The Hero With No Fear 2.0 (Hot Toys TCW Anakin upgrade)

May the Fourth Be With You 

Happy Star Wars Day, everyone!






"The king stood in a pool of blue light, unmoored."
- Station Eleven






























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The above photoshoot is the sort of thing I've been wanting to do for years but only just recently finally acquired the right lighting equipment to attempt it. My inspiration was this fan art by the artist 'Lotsmanoff', and I did my best with my limited skills to capture a similar vibe:  



Frustratingly, as I was taking the photos, I realised the range of hand gestures that this particular HT figure came with are very limited (intended, I suppose, for steering the STAP rather than for lightsaber poses) and don't allow me to fully recreate the image as I had wished. I'll have to find better gloved fist-hands for future photoshoots.


Moving on to the figure itself, this is essentially a 'redo' of the very first Star Wars custom figure I shared here over four years ago. For that version, I used the old Sideshow Anakin and an unmodified Hot Toys RotS Anakin headsculpt (courtesy of Stryker). I was always intending to re-hair the HT headsculpt on that earlier custom, but when Hot Toys released their latest version of 'General Skywalker', I decided to use him as the base body for my 'real hair' version instead.

There are still many things I wish I could improve about this figure, especially the absolutely dreadful overly-padded HT body he came with (which is actually a downgrade from the sturdy and functional DamToys body I'd used for the previous custom), but finding an alternative body to swap the highly-tailored HT outfit onto is proving to be very difficult, if not impossible. Also, the blue HT over-tunic is a bit of a letdown in-hand, because it gets really wrinkly with even just a tiny bit of handling and posing. Odd as it sounds, I preferred the faux leather tunic from the old Sideshow figure. Unfortunately, though, the two outfits are not compatible with one another as they are made for totally different sized/shaped bodies, so I was not able to pick and choose the best parts of each as I'd originally hoped.

All that being said, I'm beyond tired of waiting years to post my 'backlog' of nearly-finished figures, so I decided to overcome my perfectionism and share this one anyway. If I end up upgrading him futher in future, I'll just add new photos here in this thread. :')

For now, here are some comparison pics so you can see what differs from the official HT release:





The most obvious change is, of course, the hair (many thanks to JKI Customs for the help over the years):  




I wanted to love the HT figure 'as-is', but to my eyes the plastic sculpted hair they gave him was just so awkward looking and, well, ugly. At least the HT RotS version had a bit more volume and aesthetic appeal, but the way they did the hairstyle on this one just did not work for me.




Not only was their interpretation of the earlier seasons TCW hairstyle a bit 'off', but the colour was also wrong for TCW Anakin. I hope that now his hairstyle is at least somewhat more evocative of the animated version.




In addition to improved hair, I also repainted all of the 'leather' accessories to make them more 'screen accurate' to the animated appearance.
The boots (HT's dark shiny boots vs. repainted version):



The belt, repainted (forgot to take a close up of the original version, whoops):



The arm gauntlet and glove, likewise repainted from plain dark, shiny brown to a more 'accurate' mid-brown w/ weathering. I also added a tiny little custom commlink, kindly 3D printed for me by Ovy (though I added a tiny extra button to it, lol). I intend to do many photoshoots with this figure in future, and the commlink is something he uses frequently in the series, so thought it would be a useful thing to include.




Finally, I'll end with some miscellaneous outtakes:


Space paparazzi flash photo.... normally flash looks horrible but I kinda liked this one.  




Other random lighting and posing experiments...























That's all for now, thanks for looking. Hopefully will have additional Clone Wars figures and more 'action-y' photoshoots to share with you soon.

Excellent custom, Sky! I think it ended up looking better than the art that inspired it. Love the attention to detail, the improvements (hair), and of course the excellent light saber effect. It paid off in the end!

Ah, this is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker 2.0. He looks the dragon into the eye and doesn’t even slow down.
Another awesome custom.

Visisonor wrote:Ah, this is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker 2.0. He looks the dragon into the eye and doesn’t even slow down.
Another awesome custom.

Glad you get the reference. :'D

And thank you!

MILES better than the original! The plastic hair wasn’t even the right colour! I love all the shading on the leather as well, it’s so easy to overdo but you’ve nailed it. The dramatic lighting is just, ugh… *chef’s kiss*

It’s funny, in some shots he definitely bears a resemblance to Luke which just goes to show how well they nailed Anakin’s casting!

Those are some excellent pics, and your upgrades are a vast improvement. I think the hair job turned out perfectly. Great work all around, S. Happy May the Fourth!

GubernatorFan wrote:Excellent custom, Sky! I think it ended up looking better than the art that inspired it. Love the attention to detail, the improvements (hair), and of course the excellent light saber effect. It paid off in the end!

Thanks so much. I'm glad you like the modifications. One should never underestimate the effect that real hair can have on a figure. It just enhances the realism so much.

Lynkhart wrote:MILES better than the original!    The plastic hair wasn’t even the right colour! I love all the shading on the leather as well, it’s so easy to overdo but you’ve nailed it. The dramatic lighting is just, ugh… *chef’s kiss*

Ahh, thank you, that means a lot!    The lamb hair does indeed make a huge difference, I felt almost shocked looking back at the pics of the non-modified head, lol! And lighting was a bit of an experiment, but I'm glad it seems to have worked out. I always loved the dramatic noir-ish lighting in the TCW animated series, and it's been fun to play around with that.

Lynkhart wrote:It’s funny, in some shots he definitely bears a resemblance to Luke which just goes to show how well they nailed Anakin’s casting!

Ha, I had the same thought myself! But I didn't notice it until I was going through the pics I'd taken and realised that with the TCW hairstyle, he does indeed resemble RotJ Luke!

Now I feel like I need to give my RotJ Luke real hair, too...

Stryker2012 wrote:Those are some excellent pics, and your upgrades are a vast improvement. I think the hair job turned out perfectly. Great work all around, S. Happy May the Fourth!

Thanks for the kind words, and for all the support over the years! This figure was long time in the making. And now that he's finished, I can move onto finishing so many other WIPs.

Great upgrades! all your work really paid off!

May the 4th never be gone with you! Bit late to the party, but I'm busy lately and only do some occasional check into the message boards. 

Okay I seriously had to read the text to see you changed the hair and not the whole sculpt. What a difference real hair make (I will never be a fan of sculpted) and you can't do that any better wow 

I'm glad you showed him to us and not waiting any longer, even if you still might tweak him here and there (when is a figure really finish anyway?) All your repaints are big improvements to my eyes, even if I don't have a comparison to the source material - it just looks better this way. 

#As for the artsy pics - I'm a fan of blending cold and warm colors, especially black and violet. But it also works with the dark blue and pink/violet. I like looking at inspiration pics and redoing them in 1/6 too

Great work and hope to see more in teh future 

BAMComix wrote:Great upgrades! all your work really paid off!

Thanks, BAM.

Valiarde wrote:May the 4th never be gone with you! Bit late to the party, but I'm busy lately and only do some occasional check into the message boards. 

LOL, no worries! Every day is 'Star Wars Day' for me, so the party never stops.  

Valiarde wrote:Okay I seriously had to read the text to see you changed the hair and not the whole sculpt. What a difference real hair make (I will never be a fan of sculpted) and you can't do that any better wow 

Thank you!! And for what it's worth, even I was shocked when I looked at the comparison photos. Once you go 'real hair' you never go back!  

Valiarde wrote:I'm glad you showed him to us and not waiting any longer, even if you still might tweak him here and there (when is a figure really finish anyway?) All your repaints are big improvements to my eyes, even if I don't have a comparison to the source material - it just looks better this way. 

You're absolutely right, custom figures are always something of a work in progress anyway. I will likely do more tweaks eventually, but I'm content with him for the time being. I need to move on so I can finally start taking photoshoots of him with other Clone Wars figures!

Valiarde wrote:As for the artsy pics - I'm a fan of blending cold and warm colors, especially black and violet. But it also works with the dark blue and pink/violet. I like looking at inspiration pics and redoing them in 1/6 too

Great work and hope to see more in teh future 

Again, thank you.   And I appreciate the suggestions about the lighting and references. This particular experiment was mostly a) to mimic the feeling of the fan art, and b) to figure out the lighting placement, as that is something I find difficult to get right. But I have a slightly better feel for it now, so will play around more with colours in future. Things will no doubt get even more complicated once I have multiple figures with lightsabers (the blue in this case was more heavily emphasised cause I was trying to approximate the lighting effect of Anakin's lightsaber, lol).

Very nice pictures of Anakin, Sky! I really love the colorful lighting. If I have seen correctly, the stars are on a printed backdrop?

Randam Hajile wrote:Very nice pictures of Anakin, Sky! I really love the colorful lighting. If I have seen correctly, the stars are on a printed backdrop?

Thank you, Randam! And yes, that is correct, it's a printed backdrop.

Oh I meant to ask, any hints for A. Disguising glue and B. Doing such realistic part lines with the hair? Those bits always catch me out!

Lynkhart wrote:Oh I meant to ask, any hints for A. Disguising glue and B. Doing such realistic part lines with the hair? Those bits always catch me out!

Sure, what kind of glue do you normally use? For the areas that are more hidden you could probably get away with just  fabri-tac or even regular tacky glue. But for the bits that are visible, such as around the hairline, JKI Customs gave me a tip a while back to use Roket glue, which is supposed to dry crystal clear (it does for the most part, sometimes you can see a little bit of it, but it is much better than most).

Here's a link to the specific brand:

https://amzn.eu/d/455QJIk

As for a part line, it depends on the head in question. With the Hot Toys Anakin, to re-hair him requires not only to remove the original hair, but to also then build the head/scalp back up into a proper head shape. So you would need sculpting materials (not an issue for you, I'm sure!) to fill in the head shape. Then you can use that to advantage with the part-line by literally 'rooting' the part of the hair into the scalp. You can do it either while the sculpting material is still malleable (might be a lil messy though), or by leaving a deep groove or series of deep holes in the area where you want the part to be, then glueing the hair into that once it's dry (that's  probably what I would suggest).  

Hope that makes sense...  

Oooh I hadn’t thought of rooting it in that way! I might need to have a go with that on a few scrap heads to try out! I mostly use fabri-tac now or strong wood glue but I hate how quickly the former dries as it feels like as soon as you’ve applied it, it’s already bone dry!
I desperately need to redo one of my fantasy figs because I took her out on a photoshoot recently and only noticed how bad her hair was when I got home - it looks like she’s got really awful dandruff! I think I can’t remember what glue I used back then but I was very much a beginner at hairing so hopefully my skills have improved a bit since then

Lynkhart wrote:Oooh I hadn’t thought of rooting it in that way! I might need to have a go with that on a few scrap heads to try out! I mostly use fabri-tac now or strong wood glue but I hate how quickly the former dries as it feels like as soon as you’ve applied it, it’s already bone dry!
I desperately need to redo one of my fantasy figs because I took her out on a photoshoot recently and only noticed how bad her hair was when I got home - it looks like she’s got really awful dandruff! I think I can’t remember what glue I used back then but I was very much a beginner at hairing so hopefully my skills have improved a bit since then

This flaking happens with superglue under certain conditions (wet? on top of hair rather than under?). It has happened to my hairing projects less often lately, but one pretty easy fix is using acrylic markers of suitable color on it.

That Anakin upgrade look nothing short of amazing!

Lynkhart wrote:Oooh I hadn’t thought of rooting it in that way! I might need to have a go with that on a few scrap heads to try out! I mostly use fabri-tac now or strong wood glue but I hate how quickly the former dries as it feels like as soon as you’ve applied it, it’s already bone dry!
I desperately need to redo one of my fantasy figs because I took her out on a photoshoot recently and only noticed how bad her hair was when I got home - it looks like she’s got really awful dandruff! I think I can’t remember what glue I used back then but I was very much a beginner at hairing so hopefully my skills have improved a bit since then

She's a gorgeous figure! I hope you can sort out her hair to your liking, as I'd love to see more photoshoots with her. :')

And yes, fabri-tac is a little hit or miss for me also. I've actually preferred just using Aileen's tacky-glue for the non-visible areas, as it's much less messy (than fabri-tac).  I used it on one of my Padme's recently and it holds just fine. Though it depends on what surface area one is applying it to, obviously, as it doesn't work on everything. (And it's not really waterproof, so wouldn't be ideal for outdoor photos.)  

The Roket is by far the best thing I know of for the hairlines though!

ukshaun wrote:That Anakin upgrade look nothing short of amazing!

Thanks, glad you like him!

Yeah, I tend to avoid superglue for that precise reason, plus it tends to stiffen fibres and make them really fragile. I think I’ll be sticking (ha!) to the wood glue/tacky glue from now on!

She's a gorgeous figure! I hope you can sort out her hair to your liking, as I'd love to see more photoshoots with her. :')

She’s one of my favourites too which makes it extra frustrating I didn’t notice at the time! I’ll be able to darken the problem areas digitally so it’s not the end of the world. I’ve been meaning to redo it for years so in a way it’s actually quite fortuitous as I don’t know if I’d ever have got round to it otherwise!

Oh, I look forward to seeing more of her!

And yeah, I tried superglue ONE time as an experiment on one of my earlier Padme attempts, and the results were (imo) terrible. As you say, too stiff. These days I try to avoid superglue in general for craft purposes unless I have no other options.

That's probably one of the best Anakin customs I've seen, great job and happy late star wars day to you!

Theboo-bomb wrote:That's probably one of the best Anakin customs I've seen, great job and happy late star wars day to you!

Wow, thanks so much for the kind words, boo-bomb!

Beautiful job, he looks more real than real Anakin almost. You realize it might be the top 1/6 Anakin in Galaxy.

I think he would look great with orange lighting too, an a lot of dramatic shadowy silhouette shots.

Glad you got one of the prints into action. Details like these really make a difference.

It's quite the milestone, that new lighting really was worth it, will be fun to photo all the other figures in lone and see interactions.

Ovy wrote:Beautiful job, he looks more real than real Anakin almost. You realize it might be the top 1/6 Anakin in Galaxy.

Ahh, thanks, very kind words. Though there are many talented 1/6 artists out there and I am sure others have had similar ideas. But I appreciate it.  

Ovy wrote:I think he would look great with orange lighting too, an a lot of dramatic shadowy silhouette shots.

Orange is a good idea, there are still a lot of lighting colour combos I haven't tried yet. Looking forward to further experiments.

Ovy wrote:Glad you got one of the prints into action. Details like these really make a difference.

So true, even just this little detail made a big improvement from my perspective. Thank you for providing it! :'D

Ovy wrote:It's quite the milestone, that new lighting really was worth it, will be fun to photo all the other figures in lone and see interactions.

I'm glad I've finally gotten to the 'fun' part of 1/6 action figures. Even though I still have a long way to go before I can do some of the more complex group action shots and dioramas, at least it's a start!

Love your mods and the lighting !
It's the little details that makes all the difference