Making Busts (April - June 2005)

For those unfamiliar with customising, the pale pink stuff is the colour of the 'super sculpey' sculpting clay that I put over the plastic figures. It can be translucent, so you can often see the original colour of the figure underneath. Once I've finished sculpting, I always completely repaint the whole figure.

Making Busts from Sideshow Dolls

I had only once made a 12" custom using a Buffy doll. She came out well (I'm particularly pleased with the hair sculpt and she was nominated in Fwoosh.net Custom of the Year Awards) but I really didn't enjoy making her. Trying to squish a 12" doll into a pan of boiling water isn't easy and I used a ton of sculpey clay on her. By the time I'd finished wrangling her, I had serious arm, neck and back ache!

So. I had another doll just sitting in a cupboard for a year, waiting to be customised. In April 2005, I started customising the larger scale busts made by Moore/DST. I realised they had never done one of Buffy herself and that the Sideshow doll was in scale with these busts.

I removed the arms at the bicep, sawed through the waist and removed the hair. The doll has disproportionately small shoulder/arms so I had to bulk her out a lot.

I moulded sculpey clay over the top of the doll to sculpt tie-back hair, the vest top, hat and gown. The tassel on the hat is made from silk thread. I used acrylic paint, some metallic gel pens and sprayed the finished product with matt sealant. I used her Vampyr book (her Sideshow accessory) for the stand.

Here are some photos of her in progress and finally with my custom versions of the other official busts, so you can see how the scale worked.

After Buffy turned out to be a success, I used the same method to make a large busts from the 12" Sideshow dolls for Angel and Spike. The shoulder/arm proportions are better on these dolls but the necks were much too short. I had to pull those neck's out of their sockets to elongate them.

The Sideshow sculpts for Angel and Spike were excellent so they made some nice variants as busts.

I used the same stand for both of them, adapted from an alter that came with the 6" Spike. For Angel I glued on his claddagh ring. For Spike/William I turned the stand round, repainted it and stuck on his poem.

Customising the Large Busts by Moore

These busts were made from the official busts from Moore Action Collectibles. I used sculpey to alter the hair and clothing on them. I also altered the shape of Angel's face by sanding down his nose and making his forehead wider.

The following photos show the various stages of painting the customised sculpt.