Final WIP: X-Factor Beast

X-Men Month continues with Beast in his X-Factor uniform, from the six or so issues when he was both furry and still wearing his brown and yellow suit.

I look at the picture from my WIP post, and the proportions look fine. But they didn’t work on the toy in person… The Blanka legs seemed too long. It was probably those weird knees: SOTA makes the world’s longest knees. Make a note: a Street Fighter figure is a good starting place for a Manos-the-Hands-of-Fate Torgo figure. Anyway, the knees didn’t allow him to crouch properly, so I cut off the legs off another Marvel Legends 4 Beast (happy to use him! This series was $2.50 at KayBee for a while, so I’ve got a few) and grafted them onto the Blanka legs at the mid thigh. I then sanded the fur details off and sculpted uniform cuffs on the legs. Then he was ready for painting.

I tried to return to spray painting for some applications with this Beast custom. This past weekend I went to the Home Depot and got looked for the colors I’d need; notably, white and brown. Last year I had this idea that spraying base coats was going to streamline my whole operation and let me pump out customs left and right. I invested in all the Krylon Fusion colors (bonds to plastic! Although it’s not too different from normal spraypaint) I could find. But I was missing white (I didn’t think I’d need to do base coats with Fusion, but it in fact is not a magic miracle paint that blocks out dark area on plastic) and brown. First, Home Depot has some kind of exclusive with Rustoleum, so I had to settle for their Fusion knockoff. I then covered Beast’s head, hands, and feet in masking tape, and sprayed him base white and supposed brown. But Brown my ass… Beast came out looking reddish purple, and certainly about 50 Rs more that the cap of the spraypaint.

But some quick brushwork changed his tone to the brown I wanted. The stripes went on pretty easy, as this is the third X-Factor pattern I’ve done by now.