With two versions of Rise of Cobra Scarlett, and them being very different, I really wanted to try and give her a proper treatment in any customs.  Plus, let’s face it, there aren’t that many girls in this toyline and I had an extra of each Scarlett, so I wanted to give it a go.

The hardest part was trying to find a way to keep her feminine while still ‘bulked up’ with the Arctic cold-weather gear.  I could have just taken the Arctic Snake Eyes and did a headswap, like I did with Ripcord (and lots of plastic-weldiness) but that would have still made her just pretty androgenous.  I wanted sleek and sexy, like she in in the other ROC incarnations (even though the City Strike one has some neck issues) but I wanted her padded-out to protect against the cold weather.

This took some doin’.

Basically, I had to find body parts that were smooth-ish (not too wrinkly, armoured, geared-up) so as to look like arctic gear, and I had to find
ones that weren’t too big in the first place.  Smaller, more effeminate males were needed, and they needed to not have too much of a differential between shoulder to wrist and hip to ankle (to give that smooth, one-piece sleeve-to-cuff look).  I’d find a great hip, only to have it billow out with big, bulky kneepad and huge feet (Retaliation Snake Eyes) or a great bicep that had a tiny wrist (ROC Breaker).

Eventually, I ended up piecing together just about everything I could find.  I nearly went with ROC Cobra Commander’s arms and legs, because they would’ve been about perfect except for the vertical grooves that are in the sculpt. Oh, and that weird circuity thing on his bicep, which I would’ve Xacto’ed off anyway.

So, here’s the recipe:

• Head – ROC City Strike Scarlett
• Torso – ROC Scarlett, Impact Armour
• Upper Arm – ROC Breaker
• Lower Arm – ROC Snake Eyes, Paris Pursuit
• Hood – ROC Snake Eyes, Paris Pursuit (plastic-welded to…)
• Jacket – ROC Duke, Desert Battle (plastic-welding rocks)
• Hands – ROC Scarlett, Impact Armour
• Holster – ROC Scarlett, Impact Armour (with crossbow, in pieces)
• Upper Leg – HOH Firefly, with holster Xacto’ed off
• Lower Leg – ROC Storm Shadow, Paris Pursuit
• Feet – HOH Firefly

I may or may not try and get her ponytail to do something different, or even clean up the holster where I got white paint on it, or even her neck with the black hickeys that she got in her life before I got her in a Huge Lot on eBay. But for now, this is her, and I’m pretty damn pleased.

Straight from the movie, beeches!

Except, did you ever wonder a few things about that Arctic scene? Like, does Snake Eyes keep an extra eye visor in his coat, a black one, or is it like ultra-violet activated and turns black in the shade?

When the missiles first launch, why is Snake Eyes the only one that thinks of grabbing a snowmobile and shooting them? Why doesn’t he try to shoot the others? Why do Scarlett and Ripcord stand there and watch? Why is Ripcord the only aircraft in the sky from the Arctic to Washington DC? Were we somehow unable to scramble a couple of F-14s in the 2 hours it would’ve taken him to get to the lower 48?

All valid questions. All showing some serious Shatness of the ROC movie. Yet still, somehow, I frickin’ LOVE this toyline, and am SO GODDAM HAPPY that I’ve pretty much got my Arctic line complete. Except the Polar Sharc pilot, what’s his name. Anybody got an extra one of those?

Before I got nutty in getting all Phone Melty and Plastic Weldy, I wanted to ease in slowly.  I did the Desert Ripcord, because that was just a headswap, handswap and painting the neck.  But, I wanted to get painty, and I’m really loving getting my City Strike crew together, so when I saw that I had two identical Jungle-coloured Heavy Duty’s (because the jungle featured so heavily in Rise of Cobra… oh wait…) and then I finally picked up the 4-pack Desert Something Something ROC with a repaint of Heavy Duty, I thought, “Hey, I frickin’ LOVE pickles!”

Kidding.  I thought I should just do my own repaint, because HD isn’t my favourite from the movie line and I wasn’t afraid of fucking him up.  It’s not because he’s British, or because they did him and not Roadblock, but because they gave the toy freakyweird eyes.  Like boggly and gross.  I love the earring, but the eyes are sheepshit and scare me.

But still, a good excecise and if I can get another HD in Impact Armour (because his eyes were far less sheepshitty) then I’m using that head on City Strike Heavy Duty and putting Sgt Stone’s head on the Impact Armour body.  I’ll have a full freakin’ squad of those soon, but more on that later.

A basic blue background, then some lighter and darker camo and BAZINGA, he’s not as lame anymore.

I’ve got the Jungle styles in there for comparison.  I even did his left knee in that stupid flat, dark colour, just to pay homage.

Side-on, and you can see that the lighter camo grey is much closer to the blue than the lighter-camo grey is to the green background.  So my camo isn’t as good in that aspect, but he’s City Strike worthy, I reckon.

Personally, I like mine better.  I know there wasn’t a “City Strike” section of the Rise of Cobra movie, but there IS a full toyline, and I think City Strike Heavy Duty would fit right in, I reckon.

Except… though the tin says “Matt” on it, he’s quite glossy.  So are my other efforts.  I think something went glosstastic with the white that I’m using, because it’s only colours that have the white involved.

I’ve just posted about making the attachment for the nozzle of my heat gun to “weld” an Ice Viper’s hood onto Arctic Snake Eyes’ parka to make an Arctic Ripcord.  Here’s the shots of the Ice Viper with the hood from Snake Eyes’ parka.

Swaperoonie!

I’ve got hoodieboy and a normal one side-by-side for comparison.  You can see that this is probably the least impressive angle as you can still see the seam on the inside of the hood.  Because of the Squeeziness Factor, I had to do the work on the hood while it was already on the Ice Viper, making it incredibly difficult to melt things together, plastic-welding styles, without melting the Ice Viper’s face too (I melted his visor a little, whoopSo yeah, the most flaws in the above.

A side-on comparison, where you can still see a bit of a sharp angle between ‘old’ parka and ‘new’ parka near his face, but I’m still loving it.

My favourite shot, of course, because it shows no imperfections!

What’s that?  FUCK.  I see that I overlapped the black line with some white when covering up char marks.  Meh, I can fix.  But still, FUCK.  Should’ve seen that.

Another shot showing the slightly too-angular meeting of hood-of-parka with neck-of-parka, but still a pretty good shot.  The camo pattern works too, I think.  Just need to fix that black line on his back.

The first official custom I did was Nunchuck, whom I will blog about later, but he was a Jump In With Both Feet custom, for the 4th Australian Customs Contest on the Hisstank.com forums.

Now that I have time to sit and do them the way I want, making figures that I thought they should’ve made in the first damn place, I’m really quite pleased with the results.

First up, Ripcord.  Now, I know there’s a floppy-hat Jungle version from the ROC (Rise of Cobra) line, but there wasn’t a whole lot of jungle mentioned in the movie, yet the desert featured heavily.  So, I took the much-too-tall Desert Duke (from one of the packs?) and popped a Ripcord head on him after painting the neck with the nearest matching brown.  The reason I phrase it that way is because one of the other Ripcord heads has a much darker shade of brown.

Not that I slap on the tinfoil hat in regards to racism, but you wouldn’t really expect to see a much pinker or more Caucasian-looking Duke, nahmeen?

But maybe they folks at Hasbro all just said, “Which is Eddie Murphy’s latest movie?  The daycare one or the fat people?!” and got all kinds of confused.

Easy to do.

This next one is another easy-looking one, that turned much harder.  Much along the same logic that says to make a Jungle Ripcord instead of a desert one, they also thought it would be Friggin’ Brilliant to make 53 versions of fkn Snake Eyes for the movie line, yet no Arctic Ripcord.  There’s freakin’ DOC, for fks sake!  But no Ripcord?!?  He featured in the goddam scene!

Further proof, I suppose, that the toymakers get to see one trailer (if that) before having to figure out which toys to make for an upcoming movie.

Right then, I just took an Arctic Snake Eyes and popped a Ripcord head on it.  Done!

Totally kidding, that’s just where I started.

I was looking at all the parkas for my beautiful Arctic Rise of Cobra awesome beauties, and noted that I wanted an Ice Viper with his hood up as much as I wanted a Ripcord.

So I whipped out the Xacto knife, carved the hood off an Ice Viper’s parka and the hood off of Arctic Snake Eyes’ parka, and swapped ’em over.  Bit o’ glue, some paint, and Done!

Totally kidding again.  It was actually quite involved.  I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to glue the quite-pliable soft-plastic jackets and whatnot together, but they don’t really stay whilst drying.  It’s nigh impossible to get a really tight seam.  I tried using the tealighter candle in my Kustoms Kit, but that just chars the shit out of the surrounding plastic and renders the parka unusable.

Nup, this would need a better solution.  So I bought a heat gun.  With brother-in-law’s Bunnings Christmas Gift Voucher.  Go Doc!

The heat gun nozzle is too damn big too, though!  If you’re out to melt the entire getup, then rock on.  But if you’re down for some precise work, there’s a project waiting.

I took our old vacuum cleaner hose, the metal cylinder bit, and cut about 3 inches off the end.  Then I cut about 4.5 inches off again.  First I just flanged the tubing around the heat gun nozzle, but it didn’t fit very tight.  Wife’s brilliant idea was to take the 3 inch bit, cut a slot down it vertically, and then just fit that over the nozzle and the add-on.

Imagine just getting one cylinder to “hug” the other one.  Then I took the flanged-out bits and bent them in, creating 4 ‘flaps’ of metal that all overlapped a bit.  Then I took a decorating tip from my Bag O’ Cake Frosting and slid it into the flange-hole to the point that it was slightly wedged in.  Knowing that wouldn’t hold, I went in underneath it, INSIDE the whole cylinder, and used some needlenose pliers to bend some of the flangeybits in, to where they were behind the little metal cone.

Basically, it’s like taking a cone-shaped waffle ice cream cone and shoving it through a toilet paper roll.  It’s a bit tight, but it’ll hold.  Now go inside the TP tube and pinch some cardboard in behind the ice cream cone.  Viola!

It needs some nips and squeezes from the pliers, but ultimately what I ended up with was a cone sitting on top of a cylinder, that enables you to concentrate the heat gun’s magical heat rays into an area about 1-centimetre square, melting it to liquid in about 4-5 seconds.  Wait any longer and it’ll bubble and char!

So I just got some needlenose pliers, went through the armpit of the parka, and held the hood in place on the shoulders while I ran the heatgun up and down the seam.  It melts quick, so concentrate, and then hold it in place with the pliers once the edge of the parka has melted into the edge of the hood.  After a minute or so, you get a nice Welded Plastic seam around the entire hood.

Sure, there are some charred spots, but if you plan on painting it anyway, it’s really not that bad.

Side view shows few imperfections, which is why I’m leading with it.

If you look closely, you can see that the grey I mixed up for the camouflage didn’t quite match, just a hair too dark.  But that’s okay, because I could then make some racist jokes that entertained my wife.

Full-on, badass, looks-like-Eddie-Murphy-but-we-forgive-him pose.  Wife LOVED this shot and I’m rather pleased as well.

Y’know, for my first time and all.