Blackstar Classics - Filmation Blackstar Custom

Before the He-Man cartoon was conceived, Filmation created the shortlived Blackstar animated series, which would become a strong influence on the He-Man show, both in terms of world building and concepts, art style and animation as well as voice actors (Blackstar's nemesis Overlord was voiced by Alan Oppenheimer who would go on to be the voice of Skeletor). Certain animation sequences from Blackstar were recycled for He-Man and Blackstar himself was referenced through a subtle tribute in the form a golden statue of his likeness as an easter egg in scene. It would therefor stand to reason that I had to include a Filmation style Blackstar in my line-up of Filmation MOTU characters. I won't go further into Blackstar's story, I already did that for my 30mm version of him here. First, on to the eye candy, before I enter into some detail of the process to create this Blackstar.

 Blackstar had a bunch of companions called Trobbits, a sort of play on "tree hobbits". The ones that were released with the '80s toys were very much true to their Filmation appearance and are a good size to go with the Classics figure. Only 6 out of the 7 were released though, so I will need to do a custom to complete the gang someday.

The construction of the figure uses parts of two different figures (though could have been done with one instead), a fes resin items from custom bits creators and some handsculpted/modified items. 

The breakdown is as follows:

- torso, loincloth and boots are from a Super 7 Ultimate Filmation He-Man;

- arms, hands and legs are from a Super 7 Filmation Triclops (though the ones from the He-Man figure could also be used;

- starsword and necklace are available in resin from Dark Dimensions Toy Empire, they also do the belt if you don't want to scratchbuild it;

- head is a resin cast of a Filmation Classics He-Man, with the hair resculpted with greenstuff and eyebrows thickened;

- belt buckle was sculpted by a mate, with some modifications by myself.

Regarding the construction, it's fairly straightforward from there. A few points of note:

To get rid of the curve in the lower side of the belt, I carefully sliced underneath the existing belt edge, starting from the middle, without removing it. Once you reach the sides where the edge is straight, just reglue the edge in a straight line and cut off the excess in the middle. Easy. I left a gap in the middle in the width of the belt buckle, so it would sit flush. If your blade is sharp enough, you can then tidy up the newly exposed bit of loincloth and continue the creases all the way up to the new belt edge.

Regarding the hair, it was built up in sections and layers, not all in one go. This is a minimalistic Filmation style, so you don't have to go very fine, broad strokes will do it.

The rest is paint. For this one, I painted the whole body, which is something I normally will go out of my way to avoid, as it means you always have to be careful for wear around the articulation. This is also why there are parts of two figures in there. My original plan was to use Triclops' body for this, as he already has a darker skintone. Several obstacles arose during construction however. First of, when you remove his armour, there is a rectangular block of plastic protruding from his chest and back that the armour slots onto. I carved that off and sanded it smooth. There was still a discoloration visible due to the colour of the plastic underneath, so I ended up repainting the whole torso. When everything was painted, it was type to put the head in place. I hadn't done so before starting as it being a resin cast, I was afraid I might not get it back off. First test, it sat on top of the neck like some sort of christmas decoration and he looked ridiculous. Turned out the Super 7 Triclops torso was more bulky and had a broader, taller neckstump than the other figures I had. So even after hollowing out the head more and getting it down as much as it could without carving up the neck itself, it was still sitting too high. In addition, due to the bulk of the chest, the necklace was also sitting too high and not flush with the shoulders/chest. So, with a somewhat heavy heart, I decided to pull it all back apart and use the He-Man torso instead. This meant switching out the modified loincloth again, as well as the arms and legs to keep the somewhat darker skintone. Luckily damage was minimal and I didn't have to repair much. The downside of the He-Man torso is I had to repaint it, as well as the shoulders this time, so in the end I painted the Triclops arms and legs as well to get an even colour. I left the hands bare though, as those need to grip weapons. So, long story short, this ended up being a lot more work than planned due to the Triclops body not working out in the end. If I were to start from scratch, I could just use the complete He-Man body as a base.

To conclude, a couple pictures of the two great heroes together. He-Man here is the Mattel version, which I now notice also has a darker skintone than the Super 7 one. 

And one final shot: the hero of Sagar with his Trobbit companions take up their place in the display case:

MOTU Classics - Leo Skeletor

The vintage  Leo Skeletor is, as most of you will know, the rarer India release with dark blue skin and black accessories. I'm not the first to do a Classics custom of him and I won't be the last. As customs go, this one wasn't very labour intensive. The main body is a Webstor body for that dark blue skintone. The accessories (chest harness, loincloth, staff and sword) were cast in flexible black resin by Barbarossa Customs. His stuff is great, so go check it out. Boots and feet got painted black. the head was a spare Skeletor head that was repainted. For the paintjob on the face, I took my inspiration from the excellent packaging art on the ReAction figure.