Tutorial on Custom Ohyja Survive Part 2

I don't know why i never said this before but I'll like to say to all my viewers: thank you very much for your support so far. I have daily hits of 50 and above these days and a lot more on days when i post new stuff up but hardly anyone commented on anything.

Although I get zero advertisement money since Adsense disapprove of my blog for some immutable reason which they refuse to divulge, I am still happy that many people see my blog as a sort-of good source for SIC customs :D If you guys wanted to post more comments on my pages would be really helpful to keep my motivation up! thanks again, guys!

And without further ado, here's Part 2 of the tutorial for Ohyja Survive custom. Bear in mind I am not following the Hero Saga's version though as I feel its not a Final form enough design so I supped it up with Mcfarlane's Medusa figure parts plus some enhancement of my own on his staff. Feel free to make your own modifications that will further make this figure a work of art :D

 

For this part of the tutorial, we will deal with his Shield and his Snake Appendages on his back. As the time I did this custom I was really not good at creating tutorials, I have not taken photos of some of the steps that should be taken but I will try to describe them in words as accurate and detailed as possible.

 

(3) Shield

 

For the shield, I used one of Ohyja's arm pads as the base. First I sand the metal arm pad to give the putty a little more hold on it. I then used epoxy putty to form a large base on the arm pad for later additional putty layers. I stick some metal wires to form support for later add ons, see photo below.

Once the putties has dried, I add on the top part of Ohyja's head which i have cut off earlier as a base for the shield, see photo below.

Then I start forming the actual shape of the shield's snake head and tail. Notice how the metal wires form support for the tail portion? I didn't take photo of a step whereby i stick small metal wires on the putty snake head where the fans are suppose to be before the putty dries. Once the snake head putty dried, I add putty fangs over the metal wires. The metal wires again act as support and prevent breakages in case the shield falls off.

Next, I started adding details to the snake head by forming nose, forehead and eyes. All these are done using my blade. First Add on pieces of putty on the snake head. Let it dry for 45 minutes before cutting the putty into the shapes you wanted. Its easier to cut the putty without your cuttings moving the putty about if you let the putty dry and harden at least for 45 minutes first. The time required for the hardening (not full hardening but partial) depends on what putty you uses. Some putties such as Tamiya's Quick Type dries faster).

I then add 'scales' over the shield's body, see photo below. The same technique described at the paragraph above applies.

And finally here is how it looks after completing the body and head of the shield. Those minute holes you see on the 'scales' are done by poking holes on the sides of the 'scales' with my pimple needle when the putty are half dried. the miniscule rectangle design you see on the snake head forehead is done with toothpick. I shave the head of the toothpick to form a small rectangle head instead of a sharp needle head.

Again due to my inexperience in designing tutorials i forgot to take a photo of the next step. really sorry about this. What I did next was to create the tail of the shield. I used a small plastic sheet cut it up in the shape of a tail and glue it on the putty and metal wire support already added onto the shield. This plastic sheet act as a base for me to add putty on top of it. Using the plastic sheet as base plus putty as compared to pure putty sculpt makes the tail stronger to prevent breakages yet slim enough to make it look good. I then form shapes on the tail using my toothpick and my blade.

I then add more details to the body by adding that gold trim design on it. That design was done using small thin plastic sheets glued onto the shield.

I also added some wheel designs on the underside of the shield. You can partially see this in the gallery part in part 3 of this tutorial.

Final thing to do is of course to paint the shield. Sanding is a must.

Color them are as follows:
1) Super Metallic Purple for the shield body
2) Metallic silver for the sides
3) Brass for the gold trims and eyes and
4) Use a liner pen to make black linins on the designs of the shield.

On hindsight, I should have made the shield larger ;p This serves a warning to all amatuer customisers. Sometimes you can get really too 'into' the custom creation itself you miss the big picture, literally for this case. I was so into how to create the shield shape and design i completely forgotten that it is a shield and not an ornament. It should be large imposing and usable ;p oh well next time perhaps.

(4) Snake Appendages.

Ok here are the steps, some of which are very crucial to follow in order to make the snake appendages structure to last. This means you need to build support on the Ohyja body itself so that if you hang those snakes on his body for prolonged period of time, the snakes won't start slouching, falling off or sloping to unwanted directions.

The way to achieve the above is to provide strong support from the body, not from the armor since the armor is made of soft rubber and wont hold nuts not to mention those snakes are quite long and heavy.

Again my apologies for not taking certain photos that explains what i did. I will try to describe them in words for you.

The first thing to do is to drill holes at the base of each snake appendages (see photo below on the part highlighted in red). I used 4 in total, feel free to use as many as you want but to me 4 is enough to avoid cluttering everything up and make it more fragile at Ohyja's back.

I got some unwanted leftover sprues from gundam kits that I used to make the connecting rods for the snakes to the Ohyja body. I cut off 4 rods from the sprues and glue them onto the drilled holes on the base of each snake appendages. Make sure the rods are long enough e.g. about 5 cm long. I let about 2 cm length of the rods to be embedded inside the snake appendages and glued them in, leaving 3 cm of those rods poking out of the snake appendages. Thse rods will then be connected to Ohyja's body via the holes i will drill. See below on how this is done.

Next,  we move onto Ohyja's body armors. Cut off those connector ports found on the back of Ohyja's armor. Since I got 2 spare armors, I get 4 ports (you can always replicate extra ports using putty with oyumaru resin, see my older tutorials on how to use oyumaru resins). I glued these ports onto the Ohyja's back like in the photo below:

I then drilled holes into the middle of each ports. These holes will act as conduit for the snakes to be connected to the body.

Now, as I have mentioned the Ohyja armor is soft rubber and can't support anything at all. So what needs to be done is to create support for the snake appendages using Ohyja's base body itself. I drilled holes on the exact same spot where the holes of Ohyja's armor are. I then glue the back of Ohyja's armor to the base body to prevent the holes from moving about thus unable to connect fully with the snake appendages. The 3cm rods poking out of the snake appendages are then pushed into the holes on Ohyja's armor and further into the holes on Ohyja's base body. Ohyja's base body are hard resin and are able to support those snake appendages. The added side benefit is that the snakes when conected to the body makes Ohjya's armor more secured and doesnt move about much. Note that the above can only be done with the two snake appendages connecting to the lower part of Ohyja's armor. the 2 snake appendages on the higher and outer part of Ohyja's armor will have no such support. However, thanks to the 2 lower snake appendages creating support for the Ohyja's armor itself, the upper 2 snake appendags when connected to the Ohyja armor became quite stable. To make it more stable, I glued 2 pieces of thicker plastic sheets with hole in the middle of each sheets beneath the Ohyja's armor to provide support for the rods on the snake appendages.

The result from the above modification are 4 snake appendages growing out of Ohjya's back to add to his poisonous arsenal! Each of the snakes are poseable and they can turn 360degree on Ohyja's body.

For color scheme, I used metallic silver as a base coat first. Then once the metallic silver layer dried i add on a super metallic purple layer on the snakes and brass on those collars on he snakes.  As usual, I used Mr Color paint for my customs. For the snake appendages, I drybrushed most of the metallic purple on them to avoid painting over the black/grey paint on the areas between the scales.

I would have love to have all 4 snake appendages to be pythons but unfortunately the Mcfarlane medusa only comes with 1 python head and the rest are regular snake heads ;p oh well

Stay tune for the final part of the tutorial and photo gallery next week ;D see ya!