This is my very first custom action figure. As a child, I was always disappointed that toy companies rarely made action figures of the female characters I loved from my favorite cartoons. As an adult, I am delighted to find a whole world of people who customize action figures and create whatever characters they please.

Jackie Wallace is one of my favorite characters from the TV show "Batman Beyond" even though she only stars in one episode and appears in the background of a couple others. I love her hair and her look and her sweet disposition. She's the type of person I could imagine being friends with. She was never significant enough for a figure to be made of her, so I decided to try my hand at it.

The base is a JLU Wonder Woman action figure. I sanded off the stars from her blue bottoms, sanded down the lines of her boots, and sanded down her raised belt and chest details. I don't have a dremel yet, so I used various grades of sandpaper. To remove her arm cuffs I used an exacto knife. After warming them with a hair dryer, I popped off her legs to make the sanding easier.

Her hair lifted right off, leaving two parallel indents along her skull. The back of her head was oddly elongated so I chopped off a chunk with a large kitchen knife. (My mother is slightly horrified with how much dismemberment my new hobby entails.) The trickiest part was sanding down the tiara on her forehead. I didn't want to accidentally turn her into a neanderthal. Her nose got a little foreshortened in the process and my husband helped me with some emergency rhinoplasty.

Once she was sanded down, I sculpted her hair using Polymeric's Kneadatite (Blue/Yellow) Sculptors Epoxy Putty from my local tabletop gaming store. Sculpting was much more difficult than I had anticipated(probably the last time I tried was making "snake" clay pots in third grade). It took me three tries of sculpting and ripping the mess off her head before I was satisfied. Jackie's hair is my favorite aspect of the character so it was important to get it right.

I had some acrylic paints from Michael's leftover from painting putz houses at Christmas so I used those. Painting is definitely the main aspect of custom figure making that I want to perfect. Jackie's paint job is ok, but not nearly as smooth as I wanted. Finding the right balance of paint and water will be key. Also acquiring finer sand paper. Her face turned out ok as well. Even when steadying the figure and my hand, my fingers really caused the paint brush to tremble. I'm glad I didn't study to become a surgeon.

Once the painting was complete, I tried popping her legs back into her torso but even with heat from a hair dryer, I couldn't force them back in. So I settled for hot glue. In future, I'll try to find other alternatives for putting Humpty Dumpty together again.

Thanks for reading!