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.

MOTU Classics - Custom Anti-Eternia He-Man in alternate colour scheme

Let me start by saying I don't feel there is anything wrong as such with the nearly all black colour scheme on the official AE He-Man figure, but I have always found the alternate colour schemes depicted in some fan art which use more red and sometimes grey, make for a more contrasting figure that is ultimately more interesting to look at. So it only makes sense I ended up doing a custom version that incorporates all these elements.

The base figure is another copy of the Chinese AE He-Man bootlegs. I used a spare set of Faker boots because I figured the purple would be a better base colour to paint red and if some paint rubs off, it would be less jarring. The loincloth, belt and wrist guards were repainted. The harness and weapons were moulded in red by Barbarossa customs, then painted, leaving the handles bear to avoid paint wear in that spot. I prefer to have the accessories as close as possible to the paint colour, so that eventual wear will not stand out (much). I also painted the hair to be slightly lighter and painted yellow in the centre of the eyes instead of the original white.

The original artwork that inspired the alternate colour scheme the most:

MOTU Classics - Hellscape Skeletor

After He-Man defeated Anti-Eternia He-Man and closed the portal, the Masters thought that would be the end of trouble from that evil place. But Skeletor hadn't given up on his plans to harness the powers from that forsaken place and, through many spells and trials, he finally managed to summon Anti-He-Man's sword of power. When he called upon the dark power of Castle Hellskull, the magic answered and he was transformed into an ever darker version of his self, the one that would become known as Hellscape Skeletor.

The idea for this one was born when I got my hands on a couple Ninjor bodies without heads or accessories. The body shape and colouring made for a perfect base for a different take on Skeletor. I Threw together some bits I already had and ordered a couple custom casts to fill in the gaps. The chest harness is a repaint of a spare Faker harness I had left over from a different custom and the black sword is, fittingly, from one of the China Anti-He-Man figures. The Alcala head is a resin cast from Eternal Customs. The staff is a black resin copy made by Barbarossa Customs. I painted Skeletor's skull and the one on the havoc staff to match and Skeletor's your uncle. I left the loincloth as is, figuring it worked well and didn't need to be changed for the traditional Skeletor leather loincloth.

MOTU Classics - Battle Armour Faker

By now a pattern may start to appear, revealing that I'm partial to He-Man and Skeletor variants when it comes to MOTU Classics. I have given up the likelihood of acquiring a Battle Armor Faker from the DC-MOTU 2-pack for a decent price and I had a spare Battle Armor Skeletor, so I figured I'd have a go at making one. I actually started this one before the Pitfighter Faker, but as I had a better feeling about the latter, it got finished first.

I largely inspired my BA Faker on the official one, but used steel accents instead of gold ones and used purple as the secondary colour in keeping with traditional Faker colours. In addition to the armour pieces and weapons, I also repainted the hair on my Faker.

The body is one of the China Fakers, which may be factory castoffs or bootlegs (the latter theory gaining more traction). I had to carve some material of the shoulders and sides of the torso as I found out the BA Skeletor torso is somewhat slimmer than the regular one and I couldn't close the armour otherwise. As indicated, I wasn't terribly excited about how this one was turning out and I'm still not now that it's finished, but I guess it does the job.

MOTU Classics - Pitfighter Faker

Skeletor's dark side of the hemisphere is home to many blackhearted individuals, humans and monsters alike and to keep them in check, he has to provide them with entertainment to match their twisted tendencies. Thus were born the bloody pitfights in the arena, over which Skeletor presides like a king or emperor of old. The undefeated champion of these gruesome fights is none other than the evil robot of Skeletor, Faker. Wearing custom armour partly scavenged from defeated Eternos guards, Pitfighter Faker instils fear in more than one unlucky opponent who is forced to face him.

Some posing with his accessories:

This one was inspired by a custom done by Benjamin Maillet that combined a palace guard body with a Faker head and some factory testcast weapons cast in orange. My version is slightly different and uses the body and weapons of a China Faker, the boots, leg and arm armour of a palace guard and then some paint to the weapons and armour to tie the colours together and simulate the wear of repeated use.

MOTU Classics - Filmation Dragon Blaster

Now the Filmation cartoon never went into all the He-Man and Skeletor variants that the toy line did, but the minicomic that came with the original Dragon Blaster Skeletor was clearly inspired by the way Skeletor looked in the Filmation cartoon, so as I had an extra Filmation Skeletor and an extra Dragon Blaster, I figured to mix and match the part to emulate what a Filmation Dragon Blaster would have been like. Now this barely qualifies as a custom, since I only mixed parts from two figures, but the dragon does have a custom head that came with the Dragon Blaster figure I got off ebay a couple years go.

The inspiration (I could have repainted the armour to match the art better, but that seemed like a bit more trouble than it was work and the original armour colours seem to look good on the figure.

 

MOTU Classics - Custom Anti-Eternia He-Man in Hellskull Battle Armour

Having suffered defeat at the hands of Eternia's He-Man, Anti-He-Man descended in the deepest catacombs under Castle Hellskull in search of ancient weapons of power to enact his revenge. It is there that the spirit of the Castle bestowed on him the Hellskull Battle Armour, infused with all the evil of that place and a set of weapons to match. Armed with these, it is only a matter of time before Anti-He-Man will find his way back to Eternia and destroy his paleskinned double...

Anti-Eternia He-Man in Hellskull Battle Armor and enchanted weapons

I picked up a couple of those He-Man, Faker and Anti-He-Man figures from China that, according to some are factory rejects and to others bootlegs. He-Bro made a good case for the bootleg theory with some notable differences, so I'm going to go with that. Regardless, these make for some great custom fodder as they are relatively cheap basic bodies and there is no guilt over destroying an expensive collector figure.

I wanted to make a Battle Armor variant out of one of the Anti-Eternia He-Man figures, and was hesitating which armour set to use (Skeletor's or He-Man's), but then I saw a loose chest armour for sale from a Castle Greyskullman figure and I thought that would look great in dark red, plus the skull with wings motif also figures on the shield that comes with Anti-Eternia He-Man, so the choice was made. As a plus, no complete figure had to be (expensively) sourced and harmed in the process as this was likely leftover from someone else's custom work.

A quick proof of concept was done by painting over the green stone of the flexible armour pieces in diluted black. Then that was followed by a drybrush of dark burgundy red and topped with a drybrush of scarlet. The grey emblem was just drybrushed with a lighter shade of grey to bring out the detail and the same red from before was used in the eye sockets to give a red eye effect. I felt it looked good enough to soldier on.

A quick mock-up on the body told me the colour scheme was off balance, with all the red touches being in the upper half, so I decided to give the boots the same treatment as the armour, for a worn, scuffed red leather look.

Finally, his all black plastic weapons got some touches of red and grey. Normally I would aim for a smooth covering in successive thin layers, but here I decided to continue the rough stone theme from before, so I went with more drybrushing. Finally, to help protect the paint, all the repainted parts got sprayed with varnish and added back onto the figure.

A more heavily edited picture to get a movie poster effect, for fun.