Customized Famke Janssen/Jean Grey/Phoenix head

At the instance of ReverendSpooky, I am sharing this rather incomplete project. After looking into the few options for a head of Famke Janssen to customize, I settled on Sideshow's rendition of her as Xenia Onatopp from that James Bond film with Pierce Brosnan. Here is what I had to work with:



The head was a bit on the large side, with somewhat elongated features and possibly larger jaws -- there was little I was going to be able to do about that. It also featured rather dark/contrasting makeup and lipstick, and an atypical for the actress hairstyle. I repainted the lips, eyes, eyelids, and eyebrows to match what we see in the X-Men movies more closely, and cut off the hair (like a wig), built a smaller cranium out of air-drying clay, painted that a dark red color, then covered that in Tibetan lamb hair from Morezmore. So I ended up with what you see in the following photos. Not sure I am done yet, although it is difficult to see what more I can do to improve it, besides finish the figure with more of the outfit (which I have currently misplaced). If she had black hair, she would remind me more of an entirely different actress, but I will not name her so as not to influence your viewing of the head.





#custom #kitbash #headsculpt #female #famkejanssen #jeangrey #phoenix #xmen #sideshow #morezmore

I see what you mean about the color not being quite the red you wanted, but you did a hell of a job on the hair. The Tibetan lamb really is just the perfect material for 1/6 hair. I don't get why you don't see manufacturers using it (or at least the commonly available synthetic version) instead of the thicker hair they usually end up using. It just looks so much better.

ReverendSpooky wrote:I see what you mean about the color not being quite the red you wanted, but you did a hell of a job on the hair.  The Tibetan lamb really is just the perfect material for 1/6 hair.  I don't get why you don't see manufacturers using it (or at least the commonly available synthetic version) instead of the thicker hair they usually end up using.  It just looks so much better.

Thank you, ReverendSpooky. They had at least two reds that I tried, one was brown red, the other copper (I think that's the one I settled on, been some time). The hair should probably be cut shorter, but I'd rather have it too long than too short for now. It works really well, but it can get unwieldy after you mess with it when dry, in which case a water treatment helps; product tends to be a bit too strong (leading to too much clumpiness) in my experience. I used Allene's fabric tape strips this time, instead of Morezmore's recommendation of fabri-tac, to keep things less messy. In all my experience with this hair, one inevitably ends up with plenty of loose strands that need to be/can be removed. I've removed so many from this head, I am surprised she's not balding. But yes, on the whole, it seems to work quite well.

Man, that did turn out pretty well. The texture is just right.

Never tried my hand at this, but am kind of tempted. I keep thinking about a figure in my brain that could really use it. It's either this or a wig... Hair's got to be long.

dadrab wrote:Man, that did turn out pretty well. The texture is just right. Never tried my hand at this, but am kind of tempted. I keep thinking about a figure in my brain that could really use it. It's either this or a wig... Hair's got to be long.

Thank you, dadrab. I also thought about using a wig and even got one (with a red I liked better), but it was just a little too small for this rather large head -- and that even though I had made the bald under-skull smaller! With normal heads, one can simply shave off the hair and and whittle down the head as much as needed to make it look right with the hair or accommodate the wig.

I have a couple projects that require adding hair, but I’ve yet to try it. Yours turned out pretty good. How many times have you attempted this technique?

Stryker2011 wrote:I have a couple projects that require adding hair, but I’ve yet to try it. Yours turned out pretty good. How many times have you attempted this technique?

This is my third attempt. My first two were Arnie heads modified to look like Conan (photos in the M35 review and the Vikings Vanquisher review threads, and reposting one of them below). The trick is to use enough (plenty) of hair (some of it will come off later -- alarmingly much but if you've done your job right there will be enough left) and make sure it is glued on well enough.  

Here is the Morezmore tutorial:
https://morezmore.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/how-to-make-dolls-hair-tibetan-lamb/

With the Arnie heads I followed the tutorial precisely, but with the Famke head I improvised by using cut up thin strips of Allene's fabric adhesive tape. The end result was about the same.

very cool work on Famke, it's really night and day, you took all the potential from that headsculpt, awesome achievement.

blackpool wrote:very cool work on Famke, it's really night and day, you took all the potential from that headsculpt, awesome achievement.

Thank you very much, blackpool!

Nice work!

Thank you very much, ZombieKev!

There are hair salon shops often in markets that sell hair extensions in all styles and colours, some of them are very realistic if you want to inspect before you buy unlike ebay etc..

shovelchop81 wrote:There are hair salon shops often in markets that sell hair extensions in all styles and colours, some of them are very realistic if you want to inspect before you buy unlike ebay etc..

Thanks for the tip. I will keep it in mind.

Hi!

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I’m hoping you Can give me some pointers.
I’m new to customizing and am working on a Jean Grey using this same headsculpt.
I will most likely be using a 1/6 scale wig for the hair

How did you cut out the moulded hair and what kind of clay did you use to build the cranium.
Any tips and advice would be much appreciated!

Matt.s99 wrote:Hi! Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I’m hoping you Can give me some pointers.
I’m new to customizing and am working on a Jean Grey using this same headsculpt.
I will most likely be using a 1/6 scale wig for the hair. How did you cut out the moulded hair and what kind of clay did you use to build the cranium. Any tips and advice would be much appreciated!

Hi and welcome. And certainly no need to apologize for resurrecting an old thread -- especially when you have such a good reason.

If memory serves me correctly (it was a while back and I have not dug out these pieces since the Great Move), I tried using a 1/6 wig, but it was a bit small for the Sideshow head (which is slightly oversized, and not just in having the face too long). I may or may not have had to do a little bit of adjustment where the head meets the neck so that the head could sit well on (e.g.) TBLeague bodies.

But anyway, you would heat up the head sculpt (use a hairdryer or hot water) and go at it with an X-acto knife. If it were more solid, you could have whittled the hair away, but since this is hollow, I thought it would be more fun to cut it off like a wig (see photos below). It seems like a good idea to leave a little bit of the (painted) hairline on the head sculpt that remains (and that can be repainted as needed to match whatever hair you use). You have to improvise with the upper edges of the ears -- they are hidden under the hair. Either cut at the hair line and rebuild them with air-drying clay, or, as I did, cut in such a way that enough plastic remains to achieve the basic shape (even if not really sculpted or painted appropriately). Chances are that this part of the ears would still be hidden by the new hair.

If you are able to use a wig, building a cranium might be unnecessary (I'm not completely sure). But since I went with the Tibetan Lamb Wool solution, I needed to make a cranium, for which I used air-drying clay (THIS is the one I always use, but there are other options too). The clay is lightweight and strong, but less flexible than the plastic head, so keep in mind it might separate during handling, so just be ready for that eventuality and have some superglue at hand if necessary. If you are using air-drying clay, and some of it gets on surfaces where it should not, it can easily be removed with some water (either washing the whole piece or scrubbing it away with a wet Q-tip, for example). I generally put tape or plastic wrap to protect areas that should not be glued or painted.

Once the clay has dried/cured, one can use glue (I used fabric glue strips from Allene's) to attach bunches of hair -- the best I can do is refer you to the Morezmore tutorial (see link in a post above; they sell their materials on eBay under the same seller name). But if you are able to use a wig, whether you glue it or not and whether you need a cranium dome (and if you do need one, it might be a smaller one than that needed for the loose hair), would be different.

I didn't really take progress photos, but here are a couple I did while goofing around.





Hope this helped.

That’s super helpful!
Thank you very much. I’m going to wait until I receive the wig to see how I can make it work.
I may also sculpt some hair (like her X2 style) and play around with that.
Right now I just have the hair as is, but painted it red.

You are very welcome. I hope the wig you get works better than mine. Or you can always use loose hair like I did. I noticed you were looking for the Phoenix Girl (or whatever that set was called) -- I did too, but was discouraged by the combination of difficulty locating it, the price, and the fact that it looked even less than Famke Janssen than this.

Pretty cool man! It's great to see you doing a mod like this. I hope to see more of this figure soon!

Very Cool!

Pontiacivan wrote:Pretty cool man! It's great to see you doing a mod like this. I hope to see more of this figure soon!

BAD WOLF-787 wrote:Very Cool!

Thank you very much, guys. To tell the truth, I got distracted by many other things, and haven't finished the figure. I have to dig it out from wherever it ended up during the Great Move, anyway.

GubernatorFan wrote:You are very welcome. I hope the wig you get works better than mine. Or you can always use loose hair like I did. I noticed you were looking for the Phoenix Girl (or whatever that set was called) -- I did too, but was discouraged by the combination of difficulty locating it, the price, and the fact that it looked even less than Famke Janssen than this.

yeah, it’s not the greatest likeness (paint wise, I see it in the sculpt and think a likeness can be brought out if painted correctly) but I love the overall figure.

Here is my repaint. The current body I have is a bit too small, so I’m looking to get something with broader shoulders so her head doesn’t look so big. Not bad for my first ever custom, I think.

Looks pretty good for a first attempt, Matt. Painting at this size is not my strong suit anymore — I wear bI-vocals, and still have to use powerful magnifying cip-on lenses just to see these things, so I can appreciate anyone’s efforts. I do agree she needs a different body to give her less of the over-sized head look. Maybe someday we’ll get lucky and someone will make a Famke Jansen head sculpt.

Very nicely done, though you are right a bigger body would make it look better. The Sideshow head is indeed unusually large, not to mention the imperfect likeness of the sculpt -- but that's what we've got so far.

Nice job! You already made a big improvement on the original!

And re: the oversized head, this is where the larger-sized tbleague bodies might come in handy. They are pricier than a plastic/jointed 1/6 body, but I bet the wider shoulders on them would help a bit with the bobble head issue. Though, as GF noted, it might require further modding to the head to make it compatible with the tbleague body.