the same principle used in painting edging and trim in house-painting. When I was eleven feet up on the ladder trying to paint up to the ceiling molding in our library, I experienced it over and over. Don’t get lazy and try to use all the paint on the brush, so the brush fibers touch your surface; keep enough paint on the brush so you’re moving the line of the paint, not the brush.
The big learning I’ve made about model painting: always, always quit while you’re ahead.
Customized Black Trans Lives Matter protester action figures!
I bought the figure on the right to customize for Stevie, the New Mutants dance teacher, for my X-Men dollhouse.
So I made her a skirt out of an actual trans pride flag, with black ribbon added.
Look at this group of beautiful people ready for justice!
Note the cis white woman at this protest is being useful as an armed honor guard off to the side.
After the protest the ladies feasted while my newly arrived Hasbro Ghostbusters Ernie kept up the protesting!
