Branjita's WIP Custom Figures

Yesss!!! Definitely finish it. The world needs more 5" figures.
blackweb
bardockssj

DUDE you have to finish this!!! I've been wanting to see it since you posted the old WIP pics years ago.

Yes I love seeing all kinds of customs not just figuarts.

Good tastes Doomy. I like looking at your collection too. 


The Return Of Branjita's WIP Custom figures. Super happy. I care, so... LETS FINISH THISSSSS

Well I'm just doing my part lol, to be honest I like the characters for the most part and in the moment there are times w9atching I feel like I did back in the day watching DBZ. I don't know if anyone would want me to make 5'' scale figures.

Bran everyone would want to see your customs, and I'd love to see that one finished even more being a Gohan fan!

It's been a while since I've spent any time customizing DBZ figures. But I worked on a couple last night!

Several years ago, I pretty much bought all the fodder I thought I'd ever need for the characters I wanted to make. (Did I know that I would probably never finish making ALL of them? No. Will I ever make some of them? Sure!) But anyway, I stupidly forgot about Buucolo. And playing Dokkan Battle reminded me he existed a year or two ago. So I wanted to make him. Originally, I told doomprevails88 if he bought 2X the supplies to make Buucolo, I'd make him a custom one and keep one for myself. Well, almost a year went by (plus or minus) and good deals on ebay for the supplies just weren't coming up. There was a collection one time that was pretty good, but both Doom and I forgot about the auction and missed it. This project would have been so cheap and simple 10 years ago... and it was proving to not be cheap, for certain. Buying the figures individually for rip off ebay prices wasn't going to work... $30 for a scratched up Super Buu was a ridiculous proposition... and there was never a collection on ebay that wasn't ENORMOUS that had all three figures that would need to be sacrificed to make these guys, muchless 2X of them all!

But then...! Larry came through with a homerun! He had it all, and I/we didn't even have to buy Piccolo to get the capes!!! LarryKoopa gave me a deal I absolutely COULD NOT refuse on EVERYTHING I needed to make these Buucolo customs. 

And what was better? His figures were close to near mint... instead of scratched up junk like most of what is on ebay these days, posted for top dollar. I just washed them and rubbed the paint rub spots heavily with a wash rag and a tea towel they were nearly good as new! Look how good those capes look after a little bit of work! (They weren't bad by any means, but they weren't as flawless as they look now).


What's important about Piccolo Buu's design? He has normal fingers (unlike Super Buu's oven mitt hands)... he has a nose... the thing on his head is shorter than Buuhan's as far as I can tell (but I haven't decided if I care about this fact yet... I know the thing go cut off, so maybe I will cut them off too?)... his lower boots are definitely brown, perhaps because Piccolo wore brown shoes. I have no idea what color Super Buu's or Buuhan's are in the anime, so I may want to repaint the shoes on all of mine. I also have a Buutenks custom that timone317 made, and I'll have to check his boots as well.




And so I immediately got to work.  I actually transferred the best Super Buu parts from Larry's two and the one I already owned to the best figure. I then soaked him in boiled water for a few minutes, stuck a BIC pen between his knees, and fixed his pidgeon-toed awful stance these figures all came with. I put him in the freezer for about half an hour with the pen between his knees while I did other work on the figures and he ended up looking great. The M on the belt did start chipping, probably due to the boiling and/or bad prep work at Jakks' factory, but whatever the case, I'll repaint that. 

Anyway, so I learned some things that nobody had ever mentioned before.

1. It doesn't seem like you can swap boots between Buuhan's legs and Super Buu's legs. It might be possible, but it would seem to involve quite a bit of destruction and a much higher temperature of boiling water and soak time. Unlike most Jakks figures, both of these have an enormous peg nearly the size of the boot, holding them inside the pant leg. I can't think of another Jakks figure like this off the top of my head. But it's a real shame, because Buuhan has a superior design to his ankle articulation that makes him a lot more stable... plus his boots look nicer. Given the fact we had such a hard time finding these guys and they are in such good shape, I was unwilling to possibly break one of them.
2. Super Buu's head and forearms boil and pop very easily. Buuhan's forearms pop easily. Buuhan's head does not pop easily. It is connected to a large black peg that goes into his head nearly an inch. I had to soak his head in hot water several times and pull it little by little with some twisting to get it off the peg.
3. Surprisingly, Buuhan's head fits right onto Super Buu's slightly smaller neck peg, and despite the fact his original neck was not ball jointed, his head is sculpted in a way that I don't think I'll NEED to modify the inside of it.
4. Super Buu's forearm pegs are larger than Buuhan's So Buucolo is going to need the forearms tightened a little before I call these customs finished. I'm pretty sure they'd pop out if I tugged on them currently. I don't know if it'll be the Super Glue method or the Hot Glue method yet though. I'll figure that out soon.
5. It's a real shame that both of these figures don't separate their torsos from their pants--I know Buuhan certainly does not. I believe cracker made a Buutenks by taking Buuhan's hip articulation and combining it with Super Buu's knee articulation. It seems like a lot of work to me, and since I just want the guy to stand in my display, I really don't care enough to actually do it.
6. Jakks Piccolo's cape fits on Super Buu's body as if it was made for it. Sure, it looks slightly undersized for his body, but it is a direct fit to the neck and fits very nicely against the body. Kind of a major surprise!
7. The excess parts... I have no clue what to do with them. Super Buu's forearms would take a little drilling to fit inside Buuhan's upper arms I think. The heads would need to be drilled as well. 

I might save the parts in case I decide to make Muscle Buu (South Supreme Kai absorbed Buu). That version of Buu is extremely muscular, has a Super Buu face, a longer head thing, and well, I'd just have to sculpt bulky upper arms and a torso on top of Buuhan's. If I decide to cut the thing off the Buuhan heads, I'll save them to make the thing on Muscle Buu's head. Seems like that version of Buu has very bulky legs in some of the artwork, so I doubt this is a custom I am actually interested in, honestly! In some artwork, his legs look short, but during the transformation, he actually grew taller if anything, so that's odd. See here:





Anyway, back on topic. Here's what everything looks like right now. Adjusting Super Buu's legs using the boiled water trick sure did improve the way he stands.




I'm not thrilled by the idea of having Buucolo, Buutenks, and Buuhan with the exact same head/facial expression in my collection display, but I'm 100% not interested in repainting all that pink, just because I decided to change the mouth. So looks like that's how they'll need to stay!