My first prize figure custom: Ramsay Bolton

[holyscream]

Originally posted on my MFC account.

Hiya 👋🏽 I finished customizing my first figure a couple of weeks ago and wanted to document a few of my thoughts here.

Background & Materials

I’ve been planning on getting into garage kit painting for a couple years now and since I was recently able to acquire my grail, Shaving Bunny, and then took a long hard look at both my bank account and the commission rates for GK painters, I thought it would be a good time to finally get serious about it.

I’ve done Monster High customs before, so I’m not completely new to the subject matter and already owned a cheap airbrush, a can of matte Mr. Super Clear, some Epoxy Sculpt, and decent brushes and pastels.

I took this opportunity to invest in some more tools that I’d been sorely missing during my Monster High OOAK days, plus ones that I’ll be needing once I start attacking my kits. For this project I used

• A hobby vise (huge help when painting details, especially if you have a slight but noticeable tremor like I do)
• Sandpaper from 400 to 1600 grit
• GodHand Sandpaper sponges (invaluable)
• Alligator clips and a stand (I used to string my dolls up to dry)
• A respirator (I used to just hold my breath 💀)
• Tamiya primer in grey and white
• Vallejo airbrush paints (I used to use thinned craft and model acrylics)

All worth their money. I especially recommend the Tamiya primers and the matte MSC UV-Cut sealant. They’re the best products of their kind that I’ve worked with, and I basically wasted money when I bought cheaper alternatives for my first ever doll custom.

Character & Figure Selection

Ramsay Snow Bolton is a side character and minor villain from the fantasy book series A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin. He immediately became one of my favorite characters for his comically evil antics and crimes against humanity—and Theon Greyjoy in particular—and the fact that he is a fantastic character foil to some of our protagonists. He also appears in the HBO adaptation, Game of Thrones, where he is portrayed by Iwan Rheon. I adore both versions of the character, but the show version wins by virtue of being fun-sized and having more screen time. I ended up getting the GoT Blu-ray box set just so I could look at him in HD, lol.

Long story short, I’ve been kind of obsessed with this character for a couple of years.

Unfortunately, because Ramsay is such a lout (to put it mildly) and the TV show really shit the bed in its latter seasons, there isn’t a whole lot of merch for him. There’s an Eaglemoss statue with a blotchy paint job and a Funko Pop (*shudder*). I own both out of principle, but I’ve always wished for a bigger figure with human proportions. And I knew that if the world wouldn’t give me the Ramsay I wanted, I’d just have to make it myself.

After searching far and wide for a figure that would make a good base, I landed on this Banpresto prize of a character from JJK. I know nothing about the manga or this character, but he

• looked easy to take apart and reassemble
• was holding a sword-like weapon
• had an outfit neutral enough to be altered to fit the show’s casual pyjama-looking outfits
• was 15 bucks on Ninoma

and so, into my cart he went. I did a little digital mockup of my idea:

The process

To disassemble him, I used a hot water bath to soften the plastic and glue. I had to carve the head off the torso because the piece wouldn’t come loose, but the hair, arms and one of the sleeves popped off with a little force. I never managed to detach the feet from the legs, but since I was planning to sculpt boots onto him anyways, I just gave up and left it as one piece.

Next, I used a scalpel to make some adjustments. I cut his fringe, blunted his chin and nose, and cut a V into the collar of the sweater to make it look less like a modern crewneck. Then I sanded the pieces with a 600-grit sponge until they were matte. I rushed through this step, and I suspect I’ll be seeing peeling in the future because of it.

Because Ramsay is so pale, I used white primer on the flesh-colored parts and grey on the rest. I guess I must’ve been so dazzled by the opaqueness of the primers that I forgot about sculpting the boots at this point. Whoops. Two coats of color later, I finally remember, so I sand and layer on Epoxy Sculpt. I filled in the gap between shoes and pants and added a rim on the leg. After letting the epoxy harden for 24h, I primed it again and smoothed out the transitional areas to the best of my ability. If I’m honest, I could and should have given it another pass or two. Or three.

While the legs were curing, I started on the face and arms. Like with my doll customs, I applied pastel dust with a brush on top of a coat of MSC to shade and add dimension rather than using the airbrush. When I was happy with the wrists, I applied a final coat of MSC and then added gloss to the fingernails. I think the wrists turned out the best of all parts; they’re as pale as I wanted them and have the exaggerated blush effect I was going for.

New base coat for the legs. Adding the main outfit color, black. I went a little overboard and the reddish base I put down got covered up completely.

I put off the face for as long as possible. The faceup used to be my favorite part of doll customs but I gave up on the hobby for a while because I developed a tremor in my hands which made the detail work impossible. This face is a third of the size of the doll faces I used to do, so it was nerve-wracking, but turned out much better than I feared. Not great, mind you, but sufficient.

I lengthened his mouth a bit to give him an evil smile. >:)

In comes the worst mistake: I wanted to make sure the face was free of dust before I sealed it and added gloss and for some reason that I can only assume to have been sleep deprivation, I tried to use my freshly emptied airbrush to blow air onto the face. The airbrush that had just been filled with jet black.

I managed to wipe most of the black specks off and covered some by hand, but I didn’t want to risk redoing the face again. So now he has blackheads all over his face. Let’s pretend it’s a reference to the pockmarks of his book counterpart. 🙏🏽

Back to the clothes. I added some red detailing to the ex-sweater—I want to paint a landsknecht outfit someday—and tried to hide the seam between torso to neck with a tie.

With the boots, I attempted a leather effect, but it didn’t really work. The glossy finish I chose at least adds a new texture to the figure. I had to reapply the matte finish on the pants afterward, because the gloss seeped under the foil I used as a mask (Noted: Always put on the tape first).

Oh, and for the stick thing I just mixed grey with a metallic medium. Getting it back into the figure’s grip was a tight fit and some of the paint on both parts got scraped off.

Overall, it was a very fun project I spent two weekends on, and more importantly, I learned things that’ll hopefully help me with my future GK projects.

Thanks for reading!

The result

Don’t speak to me or my oddly-shaped sons ever again.