Branjita's Finished Custom Figures

Difficulty: 7/10

Chaozu (Chiaotzu) is always a very difficult character to create. He has an incredibly round head, which is worse to work on than a character with hair, and placing the little round ball on his head, his eyes, his mouth, etc. are all difficult to get centered in all 3 dimensions. Jakks really should have produced this Chaozu, because they already developed the perfect body for him-- Saiyan Saga Gohan. I'd love to claim that I worked on this figure in a systematic, procedural way, but I did not. I should have started by dremeling the articulation so there wouldn't be paint loss when moving the figure. I am having that issue. Everything is a little tight. I actually never even boil and popped the body on this guy. The head is a heavily modified Chara Puchi DB Chaozu head on Gohan's neck peg. I remember I shaved a ton of material off the cheeks of the head, and then added Apoxie Sculpt to make it round again. Why did I do this? Because the CP head has big, rounded square cheeks, a very wide head, ridges on the hat, and I remember the eyes were slightly sculpted on, including the massive pupils. So basically I trimmed and sanded it years ago, and recently sanded it further. I kept thinking I was done with this figure, but then I'd look at reference screenshots from the anime and change my mind. I ended up spray painting it white, decided I needed to dremel Gohan's sleeves off him and put him in a wifebeater (tank top shirt). So I did that, sprayed him again, and then decided I wasn't happy again. I ended up sculpting new ears for him (which are surprisingly almost identical in size to Jakks Gohan's ears), a new, wider and taller sash, and I added a ring at the top of Gohan's wrist bands, so I could paint that red. I sculpted the mouth and drew the eyes and facial expression on the face based on the left screenshot below. The middle image is an animation cel scan and was for helping me determine a compromise for the paint colors for the shirt, and the screenshot on the right was an alternate expression I considered. I knew I wanted to have a happy Chaozu, because I knew he'd be standing next to my smiling Krillin.

 

Painting Chaozu figures is always difficult. Red and black both bleed into white, and yellow gets messed up by black very easily. I decided I did not want to shade Chaozu's skin this time, because I wanted him to look youthful compared to the Cell Saga one. Overall, I'm extremely pleased with how he turned out. He is replacing a very old Chaozu custom on my Saiyan Saga shelf that I had made around 20 years ago from an AB Goten figure. This AB Goten Chaozu is moving down to my Namek Saga shelf, and is replacing an even older Chaozu custom from 2001.

This is either the last Chaozu I intend on making, or second to last. I may or may not make a DB Chaozu in his green outfit. I think the Chara Puchi figure is good enough.

Difficulty: 5/10

I've been wanting a Gregory for years, however, he's so small, that I never wanted to sculpt him. Last year, a friend/coworker of mine told me he had a very good resin printer, and that he'd be willing to print me one and some for my friends for a small fee. So I bought the Gregory model off a website and he printed me some this year. (I said which website and such in my Work in Progress (WIP) thread, so check that if you want the same one). Anyway, these were really difficult to paint, mostly because they are so small, but partially due to the fact that I had to manually mix his two body colors. And since I had to do that, if I ran out of paint, I'd have to mix more. All in all, they have a coat of Krylon Fusion in white as a primer, followed by 5 coats of light brown, 2 to 3 coats of the darker brown, 1 coat of flat clear, and then 2 layers of gloss black. It took 5 hours to get them to the point of being completely painted, the ~half hour of painting the details on two of them, and then a few minutes to clear each them in 3 drying batches (upper body, lower body, bottom of feet), and finally I repainted the black completely again, so there wouldn't be flat clear on top of the gloss black on any of them.

The antennas on all 3 broke at some point (just 1 antenna per figure, coincidentally... and always his left antenna as bad luck would have it), so all of them had to have the tiniest little antenna glued back on, and then I had to use my electric manicure tool to grind it smooth. Gregory cannot survive a 5 foot fall directly onto his head, I have proven that 3 times now.

The larger one that has been left as solid colors (to better match King Kai and Bubbles) belongs to lasombra . The larger one with the details painted belongs to Ascat . The small one with the details painted is mine. I don't plan on painting any more (and I don't want to either).

I'm super happy with how all of them turned out!

A different friend offered to print me a regular PLA 3D printed Gregory just to see if the size I wanted would work. It did. But the PLA print is an extremely inferior quality print compared to the much higher resolution resin print my other friend printed.

Here's what lasombra and ascat's figures look like next to an unpainted one.

Here's what over 6 hours of going blind can produce. These guys are 1.5 inches tall including the antennas and then 1.5 inches tall not including the antennas.

Here's what my Gregory looks like with my 20+ year old slightly customized King Kai and Bubbles

Here's what Ascat's Gregory looks like with an Irwin King Kai and Bubbles

Here's what lasombra's Gregory looks like with an Irwin King Kai and Bubbles