I'm constantly experimenting with tools and techniques to throw into my bag of customizing tricks. After hanging out with a friend of mine and talking about folks plasti-dipping their cars nowadays, I remembered using the stuff from my days as an Industrial Design student. I then started thinking about how it can somehow be applied to action figure customizing, and then stupidly decided that Spider-Man would be a good first experiment.
The first mistake was deciding to use the old Havok style ML body. Because of the obvious rub issues at both the shoulders and hips, the ROML Protector body had to be completely disassembled and shaved out. Even then, I decided that the hip ball joints just wouldn't work and would need to be painted. After all that was done, I then etched weblines into the body with my hobby wood burning tool (a technique I've used on custom Spidey experiments before). The next challenge was logistics. Plasti-dipping anything means you have to actually be able to dip it in the stuff, and I quickly realized that there was no way to dip the main body without the dip getting into all the crevices and gumming up the articulation. In order to do the body, I ended up applying the dip with a craft stick, first the red, then the blue. The limbs were the easier part, but the hinge joint in the hands meant that they would have to be painted.
Ultimately, I got it to work and found out all I needed to know about how to use plasti-dip for figures. It's great for limbs and non-ball jointed areas, and it kicks ass for doing quick skin-tight gloves and boots as opposed to using something like Aves sculpt. Plasti-dip is also very durable; unless you end up scarring it with a knife and actually peeling it, it stays on really well, and resists scratches. It RULES for skintight masks... I've used it for several figure heads now, and the best part is that if you ever want to reuse the head, you just peel the dip right off with no damage to the factory paint. That goes for every dipped area on the figure actually; no damage to any factory paint underneath the dip once it dries, and it peels right off.

I think I'm the first person to try this out, and hopefully it'll open doors and ideas for other customizers out there! =)