Oh boy, here's one I'm particularly proud of. When I started making custom figures of the Green Lantern Corps, this is one I immediately knew for sure I'd be making. This is probably one of the very first custom figures I started making, though one of the last completed. Most importantly, this is the figure that really got me over my phobia of doing a large amount of sanding down body parts, as well as my phobia of large-scale sculpting. It's also one of the first times I was able to really get the results I wanted from sculpting.

Anyway, I started slowly assembling the pieces for this custom months ago. My idea was to build this figure from the ground up, using the body parts of existing figures. I'd seen a lot of custom figures in my time, and in my opinion, a lot of the custom figures I'd seen where people sculpted on their own details looked really bad, so I was trying to avoid that. The first thing I did was do a bit of extensive research on every action figure toy line Kenner had ever put out. I did research on Mattel too, since they were the other giant, but I knew in my head I wanted to use Kenner parts if possible, since Kenner was always the best when it came to making action figures, and besides, using Kenner parts would aid in the figure achieving a Kenner-made, Super Powers-esque look.

You know how hard it is to find a figure in the 4.5 scale with a sculpted on vest? I finally figured out the base torso for the figure would be the great "Ted" Theodore Logan figure from the Bill and Ted line put out by Kenner. The Bill and Ted figures were sculpted to be a little bit on the larger side, somewhere around 5 or 5.5 inches, but that was okay, you can really play around with overall figure height with a careful selection of limbs. The torso looked pretty good, far better than anything else I'd seen, so swapping out wasn't up for debate. I watched Ebay for a few weeks until I was able to get the figure at a decent price, then once he showed up, I threw him into a pot of boiling water for manual disassembly. The Ted figure has a very unconventional build, only about halfway the standard Kenner type, due to his particular action feature, so once I got the figure entirely disassembled, I had to drill a few holes into the torso and dremel them out, so that the body would be able to accept standard-type Kenner limbs at both shoulders and the hips. Then I pried off the plastic tab on his back for the microphone input, since it stuck out and looked bad, then I patched up the gap made in its absence with some Magic Sculpt, so the back looked all evened out.

Finding the proper limbs and head was a far more difficult task than I ever would have expected. For the limbs, my initial plan was to use Kenner's Ghostbusters figures, since the pants and sleeves had that right kind of baggy look. I quickly found out that while they looked right, the Ghostbusters figures were much too tall. Egon's limbs were perfect, but made the figure far too huge. Winston's limbs were still pretty good, but again, still too tall. Maybe he'd fit in with the 90s JLA line, but not Super Powers. Ray's limbs really gave the figure the perfect height, but they were just so fat and dumpy. I was always more of a fan of the drawings of skinny G'nort from the Justice League comic rather than the chubby G'nort from Green Lantern Quarterly, and other sources. Not to mention, the chubby look of Ray's limbs completely detracted from the baggy sleeve look that G'nort pretty much has to have. Finally, I settled on Venkman, who had not great, but passable limbs, but a shorter height, still too tall though. I also bought a few of those plastic dog figurines made in Europe, not cheap, to get the right head, but the heads were just a bit to small, as Ted's torso was sculpted with an absolutely massive neck, and I'd need a slightly larger head for it to not look weird on that gigantic, Henry-Rollins-type neck. I bought a couple of dog figures from Disney properties, since their faces had more human-like expressions, which is important on an anthropomorphic dog-man, but again, none of them looked quite like the right breed, and they made the figure just far too tall.

Finally, after careful studying of multiple pictures of G'nort's face from Google image searches, I finally figured that G'nort probably best resembled a Scottish terrier. So then I got to tracking down a "Jock" figure from either Lady and the Tramp, or 101 Dalmations, I forget which, as Disney dogs still have that slightly more human characteristic to their faces. Unfortunately, for some reason, Jock figures are apparently not common, and when you do find them, not at all cheap. I was finally able to track down a smaller unassembled Jock figure from Japan that must have come from a Kinder Egg, or something like that. The head that came with the unassembled dog figure was far too small, so I was going to have to do some 3D scanning of the part, scale up the size, then 3D print it out. This was a royal pain in the ass, but it had the advantage of allowing me to scale the head to exactly fit the body. Sadly, the guy with the 3D scanner and printer I contacted turned out to be a complete flake and disappeared off of the face of the Earth after writing me only once to tell me how much he wanted to work with me. The other guys with 3D scanners either had really crappy scanners or charged way too much for their services, so 3D scanning was out, but that was okay, because by this time I'd decided that Jock had too pronounced a snout, he'd need something a bit closer to his head to really pull off the humanoid look well.

Fortunately, by this time I'd realized that you have to look up action figures under two different categories on Ebay. If it's for boys, you look it up under action figures, if it's for girls, you look it up under dollhouse miniatures. This considerably improved the range of results I was getting. I found a cutesy puppy figure from Hong Kong, which was a little cuter than I wanted, but I figured I could accommodate for that with the right application of paint, and since it was a puppy, it had a considerably smaller snout, which would largely aid in creating a humanoid appearance. Around this time I also decided I needed to look further at other limb options, since the Ghostbuster limbs just weren't going to work. They made the figure too tall, and G'nort is supposed to be two inches shorter than Hal Jordan, I really just couldn't have him towering over a good chunk of my Corps. I needed the character to reflect his proper height, even if it meant putting in a bit more work. I found a figure from the Stargate movie line that was clearly shorter, and had nice, ultra-baggy pants. I thought he would be perfect, but once he finally arrived, I realized he had midget legs. He was TOO short. Finally, I grabbed an Eddie Carr figure from the Jurassic Park line. He left a lot to be desired. He had way too many pockets and details sculpted onto his limbs, his pants stopped way too high up his legs, and his boots were very prominently sculpted, I wouldn't be able to make those look like dog paws with just a coat of paint. Still, the sleeves and pants were baggy enough, and I knew the limbs would be the right size.

Once I'd received the Eddie Carr figure and manually disassembled him, I started sanding all the unnecessary details off of his limbs. Fortunately, this didn't wreck them. I then sanded his boots WAY down so his legs had more of a general vaguely foot-type-shape. I'd also cut the head off of the dog figure, which was insanely easy, since he was sculpted with a collar going perfectly around his neck, which made it super easy to know where to cut to get the head cleanly off. Lastly, I started sanding down the neck, which I'd been afraid to do, but it was just too long a neck, and fortunately, sanding it down didn't take off the bit that would hold in the neck joint. Then I decided to sculpt a little extra onto his pant legs, to make them longer, while keeping my fingers crossed. Amazingly, this blended pretty well, which was a first for me, and it looked decently well in terms of what it was. I then decided to sculpt over the feet, to give them a more dog-paw type look. Again, this came out much better than I'd expected, and I even managed to figure out texturing to nail the furry look, which really aided the appearance of the feet greatly. By this time my phobia of sculpting was starting to dissipate, so I went ahead and sculpted a very light, but again, furry-looking dog-paw-esque layer over his hands, which again, came out far better looking than I would have expected, while still leaving enough room in his hands that he'd still be able to hold objects as he did before. I then sculpted on his ring over that. While searching through visual references, I'd seen G'nort drawn as both left-handed and right-handed, but I decided to go with the right hand, since that's pretty much consistent with everyone else in the Corps, and if I was going to sculpt a left-handed Green Lantern, it didn't seem right to me to reserve that for the biggest dunce in the Green Lantern Corps. I don't want to go around promoting hurtful stereotypes. Anyway, I was starting to get cocky, so I figured since I was already at it, I might as well sculpt over the front and back pieces of the torso, to cover up that t-shirt look, and give him more of the baggy collar he should have. I don't know if I quite nailed the look of his baggy collar, but the sculpt still looks good, and it blends into his body very well. I also sculpted on that mohawky tuft of hair he has on the top of the middle of his head, which, again, blended onto the head so insanely well I couldn't believe it. It was also very fortunate, since it completely covered the hole I'd accidentally drilled into the top of his head while installing the neck joint.

Once the Magic Sculpt had dried, I also sanded down the ring, to give it a perfectly flat surface. That paw looked so good, it was ridiculous. I painted up the body, and since I noticed most pictures of G'nort have the Green Lantern insignia prominently noticeable on his ring, I put a Green Lantern logo sticker on his ring, in addition to the painted white circle and Green Lantern logo decal on his chest. Lastly, though I nearly forgot, I remembered to add a tail. In everything else I'd based all the details of his appearance on the aspects of his appearance I'd liked best from different artists over the years, since he'd been drawn very, very differently from artist to artist. So I went with more dog-like face, as opposed to the more alien face, the white whiskers and eyebrows, the tuft of hair on top of his head instead of an outright mohawk on top of his head, etc. This is where I took my first liberty. In absolutely every picture I'd seen of G'nort, he always had a big, long tail. This is probably the single most consistent feature of G'nort, seemingly never changing from artist to artist. However, I kinda liked the look of the smaller tail on the dog body I'd cut up, so I chopped that off, built a joint for it, drilled a hole in the figure's back for it, and put it in. The tail won't wag, but you can rotate it fully, bringing the points of articulation up to 6 on this badboy. I could have put in the tail joint permanently, still retaining full range of motion, but I made the tail removable, very deliberately. The reason? To be able to put G'nort in the Batmobile. Or any vehicle, for that matter, but the Batmobile offers greater comic possibilities, comic, as in humorous. Due to the nature of hard plastic, G'nort wouldn't fit in any properly scaled vehicle with his tail permanently attached.

Then I got to thinking, people were probably going to gripe about my G'nort figure not having a comic-accurate tail, and his tail was removable anyway, so I went to the toy store and picked up a decently cheap figure of a fox or a wolf or something. The point was that it had a big, fluffy tail. So I got that home, chopped the tail off, built a joint for it, painted it up, and voila, fully comic-accurate G'nort.

I think that's pretty much the whole story. Anyway, I worked super hard to try to make this figure look good, and even harder to get him scaled right, but ultimately, he stands about as tall as Hal Jordan, maybe just slightly taller. This is largely because of the size of his head, which I thought I was stuck pretty much stuck having to use, due to the really large neck on the torso. It never occurred to me that once I'd sanded the neck down to remove some of the length, and then covered with a thin layer of Magic Sculpt to make the collar look right, the sheer width of the neck would be totally unnoticeable, and I would have the option of using a smaller size head, which would totally solve the height issue. This is okay. I haven't permanently sealed up the figure yet, as not a single piece of it is stock, and I may want to duplicate the pieces for either resin casting or 3D printing for others looking to build a G'nort. Right now the body is held together using a big gob of that tacky putty you use to keep things from falling off shelves, since I've got a ton of the stuff since I used to use the stuff to keep my action figures standing on the shelves, but I've since gotten smart and now use actual figure stands. This holds the figure together well enough for display or play, but though not visible, is not permanently bonding, giving me the freedom to use additional heads, limbs, etc. So I'll probably experiment with making a smaller scale head to solve the height issue. As it is, the body of my G'nort figure is properly scaled, with his shoulders being lower than Hal Jordan's so the figure does still convey the feeling of being smaller than Hal Jordan and the rest, even if in fact he is not.

This was a long, long project that lasted me months and months and took no shortage of effort, and as it would turn out, wasn't all that cheap either. I destroyed countless Ghostbusters figures and dog figurines in figuring out this figure. That's okay, the Ghostbusters I can reassemble and bond back together, no one will know the difference. The dogs... not so much, so I'll probably be building a few other denizens of his planet, G'newt. He's fully poseable and looks great amongst my Corps. When I figure out how to duplicate his body parts, I'll permanently assemble him.

Update: I've since made two additional heads for my G'nort figure.

The first was a head that I hacked off from a Disney Tramp PVC figure. I'd picked this head because I like the humanized features Disney tends to give its animal characters, although at the last minute I backed out on using this head, as I'd seen another custom G'nort figure done that looked like it had been made using this head, and I hadn't been particularly impressed. It had looked like someone had just painted what was clearly a Tramp head and mounted it on a dumpy vest-wearing body. I didn't feel like I was looking at a G'nort figure. But since I was experimenting with new heads anyway, I decided to revisit the Tramp head. I built a neck joint, then sculpted on hair and the mustachey whiskers on the front of his face, painted the head, and in the end, did feel the head sufficiently resembled G'nort as he'd often been drawn in the Green Lantern Quarterly comics.

The second head came from another Asian dollhouse miniature dog, which I hacked off, built another neck joint for, sculpted on hair, and painted. It has more of a shaggy dog-type look to it, but still looks to me like a version of him I've seen in the comics, so I'm cool with it. It's the smallest head of the bunch, although it still fits the body nicely, and you can DEFINITELY see the proper height difference in G'nort when you stand him next to the Super Powers Hal Jordan figure. In fact, I came to realize as I was swapping heads and doing size comparisons with the figures, all the heads actually made the character fit his approximate height and apparent size difference to Hal Jordan, it just wasn't as apparent to me with the first, more rounded head. As it worked out, I decided I still like the first head the best, although it is nice to have other options.