A Journey to a Spider-Man M32 TbLeague Body Swap Step by step (Work in Progress)

I thought it might be good to show what it takes to do a TbLeague body swap on a Hot Toys Armor Spider-Man MK IV step by step. This will be a work in progress, so as parts come in, I will update this post. So lets get started.

Here's what we have so far. The Red body is the original Hot Toys Spider-Man body. You will notice that there are quite a few differences compared to a standard HT body. Neck, wrist connectors and ankle joints.  
DSC09960 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

You will need to cut the seam on the suit to remove the body. Since Hot Toys started sewing their suit up years ago, cutting them out is the only way to remove the suits. (Boy, do I miss the age of zippers and Velcro). Anyway, cut along the Right side. This is what they do to sew the character into the suit. The stitching looks different from the other Left side and is usually space wider than the original stitching on the other Right side.

DSC09962 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

DSC09963 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

Next you will have to drill out the neck and wrist pegs as the suit is tucked into them. Do this slowly. You do not want to damage the suit. Once it's pulled away, just take it out and lay it to one side. You will not need it again. WHen the Neck and wrist connectors are removed, you can take the suit off the body..

DSC09970 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

DSC09971 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

DSC09967 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

DSC09966 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

DSC09965 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

Pull the suit down to the feet Expose the ankle and heel. Next you will have to unscrew the ankle from the feet. It's one long screw and a small Philip's head screw driver will do the trick.

DSC09969 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

DSC09964 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

The next thing I did was remove the red shoe feet, but learned that this is not necessary. You can leave them in the suit. I was going to just put standard feet in their place but with a little modding, the red shoe feet work and look better. I'll show this in the next pictures.

DSC09968 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

Here are the red shoe feet after the mod. I took a regular Tbleague foot and removed the white ankle connector by cutting both sides to the foot to peel the heel down. The white foot connector pops right out with ease.  I did a little dremeling on the red shoe foot so I could super glue the Tbleague white ankle  connector into the red shoe foot. Now it will attactch perfect to to the TbLeague M32 body with ease. This red shoe foot mod can be done without removing the feet from the suit like I did. The red shoe feet attach to the soles that are on the bottom of the suit.  Live and learn.

DSC09961 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

Okay,well that is all for now. I'm still waiting for my M32 body to show up. Should be here any day. So keep an eye out for future post. i hope this has been helpful for your future body swap. Feel free to ask questions if something was not clear.

You, Sir, are a mad-man! I applaud your willingness to do these massive surgeries to upgrade every body to TBL.

I second Stryker. This is valuable information for anyone wanting to swap bodies, and I'm very impressed with the outfit detachment and foot/boot modification. Hope you get all the parts soon so we can marvel (see what I did there?) at the final result in all its glory.

Actionfiguremovies2 wrote:

GubernatorFan wrote:

actionfiguremovies2 wrote:GubernatorFan: I have a question that you might be bale to help with on the Phicen M32 body, I want to see if there is a way to stiffen up the hip joints so I can get them into those crazy Spider--Man poses like in the comic books? I need the legs/hips to stay in any position I place them in and not move back. I thought about crimping the crotch to put my pressure on the hip pegs. I welcome any suggestions buddy.

Hi AFM. The M32 body I have is quite good at holding poses and has excellent articulation. I am not specifically familiar with Spiderman poses, but I just did a quick test go over of the body and it had no problems, even with the famous Terminator arrival pose. Does your not hold a pose?

Thnaks for getting back with me. The M32 I'm planning to use has not arrived yet. Once I put the body in this padded Spider-man suit, the articulation is hindered.  It still has great range but the real deep poses are harder to maintain. I'll know more when the body has arrived. I had the same issue when I did my Ps4 Spider-Man. I went with a Jaou instead because the hips seems stiffer to me. (See pic below)
PS4-Spidey-Swing by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

In the thinner suits, it usually not a problem. Here's a custom on a M32 body.
DSC06787 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

I looked at you Phicen Skeleton pictures to get some ideas on how to stiffen up the hips,, which gave me the idea to pinch the metal in the crotch near and over the hip pegs. I'd appreciate your thoughts.

actionfiguremovies2 wrote:Thnaks for getting back with me. The M32 I'm planning to use has not arrived yet. Once I put the body in this padded Spider-man suit, the articulation is hindered.  It still has great range but the real deep poses are harder to maintain. I'll know more when the body has arrived. I had the same issue when I did my Ps4 Spider-Man. I went with a Jaou instead because the hips seems stiffer to me. (See pic below)
PS4-Spidey-Swing by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

In the thinner suits, it usually not a problem. Here's a custom on a M32 body.
DSC06787 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

I looked at you Phicen Skeleton pictures to get some ideas on how to stiffen up the hips,, which gave me the idea to pinch the metal in the crotch near and over the hip pegs. I'd appreciate your thoughts.

No problem. I don't know what to advise you about stiffening the hips, as I have never had to do it. I agree, a superhero suit will limit the articulation somewhat, but you can probably improve on this situation by removing some or all of the padding. I always remove it, admittedly I'm talking about usual loose, separate padding pieces/suits that they insert under the other clothing. If the padding is sewn into the suit, you can still remove or reduce it, I imagine. While M32 is not a very hefty body, it might not need padding as much as a hard-plastic open-jointed TBLeague body would -- actually you would be the expert on making this call. But if I were doing this, removing/reducing the padding would be my solution, and hopefully the TBLeague body would be able to do the rest. It can do it wearing the shorts that came with it, and that, I suppose, is a promising sign for the hips:





By the way, I hope you realize this is one of TBLeague's taller bodies (and in the photo below I made sure the ruler is actually parallel to the body so you can appreciate the actual measurement) -- is this ok for Spidey? Once again, you're the expert.



Anyway, I hope this helps.

I'm glad you do this because I don't think I could, I feel I would have wrecked it by now.
Really looking towards how you make it even better than what hot toys did.

GubernatorFan: That was helpful indeed. Thanks so much. My next question in about coloring the Phicen body with pastel? (I think that is what you used). Can you tell me the product you think works best? I've never tried this yet and wonder how you keep the color for staining the clothes? Is there a drying technique. I want to color the neck area of the Sideshow Cyclops body. It's really pale and I need it to be more suntanned. Any suggestions / links on the process will be much appreciated buddy.
I was planning to go to Hobby Lobby today but wanted to wait till I talked with you.

Theboo-bomb wrote:I'm glad you do this because I don't think I could, I feel I would have wrecked it by now.
Really looking towards how you make it even better than what hot toys did.

Thanks buddy. Me too. The hardest part is taking it apart. Putting it back together is less scary. As long as you have a plan.

actionfiguremovies2 wrote:GubernatorFan: That was helpful indeed. Thanks so much. My next question in about coloring the Phicen body with pastel? (I think that is what you used). Can you tell me the product you think works best? I've never tried this yet and wonder how you keep the color for staining the clothes? Is there a drying technique. I want to color the neck area of the Sideshow Cyclops body. It's really pale and I need it to be more suntanned. Any suggestions / links on the process will be much appreciated buddy.
I was planning to go to Hobby Lobby today but wanted to wait till I talked with you.

I'm glad it was helpful. As for coloring, yes, if you will be recoloring the body, I recommend oil pastel. Granted, if you are really trying to match a very specific skin tone (I forget how much of Cyclops' face or head shows other than the mouth area), it might be easier to blend oil paint and apply it in a thin layer or two -- check out gooboo's contributions on that later in the same thread -- I have not tried it myself. Oil pastel is admittedly difficult to blend, and there seems to be a limit as to how many layers (probably not much more than 3) would actually ensconce themselves onto the surface. With oil pastel there is no drying issue, it is dry as applied. You do want to rinse it off (or even wash gently with a little bit of soap and medium warm water), which would get rid of any loose bits and reveal if any particular area was not treated enough. When done, pat dry and reapply the protective powder. The actual application of the oil pastel is to rub the pastel over the surface fairly firmly and as evenly as possible, then rub it in further with a make up sponge (which also dislocates and applies elsewhere loose bits), then go for another layer as needed (maybe washing and drying first). I followed Ephiane's original recommendation of Staedtler's oil pastels for my experiments; I didn't find her jumbo ones but something called 241 NC25 (Staedtler Noris Club 25 colors), as the first of several Staedtler sets I got -- not that I ran out of the first one; there is also the Cray-Pas Expressionist "Multi-Cultural Oil Pastel Color Assortment" with 12 colors, especially meant for various human flesh, which has more browns and may be very useful (I got it after I had done most of my experiments). What you do not want are water-soluble oil pastels. At some point you may get something wet or need to wash it and in if you used those, all heck will break loose. If something does go wrong, with a lot of time and effort you can wash off even the non-water-soluble oil pastels, especially if you have not yet completed several layers of application and rubbing in.

For more information, you can read through the various posts in the Painting Seamless Bodies thread (starting with Post 16, also see especially Posts 19, 30, 39, 48, 58, 59, 145, 152, 197, 205...).

I don't know how much of this is available at Hobby Lobby, I got most of these supplies online.

GubernatorFan: That is perfect. Thank you for all the great information. Now I feel ready t give it a go. Thanks to everyone else who have contributed to this process. I very much appreciate it.

Wow, this is one intense upgrade. Looking forward to seeing it completed!

And GF -- that's a neat looking bald head!

skywalkersaga wrote:Wow, this is one intense upgrade. Looking forward to seeing it completed!

Parts should be here this week, so stay tuned.

Hey there to all that have been following on this adventure. It is finally done and here are the pictures. Hope you like them. Feel free to ask questions and I'l do my best to answer them. So let's get going....

Here is the TbLeague M32 body that I used. It is wrapped in Saran Wrap to get the suit to slide on better and not bunch up the silicone skin.
IMG_20210419_205336930 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

So far so good. The fit is tight but it is going on okay.
IMG_20210419_212441020 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

A little further...
IMG_20210419_212447678 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

Okay let's skip a littler further ahead. It went pretty well.
IMG_20210419_213800053 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

The neck was going to be the next challenge.
IMG_20210419_213815968 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

SO here he is next to his buddy Scarlet Spider. He's in the suit completely, but not sewed in. There are still some minor work needing to be done on the soles of his shoes. They need to be reattached.
IMG_20210420_112225676 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

And here he is. All done. So let's strike a pose!!
IMG_20210420_134840265 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

Testing articulation too.
IMG_20210420_134938580 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

How about some in the air shots?
IMG_20210420_135235165 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

Lets push it now and see how dynamic we can get.
IMG_20210420_135625450 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

IMG_20210420_140003121 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

Spidey-M-Town by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

Spidey-Alleyway by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr

Well that is all for now.Thanks for sticking with me. Until the next custom. AFM. Peace out!

Excellent job, AFM. I was worried about those extra wide shoulders that M32 has (or seems to have) but I think it ended up working very well. The action poses came out great -- strangely, perhaps even better than the regular ones. Did you end up removing the suit's padding (all or some)?

GubernatorFan wrote:Excellent job, AFM. I was worried about those extra wide shoulders that M32 has (or seems to have) but I think it ended up working very well. The action poses came out great -- strangely, perhaps even better than the regular ones. Did you end up removing the suit's padding (all or some)?

Thanks so much buddy. I did not have to remove any of the padding at all. I was pretty happy with the results too. Thanks for sticking around and following it.

That really sounds like a journey, but paid of. It's so shiny!
It's velcro on the back if I see correctly?

One question for spider maniacs. He got bit by a spider, right? Then over night he got bulky and mmuscular because DNA change something posion scifi. Does he still have to work out?

actionfiguremovies2 wrote:Thanks so much buddy. I did not have to remove any of the padding at all. I was pretty happy with the results too. Thanks for sticking around and following it.

Sweet, removing the padding must be both complicated and potentially dangerous, so I'm glad it was not necessary in this case. It certainly does not seem to interfere with the look or functionality, and that is key. Once again, well done.

@Ovy -- as for working out, doesn't Spidey's preferred method of travel by swinging on spiderwebs constitute an automatic workout anyway?

Ovy wrote:That really sounds like a journey, but paid of. It's so shiny!
It's velcro on the back if I see correctly?
One question for spider maniacs. He got bit by a spider, right? Then over night he got bulky and mmuscular because DNA change something posion scifi. Does he still have to work out?

Thanks. Velcro? I wish. They sew them up in the suits now. I miss the zipper and Velcro days.

GubernatorFan wrote:

actionfiguremovies2 wrote:Thanks so much buddy. I did not have to remove any of the padding at all. I was pretty happy with the results too. Thanks for sticking around and following it.

Sweet, removing the padding must be both complicated and potentially dangerous, so I'm glad it was not necessary in this case. It certainly does not seem to interfere with the look or functionality, and that is key. Once again, well done.

@Ovy -- as for working out, doesn't Spidey's preferred method of travel by swinging on spiderwebs constitute an automatic workout anyway?

You are correct on all counts buddy. Thanks for the kind words. Oh and I couldn't have answered Ovy any better on the workout comment.

Wow! That is impressive. I was a little concerned with the material of the suit how this was going to turn out, but it looks fantastic. You did an amazing job, as always putting this back together on a new body. Paid off, and the composite pics look awesome.

I love how your Web slinger turned out , and that last pic is superb .

Great work indeed, he looks really cool.

Stryker2011 wrote:Wow! That is impressive. I was a little concerned with the material of the suit how this was going to turn out, but it looks fantastic. You did an amazing job, as always putting this back together on a new body. Paid off, and the composite pics look awesome.

Chip wrote:I love how your Web slinger turned out , and that last pic is superb .

BAMComix wrote:Great work indeed, he looks really cool.

Thanks so much.

Here are some more body swaps using different bodies. I will also give my pinon on the pros and cons for each with a conclusion of the best IMHO. You can choose for yourself.
From L to R, TOA Heavy Industries Synthetic Human, Phicen M32, Jaou, & another Jaou.
IMG_20210422_075439068 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr
From L to R, TOA Heavy Industries Synthetic Human, Phicen M32, Jaou, & another Jaou.
IMG_20210422_075456392 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr
Closer look at the TOA Heavy Industries Synthetic Human, Phicen M32.
IMG_20210422_075510585 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr
This is the Jaou seamless. It have great tight joints but as you can see the neck range is not as good as the Phicen but is very close.
IMG_20210422_075547397 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr
This last one is also a Jaou slim body. The Neck is raise as high as I can get is and you can see that it is lacking compared to the Synthetic Human and Phicen M32.
IMG_20210422_075611659 by A.F.M. Productions, on Flickr
Conclusion: The Synthetic Human body, by far has the best articulation which is a pro. The con, it looks more robotic and less human. Pro it is a great replace for the Medicom RAH Spider-Man. FYI the Medicom RAH Spider-Man body is made of very weak and brittle plastic and is infamous for breaking at the shoulder and hips even though it has the superior articulation. But this is useless when it keeps breaking. Alos the hands will fir the The Synthetic Human body from the Medicom Rah body. You might have to drill them out slightly.
Conclusion: Phicen M32 is the next best body.Pro is looks more human, but the articulation is not has good as the The Synthetic Human body.
Conclusion: Jaou body Ps4 Spider-Man articulation is close the Phicen M32 body. with the neck not being as good as the M32.
Conclusion: Jaou slim body articulation is close the Phicen M32 body. with the neck being even less that the previous Jaou or the M32.
Well I hope this was and maybe helpful for those looking to try this. Until a better body is made and improvements done, I will probably stick with the Phicen M32 for future Spider-Man body swaps. IMHO is looks the best and the articulation is close to what I'm look for. Thanks again for sticking with this journey. More is to come.

Nice group shot, and interesting comparison of the different bodies trying the same poses.

They all look great in my book. Thanks for the notes on each body.

Spidey looks much better with that new body, it really fills that suit. The other spideys also look great, I like the variation between them.

And that, boys and girls, is how it's done!
Excellent swap & nice Spidey poses, AFM.
The extra range of the M32's neck makes the figure stand out in those extreme poses.