Relax buddy. This hobby is supposed to be fun. Any customizer can tell you that it is definately a learning experience. You have done a few cool looking pieces and we can all see progress. Maybe it's just a bit early in your tenure to be expecting to place in contests. Check out the great tutorials here and all over the web, follow them and practice. If you enjoy doing it, for yourself, keep at it and you will see yourself improving. You can't not get better with experience, I promise. O.J.J.

Thanks O.J.J. Another great customizer chiming in. I honestly didn't think I'd place, certainly not after seeing the others...but I just didn't think that both my entries were not even worth 2.5..this one, yeah, I surely botched. My other one, I was actually proud of, thought it was solid work. I'm just down cause no one likes a D on their first test, right? But it serves me right. I screwed this up, and earned at least half my fail.

Thanks guys, appreciate the tips and if I get to feeling up to it again, I might post some more here at the Realm.

Answer these questions for me first please -

What kind of paint did you use - brand and type?

How many layers of paint did you put on there because even though you claim you thinned it the paint is still thick.

Do you know how to drybrush?

I still can't see where you did a wash on this figure and that might just be because of the pictures. Essentially white is a really hard color to pull off with drybrushing because you can either do grey or blue shadows - depending on your preference.

For an example of what I would have done we will look at the hair. I am assuming he has white hair so I would do a thin (not too thin though) milk-like consistency of paint in dark grey, once that is dry I would then use a lighter shade of grey and drybrush that one, then another lighter shade once that is dry. Once everything is dry I would then do a wash (which is almost more water than paint) of either the original dark grey or black to fill in the gaps and bring another level of depth to the hair.

An example of my earlier work that shows the above effect in use can be seen on my Venom custom here - viewcustomfigure.php?FID=13187 or for a mainly white custom here - viewcustomfigure.php?FID=20751.

I did look at your other works and I can see improvement. All these techniques take work and practice though. Above all though you just have to enjoy what you are doing.

In order
Testors acrylic Flat white and warm skin tone
I can't recall how many layers exactly. 3-6, depending, the skin I had issues with it flaking and had to clean it up and I screwed it up.
Yes, I did in other pieces. Did not in this one.
I did a couple of washes in a light grey, overdid them,as the figure was based painted white.

I've noticed your work before,particularly your Ultimate Iron Man.

I look at this custom and realize I shouldn't have submitted it. Thank you for giving it the 'veteran eye' (as I think of how an establioshed customizer can notice things a beginner would not)

I did enjoy customizing, but much like other things I enjoyed, I just haven't been 'feeling' it lately. Sorry to everyone for putting a junk custom here.

And thanks again for the help.

I am pretty sure I am trying to help you with my response so I don’t know why you are questioning my motives.

No one came down on you for trying, we came down on your execution, and that is what I was trying to help you with in my response.

Did anything I mention about applying paint or taking photos sink in or did you simply read it as, “this guy doesn’t like it either and he isn’t trying to help me.”

Sorry, I'm forgetting that text doesn't carry tone and intent. Anyway the paint, as I stated, I know I screwed up, it was overwashed...I overthinned the paint and put too many layers on to try to make up the difference. Yes, I see the pictures are lousy as well... that "sunk in". I didn't drybrush anything on this figure...so what color should I have drybrushed on? And just curious, did you look at any of my other work?

I wasn't so much upset at the low rating as I was disappointed by the lack of HELP. I know it wasn't my best work. If its not any good, why not HELP someone to improve? I was not trying to be a jerk about it, but apparently I came across that way, or offended you personally somehow. So please pardon me for wanting people to help me improve...

I made a mistake by even trying I guess. Thanks for your help.

Where would you like us to start?

The paint apps are way too thick. What kind of paint did you use? You have to thin it down a little bit so it flows better and doesn’t look like chunky paste on his body. Practice drybrushing – that brings a lot of layers of color and realism to your figure. Grab a figure on the cheap that has a lot of details – like a Spiderman 3 – Venom or a Marvel Legends Carnage and work on drybrushing those details out like the webbing.

Here’s my advice – each time you do a custom work on one area and just do that for the that particular figure. So maybe the next figure you just work on your sculpting or painting and then move on from there, actually, start with your painting first so that once you start sculpting your details aren’t lost by a thick and chunky paint app.

Finally, your last three photos are blurry and don’t do any justice to the figure, so work on that as well.

You might be upset but you can’t honestly tell us that you thought you were going to get higher ranks than some of the figures that were also in the contest.

Nice work! I really liked Fist of The Northstar figures. They had some great designs! Cool choice bro!