Dawgestyle

Playing around with sculpey and sculpted this head for my werewolf custom. Her are some WIPs. I’ll add more photos after he’s painted and assembled up.  I plan to make him some sort of elite human hunting squad or something.

Who is Zatoichi? Like the much beloved JamesBond in the USA, “Zatoichi”, is one of Japan’s longest running film and TV series. “Zatoichi” came into being in 1962, and after 26 films and a TV series it ended in 1989 when the late Shintaro Katsu, the only man to ever bring Zatoichi to life, passed away, leaving the iconic role without a face. The title character Zatoichi is a blind nomad in 19thcentury Japan, who makes his living as a gambler and masseuse. Don’t befooled though, behind his humble facade lies a master swordsman with lightning fast reflexes and hair-raising precision. He is part martial arts master, part detective, part yakuza, part pathos, and is arguably the world’s most popular fictional character in history. It’s just a history we don’t get to learn here in the West. In spite of that fact, “Zatoichi” does have a larger following than one would imagine. Finally, after more than 40 years “Zatoichi” is finally remade by one of Japan’s biggest icons, Takeshi “Beat” Kitano. Reinvented by the celebrated Japanese actor/writer/director, Zatoichi is an update to the classic Katsu films, Kitano gives it his own flavor and style.

Kitano is one of my favorite Japanese actor/director.  As an actor, he’s probably comparable to either Al Pacino or Robert Deniro here in the states.  As a director, he’s probably a mix of Quentin Tarantino and Francis Ford Coppola.  Kitano has a very subtle and slow way of telling stories, but when there is action and bloodshed, THERE IS ACTION AND BLOODSHED.  I first discovered Kitano’s films early on when I was a teenage pimple-faced kid working at a video store.  Watching his early Yakuza films were like watching Scarface for the very first time.  Once Kitano popped my cherry, I couldn’t look at other Japanese films much the same way any more.  He was my first love and he set me on a path of brutally good Japanese gangster films that later followed.  To make a long story short, making a 1/6th Beat Kitano figure means a lot to me.  Kitano is “the man” in so many ways.

The head is a private commission I put in with Jim Maddox.  No matter what the price, I have to have Kitano dammit!  I had two versions made – one with the slick back gangster hair and this “blind swordsman” Zatoichi version.  I painted his head with acrylics and pastel shading.  I then sewed up all of his clothes with various fabrics.  I didn’t understand much about Japanese outfits so a trip down to Japantown was in place.  You’ll probably be surprised if I say this, but Japanese clothing is the easiest to make.  They’re just squares and rectangles sewn together.  His clothes were the easy part.  His sandals are another matter though.  I initially tried to use real wood, cut and sanded down to shape but the problem was it was, well, wood!  The wood was slightly heavy and I had a hell of a time getting both sandals to exact same size.  I guess with a little more patience I can probably make another pair to perfection.  But I’m pretty lazy and I try to get away with what I can.  Ultimately, I ended up making his sandals out of balsa wood, which is an almost paper thin, paper weight sort of compressed wood.  You can even cut it with a blade and punch through it with a pen.

The sword cane is from the Mononofu Series 5 1/6 scaled miniatures.  This sword cane is actually the original Shintaro Katsu version.  The new Zatoichi cane was very different.  It was basically just a red cane, fully rounded, and was a bit longer than this version.  I have a private commission I got from Auret7 for that sword cane (which is more movie accurate) but decided not to use it because it seemed a bit too long.  I will definitely post some pics of it for a size comparison one of these days.  The cool thing about the Mononofu sword was that it came with a set of dice and roller, which was pretty cool.  See above.  I also added some Barbie sized rement Japanese goodies for him and made a bag to keep all the goodies in.

Another thing that was super tough was really his hands.  Because Zatoichi grips both the sword and sheath with both hands, I need some gripping hands for him.  I used a Dragon base body and so finding hands that grip the small sword cane was tough.  I then explored BBI’s Saburo sword hand, but the problem was he only came with one right hand.  Dammit.  I then explored the use of modifying the highly detailed Sideshow set of hands.  But the question I kept asking myself was, “do I really want to buy a figure to take just the hands?”  Sideshow’s bodies are pretty crappy so taking the hands away would only leave one option for the body – the trash.  I finally ended up using Worthfield’s Real Guy hands.  They come in a set of three different types of hands – glove, no gloves, and fingerless gloves.  Worthfield’s hands are the best bendy hands on the market today.  These bendy hands kick so much butt.  They rarely deteriorate over time and it holds poses and items (guns, knives, swords) extremely well.  It also looks really natural, unlike Dragon or Hot Toys’ hands.  Check out his hang loose poses below and see what I mean.

Like most folks, I never watched the original Ghost in the Shell film when it was released in theaters.  And like most folks, when I first watched it on VHS from my local video store, I foamed at the mouth and couldn’t get enough.  Written in part by Masamune Shirow (who also created Appleseed) and directed by Mamoru Oshii (who did Patlabor, Jin Roh and Stray Dog), Ghost in the Shell became the anime film for the mass audience and a heroine in “The Major” Motoko Kusanagi unlike any other anime released yet.  Akira can be argued as the greatest anime ever made, but it was made for a very specific audience.  Whereas, Ghost in the Shell was something that most folks could enjoy without getting into too much philosophical arguments.  Let’s see, there’s a super bad-arse female cyborg cop who beats criminals down in her panties.  There’s her more-muscle-with-equal-brains partner who’s just as cool as she is, and then there are the villains.  The integral part of what makes Ghost in the Shell work so well is the fact that the villains that Motoko and her Section 9 crew face seems to get more worse as they appear.

As fans of the series know, it took a really, really, really long time after the first film was released before Mamoru Oshii and his production company began to remotely revive the series.  And obviously, when he did, the World was waiting with all eyes and ears – waiting for the return of The Major.  Oshii gave us Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, a completely brand new TV series that had no beginning or ending and no connection with any of the films or the comics.  Each episode started as a segment in the lives of the members of Section 9, their battles and investigations, etc. and when the episode ended, that was it.  Then the next episode would start up anew.  Many folks will tell you that the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is one of the most ingenious animes ever made.  You didn’t have to get caught in the middle of an episode and you didn’t have to follow last week’s episode to know what’s going on.  Although a few of the episodes did get linked and continued to one another.

Batou here sports a completely custom head.  I sat down and sculpted his head over about six different sessions using Apoxie clay.  The body is Hot Toys’ new 2.0 body, heavily customed by adding lots of muscles around the abdomen and arms as you can see.  The pants is from some military figure and the shirt is custom sewn by me.  His jacket is from a Word War II figure made by Dragon.  I think it was from the General Patton figure if I remember correctly.  I have so many of these loose military parts I could make a whole army.  All of his guns are from the Takara Motoko Ghost in the Shell figure.

While my taste can be scattered at times, there are few figures that I truly want to do justice in every conceivable way.  Batman and Superman are probably among those few.  This custom Batman is certainly and arguably my most long running project to date.  I planned on making him when I first made the Punisher, which was about a year and a half back.  So, you can’t imagine how insanely happy I am to finish Batman finally.  You ever work on a figure and, no matter how much work you put into him, you never feel that he’s complete?  I mean, as good as I think Batman looks now, there’s always “something” that I feel I could better him with.  This, of course, happened to me quite a bit so my year and a half of making Batman usually resulted in this.  I’d end up making parts of him, scratch the project, throw it away, then start all over again.  His bodysculpt took the longest because I never seemed happy with the way his muscles turned out.  Batman would always look like a figure with some clay just thrown on him.  Which, well, is exactly what was done.  You could never get a perfectly smooth bodysculpt without sacrificing some sort of articulation and it’s extremely hard to do anything in between.

Planning his weapons were another issue.  Most Batman toys out there come with really horrid looking weapons.  They look like, uhm, toys. I mean what millionaire would use neon pink scuba gear?  How about zip-line Batman with turbo wings?  One of the things that I really liked about Batman was that he was just a regular Joe.  He didn’t have any natural powers like Superman or a weapon like Green Lantern; Batman is just a guy in tights who could fight – which is always a plus when you’re running around in tights.  So, a lot of his weapons and gear had to be very simplistic, but effective.  He would rely more on his speed and fighting skills more than anything else.  I made his punch glaives and ninja stars out of styrene.  His grappling gun is from a BBI Andromeda figure if I remember correctly.

Now I’m sure you’re asking, “but where did you get that awesome head” right?  He is a recasted Marvel Punisher head that I got from my friend, Dave70B, who gave me a few sets on a whim.  Dave, thanks a lot bro!  This figure couldn’t be done without you!  I sanded him down and sculpted the mask over his face.  The toughest part was making that neck post fit on the BBI G3.5 body that I sculpted the muscles on.  I loved the articulation of the G3, but he had a sort of Dragon/BBI G1 neckpost.  I’ve done at least five different sculpts before I was happy with the way he turned out.  Once I was happy with his “I’m gonna kick your ass” look, acrylic paint and pastels were added.

His gauntlet blades were also made of styrene, painted black and glued onto his gauntlets.  His gauntlets and shin guards were something new I tried.  Instead of sculpting them, I tried to do a different approach – leathered armor.  Pieces of leather was cut out, glued, added eyelets and rivets, and held together with buckles.  I Frankensteined Worthfield’s bendy hands to the BBI body.  I’ve been really addicted to the Worthfield hands.  Their body has great articulation, but it looks pretty darn weird without clothing.  But the hands are undoubtedly the best “hands down” bendy figures in the toy industry.  They can take whatever grip and pose you throw at them without deterioration.

The bodysuit is another Skip and Robin Are spandex suit that I modified for a tighter fit.  I sewed his gloves, leather underwear and cape, which I added wiring for the extra cool poses.  If you’re wondering why his abs are showing up rather nicely, I added thinned down acrylic paint and some minor pastels to the suit to darken up and enhance his muscles.  Genius ain’t I? Hehehe.