Zartan, Rise of Cobra Movie - Created September 25, 2009

This custom was pretty fun to accomplish. I wanted Zartan to more resemble how he looked in the movie, and while the figure made for him was great, it also wasn't completely movie accurate. He came with an alternate head of a generic Joe wearing a cap. I wanted my Zartan to still look like Zartan, but with a removable cap, so I went to work.

But first, I took off his eye makeup. He had these light colored markings below his eyes, probably meant to resemble the original design of the Zartan character. Cool, but again not movie accurate, so I actually just scratched them off. Very simple. Then I painted his way too blonde hair black with brown dry brushing and did the same to his eyebrows. Then I worked on that removable cap.

To accomplish this, I took the alternate head, chopped the cap off the top, and just dremmeled out the inside. I kept dremmeling until there was plenty of space for Zartan's head and sure enough it worked. The hardest part was getting a clean cut of the hat from the top of the alternate head. But once I did the rest was pretty much cake. And now I have a movie accurate Zartan, complete with appropriately colored hair, no face makeup, and a removable cap to sneak into the G.I. Joe headquarters.