SATURDAY SPOTLIGHT! Packrat studios!

This Saturday I'm super juiced to bring you a spot light on guy who needs no introduction. He's Jonathan Kuriscak of pack rat studios. And he is an Epic level Customizer.

I contacted Jonathan about being featured and he was more then happy to oblige, which in turn made my day. He has been featured on Figure Realm, Wired Magazine, Toycutter and many more.

Among his fine works are a Dark Knight Returns Batman

A WWII themed Star Wars Empire Strikes Back bounty hunter set.

As well as a Vader to lead them.

An AWESOME apocalypse!

An R2-D2 Bertie World War Robot that blew me away.

I'm a huge Ashley Wood fan :]

A Concept Red Cross

And a concept Robo Cop to name a few.

But what caught my eye was the first thing I ever saw him do. 

This bad ass Steam punk Iron Man and Tony Stark Smithy! Personally Stam Punk is a Genera that leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth due to the amount of vagueness surrounding it. It was just.....

Stuff like this always turned me off.

Well stuff like this got me going. Thats a costume by the way. A PERSON IS INSIDE THAT!

The figure is a bit larger then a ML scale fig and the Tony Stark is a Ml Univers.
I started off with the normal question. Tell me a bit about yourself.

"PRC: I'm a Action figure collector, who since I was in high school "customized" figures. Its a hobby I have loved doing for a long time, and in the last 5 years gone further into the rabbit hole, basically, I'm addicted!"

I share this sentiment. It is a truly addictive experience, making something, from start to finish that their is no other like. And Mr. Kuriscak has certainly done that, and then some.just look at the detail on the back from gas tanks to the port hatch for tony stark. This Figure is an amazing scratch build.

A common question here is how did you get started?
PRC: As stated before, I did this in high school, but after Graduating from University I got back into it.

Getting the chance to ask him about his recipes was a thing I couldn't pass up! HE was Kind enough to share his amazing process with us.


PRC: Recipe for my SteamPunk Iron Man, goes as follows (from what I can recall):

Fox Cleatus Robot figure for the Chest, and Upper Arms.
To this day i want to get my hands on a cleatus. Such an awesome base.

Custom Built head from StyreneCustom Legs, built around a Sigma Six figure for the joints using styrene again


Feet, Styrene and Sculpt.


Lower arms an Hands: Mega Morph Hulk


Rest is basic bits and fodder from my (ever growing) fodder collection


Hex Rod cuts for the bolt heads

Fake Candle/tea light for the light

Thats not the least of it.
 He felt he also had to make a Thor to match.

This isn't just a normal Thor. Aside from being a Steam punk Thor its an INSANE CUSTOM!
 He was kind enough to provide us with the recipe for this as well.

RPC: For my Steampunk Thor:

Legendary Comic Book Heroes Conan for the Base

Magneto Head I believe, with sculpted beard

Hair is from... I believe an LOTR Aragorn figure

Boots from an Aragorn Figure

Right arm is built up with styrene, as is the other armor

Hand from a fox Cleatus figure

Then the HAMMER:

I created a Clear acrylic box out of clear plastic, sculpted on a rock formation, leaving the cracks clear.


In the box was Flickering LED Setup I created, with a switch on the outside of the box, hidden in the rock formations.

I then painted the rocks, left the cracks unpainted, but then followed up with a blue clear in the cracks.

Shaft of the hammer is built from a tube from fodder, and wrapped in vinyl.



Wow, just wow. All of what is here is amazing. True craftsmanship. So with everything accomplished here I had to ask, of someone who made such amazing things. What can you say to others looking to follow in your footsteps?



PRC:Keep learning, and dont be sloppy!
Learn how to paint! Read up on it, in the customizing forums, Tutorials, GO TO MODEL Maker FORUMS!!! Tons of stuff out there, worth learning!!! If it is a figure you are really interested in creating take your time, give it 100 percent, and practice. Keep trying! I dont do this with dreams of working in the big biz of Toys, I do this because I enjoy doing it, for me its a hobby! If you enjoy customizing, keep it up, it takes time to learn how to do all the various different techniques out there!
 
I can't agree more. Their seems to be a theme among customize I interview. From the novice to the pro. Which is learn, practice, and do what you love for yourself. It makes me feel good about our hobby community. We have, in most of the forums I go to, a great community. Great people all looking to share the knowledge and experience. And that's a good sing of things to come as our hobby community grows and grows.

Check Pack Rat Studios blog

And his Facebook!

Custom Concept Young Thor, Part 2

"You will follow us to the police... in the name of... The Avengers!"
~Thor Odinson


Click here for Part 1 of my Custom Concept Young Thor.

The first thing was to disassemble my other Wiccan. I had two of each hand and each head. The two Hammer Holding hands will be sized differently; one to hold the thin wand type hammer and one to hold the super heavy duty hammer.

Of the two open hands, one will be left the same and one will be RE-molded to be open but curled.

After the head, neck joint, arm pegs and wrist attachments were removed by boiling I filled them with sculpt and, when dried, drilled a hole in them and then used a Dremel grouting bit to make a semicircle indentation to receive the Revoltech joint. Next, the forearms were glued in place, disabling their  rotation. After this dried, a hole was drilled and then the same approach to the hands was implemented to make way for a Dremel joint since both sides of the joint are identical. After you know they are the right size, I coat the inside with crazy glue and let it harden. the same was done to the neck.

This is what you would end up with in the end.

After some adjusting, the Revoltechs fit nicely.

If done successfully, you end up with this. Granted, I still need to clean these up a bit (mainly the hands), but you get the idea.

You may notice a hammer in the above pic? Interested? Well here we go.

I wanted a LOT of hammer heads and the ability to swap them between handles. I set about making a test hammer. I settled on a fairly simple design I would call "The Fanged Hammer" due to its downward pointing ends. I started by getting the genreal shape on the end of a chop stick and letting it cure.

Next I went with the Ultimate Thor incarnation war hammer

For this I just shaped the conical cylinder and left it sit in a puddle of water so it would not adhere to the object it was drying on. (Note: as the water dries you must re-wet the area to keep it from bonding.)

And finally, a small square hammer.

I then took a DCUC Hawkman mace and cut the mace off.

A small magnet was glued to the end after sanding it level.

My test hammers now cured, I went about sanding them to get the base shape that I wanted to sculpt over.

I also wanted to be sure the hole I put in them was large enough to snugly fit the Hawkman handle.

For the Ult. hammer I decided I needed to make moorings for the parts. A peg going through the center of the hammer so a peg could stick out both sides for the hammer and axe end to be on. And a peg in the center bottom to attach to the handle. I did this using my Dremel work press since I wanted it to be pretty exact. It worked out well. If you customize, I highly recommend one. Also it's great for around the house stuff.

I, for the life of me, have never been able to figure out what these are. They come in EVERY Revoltech package and are completely useless to me. They do not come with any Revoltech figures to my knowledge. (Maybe with the Assemble Borg brands, but I haven't bought one yet.) So I was pretty pleased when I finally came up with a use for them!

I shaved one of the disks off so it would work better for what I needed!

A lot has happened here on the main part of the hammer. A heavy coarse grit sanding, a moderate grit sanding and then a fine grit wet sanding with Black Ice 1500. Then a small transition piece was sculpted to the hammer.

 For the fanged hammer I sanded it down. I then applied a thin layer of sculpt and then went to work making it look war torn.

I wanted to give the sense that this hammer, at one time, was almost pristine. But was ancient. And that it had been used both to attack and defend.

With that drying I went to work on the next hammer. I wanted this to be more like Thor's traditional hammer. I started by sculpting these "panels" on the hammer.

 Later on I plan to sand the space between the "panels" and sculpt flat surfaces.

I wanted this hammer to look less worn. Now on to the Ult HAMMER!

As you can see I sanded the small transitional part much the same way as the center. The wet sanding really makes things shine. This way when I paint it silver. It will lend itself to looking more like polished metal. 

I wanted to make a large hammer that was lightweight so that a figure could hold it in dynamic poses. My solution was Foamy. I first decided how big I wanted my hammer front to be. I cut a strip off making sure to be as even as possible.  I made a ring and measured to make sure I hadn't cut too much again.

Then I glued the two ends together. 

For the ends of the hammer I cut out circles covered them in Crazyglue to harden them, then sanded and grinded them to the right size. I then glued it into the hammer body.

This is what the disk looked like before I coated it in glue.

The back of the hammer (already pictured) was flat so I did not need to do this, but I wanted the front of the hammer to be slightly rounded out. So I took the disk after applying glue and curved it so it would keep its curved shape. I did this by pressing a glue cap into the back as I rotated it.

The finished product.

The same piece after a liberal amount of reapplying crazy glue and sanding, and then wet sanding.

The next step was drilling a whole in the center of the back of the flat part of the hammer. You see where I'm goin' now, don't ya?

Next step was to cut out some different axe shapes. I usually end up with left over sculpt so i made some outlines for the axe heads.

The next step was to Coat them in crazy glue. This is to harden them.

After many coats of glue and sanding this is when I ended up with. Of the four this was the one I ended up liking the most.

The last thing before assembling the axe head was to take a pice fo foamy and roll it into a tube and glue it together. Then after a coating of glue over its entire surface I cut out a rectangular channel to slide the back of the axe into.

Put it all together and you have the end of this update. Thanks for stopping by! Don't forget to follow, subscribe, like (FB) and + (G+)!

Look out! Next time on Automatauntaun!

"Red and Gold..."