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.

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.