Balrog's Customs (Ultimate Shenron (GT) - P6)

Hi again everyone. Depsite having other projects on the table for quite a while, I decided to go in a completely different direction and tackled another member of Cooler's Armored Squadron : Naiz. I hope you like this one, and as always I appreciate your comments.



I hope to have more customs to show you soon, take care until then.

Hi again, folks!

Just a quick update to my Android 13 (normal form), I made him a removable cap, it felt kind of odd having him without one.




And finally, Bojack's team of henchmen is complete, with Bido's arrival. Here's a couple pictures of the big boy and then the whole gang together.

     

I'm still pondering whether or not I'll make a normal form Bojack but for now I need a change of scenery so I'll start working on other characters for a bit... I hope you like these, and your comments are always very appreciated. Take care everyone!

Thank you very much for the support and kind words, they are as ever a huge inspiration and drive to continue my work on customs and to improve on every project.

It's been difficult to find a proper height reference for Neiz/Naiz, as often in Dragonball media. He's drawn radically different heights in different scenes or illustrations, sometimes towering over everyone else, sometimes shorter than Dore (the green one).. Since the main inspiration behind Dore's design is the Incredible Hulk (according to that film's creator), and the SHF Hulk I use is about 20cm tall, I decided to pick up a 20cm tall skinny body for Naiz so he'd be the same height as Dore. The body is from a Green Lantern figure I found on eBay quite cheap.

EDIT : to illustrate the issue, here's various depictions of Neiz I could find... one he's about the same size as Dore, the other he's simply enormous. Below those two I took a screenshot of the actual fight versus Piccolo, their heads are at the same height, but Piccolo's feet only reach down to Neiz's calves, so that'd mean Neiz is about 12-15 inches taller than Piccolo. My Neiz custom is 20cm tall, SHF Piccolo is about 16cm tall (undersized really..) so that sounds as right as I could get..  it's so hard to wrap your head around DBZ inconsistent heights at times! 



For Android 13, I used a Figure-rise Gogeta figure and the removable cap I made from a soft plastic eyewash bottle, I simply cut it to fit, sculpted and painted around it, and it fits as snugly as possible without damaging the sculpted hair underneath.

I'll probably get to finish Cooler's Armored Squadron down the line, just need to pick up another SHF Hulk, I've run out of those.

For now I have a few other customs ready to get started on, I'll make sure to share them here with you all. Thanks again for the comments, they are always appreciated.

Thanks for the kind words! I've not made a transformed Gokua, I may someday for completion's sake but for now I'm happier with his clothed form because I find it a bit more interesting design-wise. 

I too wish that Bandai would release more movie characters or simply characters that don't get much love (Imperfect Cell, pretty please!) but that's also a big reason why I'm making these customs, I simply want the characters so much that I'll just make my own instead of waiting on Bandai. 

Thanks for all those, they'll be handy if I decide to do a Neiz 2.0 in the future, though for now I'll be tackling different projects. 

It's a shame heights are so inconsistent between scenes or in various sources, and yes he does look very tall in those pictures you showed but then if you compare him to Piccolo in the scene I screenshotted, the height isn't realistic anymore..  it's like Krillin on Namek all over again, where sometimes he's as tall as Bulma and sometimes he's the same height as Gohan. 

I'll keep an eye out for a suitable body for that Neiz though, you never know! 

Here's also a picture of my updated Namek display, I've moved a few things around, trying to make more space for the upcoming releases and some more customs of Frieza Force down the line...



Also made a quick custom of Buu saga Gohan without his green tunic, to join my Z Sword Gohan and Mystic Gohan figures, now I have all the Gohan outfits from that saga.

   

Loving the display as well, nice!

The Nail looks great and I love your figure display for Frieza Saga!

Figure-rise Piccolo is a good base, though I used a Dragon Stars Piccolo myself.

I imagine you want to use a Gogeta for the bare chest and the jacket maybe, but you will still need to modify it quite a lot as Nail's coat reaches down close to his knees, while Gogeta's jacket only goes down to mid-torso. As for the bare chest, remember that Namekians have very different abdominal areas to humans or saiyans, not only with colors but also different muscle shapes. 

If you're not comfortable using cloth for customs, you can make it easier to give it a shape by inserting soft plastic or metal wire inside the cloth). You can also paint the cloth to harden it a bit and make it take shape more easily.

I've used several Figure-rise figures for customs before and they work great if you don't need to modify the body too much (as is the case with Nail from a Piccolo figure) but beware if you intend to dremel some of it, the figures are mostly hollow due to being model kits, so it can be messy if you dremel the wrong areas.

To give you an exemple for Nail, I had to dremel off a good part of the abdominal area and smooth it to sculpt the namekian abs and muscles for the bare torso, and even the relatively solid Dragon Stars had some hollow areas quite close to the surface.. if you dremel the same way on a Figure-rise Piccolo, you'll also find more hollowed out areas and will have to completely resculpt back to the surface of the abdominal area, which may also cause an imbalance in the figure as Figure-rise figures are VERY light if you use a heavier material like epoxy resin to sculpt it. 

Again, I went for Dragon Stars for safety (and it's cheaper, and doesn't require assembly), but you should go with what you're most comfortable with. If you're going with the Gogeta bare chest, you should be able to apply a thin layer of epoxy resin or similar material and give it the muscle design of a namekian rather easily.

I look forward to seeing the results of your work on that Nail custom, make sure to share it!