Customizer's Spotlight: Darren Carnall
Published by D_Martin on December 23, 2007 at 11:35 AM CST
| Cool Toy Review’s Customizer’s Spotlight: Darren Carnall |
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Name: Darren Carnall
CTR Forum Name: hunky_artist
Located: Liverpool, UK
Occupation: Artist
| Darren has always been an artist, but he has only been customizing for a short period. His particular skill is to take an existing figure and do whatever it takes to find its humanity.
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Anyone who knows about the business of toy production can tell you, there are a lot of factors to consider when it comes to producing a figure with a real person's likeness. In the case of most licensed toys, especially those based on feature films, there are multiple levels of approvals from everyone from the actor up to the studio that owns the franchise that is being licensed. This process sometimes leaves the sculpt a little less than truly accurate.
This not-exactly-perfect sculpt is then turned into an action figure in factories overseas and through the process of mass production and material availability/ suitability the finished product isn't always what you would have hoped...
    
How long have you been customizing?
I've always been creative from as far back as I can remember. One of the earliest art related things I remember doing was a portrait of my Mum. I drew it while I was sat in the living room one day. I think I must have been about 5 maybe? From what I remember it was really rather good (especially for a 5 year old!), and that interest and ability has always stayed with me I guess. I've been doing oil paintings and portraits for people for several years now, along with enjoying photography.
As far as working on action figures though, that's really quite a recent development. I bought a 7" Star Trek figure a few years back, Captain Picard by Art Asylum. I remember thinking how it looked... well, like a toy. Other people on the forums I went to at the time had tried to paint it, with various degrees of success, but nothing ever made it look 'like the actor'. After a small amount of studying reference photos I figured out what was wrong with it. The neck was too tall. So I removed the head, shortened and reshaped the neck and gave the head a repaint, and voila... Captain Picard in 7" form. Even I was impressed with it! I had a few commissions after that, people sending me their own figures to have the same treatment, so I suppose that was the initial start of it all.
    
The thing that stepped it up a notch though, and brought it to where I am today was when Sideshow started releasing their 12" Star Wars figures. While I was waiting for the Anakin figure to arrive in the UK, I was looking at all the various photos that were appearing on the internet... and I could see certain things on the head/face that for whatever reason, didn't have that 'like the actor' look that I'd always wanted. (I'm one of those annoying perfectionist types!)
That was the first 1/6 scale figure I resculpted and repainted. And again, commissions started coming in. I've done various figures since then, either resculpting existing heads or statues, or doing custom one-off sculpts of 'real' people from photographs. I'm getting more and more of this second type, doing 'real' people from scratch, and I'm already working on some movie/television sculpts of my own, but I will always customize figures as long as I collect them, and as long as I enjoy trying to achieve the 'actor in 12" form' appearance for my display shelves!
    
What inspired these customs?
I think like most people, I've wanted a really good Terminator figure since I was about 12 when the first film came out, and then when Terminator 2 came out when I was 19 that just ramped up the interest even more. When I started collecting 1/6-scale figures I started to think of all the possibilities of what movie characters could (hopefully) be released one day. Or even which ones could be made as customs. And The Terminator was right up there near the top of the list.
I'd thought about maybe putting together my own figure, but at this point I had never sculpted anything, and I didn't really like any of the custom sculpts I'd seen online. When Sideshow brought out their Terminator 2 figures I thought "finally! I'll have my Arnie figure" but all the pictures I saw of it just let me down slightly. The facial sculpt (by Andy Bergholtz) was excellent, but some things about it stopped it from looking 'like the actor', so I knew I would need to figure those things out if I was to have my perfect Terminator.
    
What's the recipe?
(The below recipe applies to both versions of the figure, normal and battle damaged)
After seeing many, many photos of the Sideshow Terminator 2 T-800 12” figure out of the box I knew I would need to change several of the key parts if I was to make this look as good as I wanted. As it turns out I changed virtually all of them.
The first (and most important) part of the figure is obviously the head. I managed to get one of the Sideshow heads from somebody in a trade, and so I set about figuring out what aspect of it was stopping it from 'feeling like' Arnie. I discovered that it was the neck, which was too thin, not muscular enough, and had an odd forward bend to it. All of this made Arnie look like he had a tiny chin/jaw and a huge forehead. So I set about cutting off the neck and resculpting a new, more muscular one. The angle of the head was changed to make his jaw more prominent, and I changed a few other details while I was at it. (I made his ears slightly more accurate in size, lessened his frown lines and made his mouth more 'down-turny')
While this was being done I was searching for other parts for the figure. I wasn't really happy with the Sideshow clothing, and I knew I'd seen a better set of leather clothes out there before. After some searching I found them. (They're made by Saturday Toys and called the Biker Fashion Set - I don't know if they have a website, but I found mine on eBay, bought in from Hong Kong. I did some custom work on the trousers (removed the stud fastener and some leather/stitching to give them a more realistic scale appearance) and on the jacket (altered some stitching slightly, painted the zips silver and glued the belt in a down folded position to give the impression of gravity pulling the belt down).
For the boots I bought some German World War Two boots and did a little custom work to make the strap and buckle screen accurate. Finally the body, and this took me a while. Most of the Arnold/Terminator customs I'd seen (even the Sideshow figure) seem to put him on the largest body they can find.... and why wouldn't you; this is Arnie the bodybuilder, right? Well... to a degree. But if you watch him in a lot of scenes in Terminator 2 he doesn't look that large, certainly not as large as he looked in the first film. In fact in some scenes he almost looks slim! (although I know he's still got bigger muscles than anybody I know!)
    
I looked at many, many different body types trying to find one that had what I considered to be the correct proportions. I wanted the shoulders to hang correctly, the chest to be the correct width etc. Eventually I found one and so I bought several of them (I knew I would be doing different versions....) Unfortunately I can't remember what the name of the figure is, or even company made it. I just bought them. I did some custom work on the body, cutting away certain parts and sanding others to change the shape, all to give a better scale appearance. I wanted to clothes to sit as realistically as they could... to look like a real person.
I used Sideshow hands as they are suitably chunky and 'knuckly' (new word). A lot of 1/6 scale hands I've seen out there are fairly soft looking, and I didn't want that. I guess I'll have to go through my Sideshow figures and see which ones have spare hands for the next time I want to make another one...
Once the whole figure was put together, I spent a week or so painting the head (artist's acrylic paints), glued it on and there you have it. A little shrunken 12" Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator stood on my display shelf!
    
What's next?
I'm always doing commissions for people, even while I was putting together these Terminator figures (head repaints.... clothing weathering... one-off sculpts of 'real people' working from photographs... statue resculpts... etc) and I have a lot of those (46 head repaints alone!) that I am working 13 hours a day trying my hardest to get through, but as for new custom work? I've recently done my first sculpt from scratch... from a blob of clay in front of me basically. And it's turned out pretty well (a private commission, so it's nobody you know). But because I know I can do original sculpts now.... I'll be looking through my DVD collection to decide whom I will be sculpting next. General Zod? Marty McFly? Who knows? Two people I know I'll be doing are the T1000 Terminator and young John Connor from Terminator 2... well I can't have Arnold without the others now, can I? ;)
    
Where can we find you?
My website/blog is darrencarnall.com. I've got most of my previous work on there, and I try to show new pieces while I am working on them. I like to show things 'in progress'. Also I have articles by guest customizes writing about their favourite figures, with photos to show their work off. Mostly though I'm looking forward to showing all of the movie and television characters that I know I'm going to be sculpting over the coming months... and hopefully years.
Think your customs have what it takes to be featured? Drop us a line.
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