When I was asked to make some characters from the X-Men First Class movie, I jumped at the chance. Magneto was one, and the other was Charles Xavier in his flight suit at the end of the movie. He was made using the body from an X2 Cyclops figure, the head from a Ghost Rider movie Blackheart, the neck from an X2 Wolverine, and the straps from a movie masters survival suit Bruce Wayne.

I had to use a new neck, because the X2 Cyclops head and neck were one piece, to accomodate the light-up feature in his visor so I shortened the neck (it was far too long) and fit it in the torso. I completely sanded down all the detail on the front of torso. Anything that had an “X” or had to with X-Men I got rid of, including the detail on his collar too. Then I added a thin layer of Aves Apoxie Sculpt and used the handle of my X-Acto knife and rolled it across to get the texture into it. I used thin styrene rods for the zipper lining, and the hose ports and belt buckle were sculpted on with Apoxie. I had to take apart and cut up the straps from the Survival Suit Bruce Wayne figure and reattach them strategically to the body of the figure to match the movie, and used Apoxie to fill in any gaps.Then I painted the entire body with Testors Model Masters acrylics, matching the color scheme of the movie costume, even adding zippers on the thighs and forerarms.

For the head, I sanded down some of his hair, including the big sideburns on his face, and got to sculpting. I thought the Blackheart face was very close to James McAvoy, with the eyes and the nose, and the lips, but everything else needed work. I made the forehead slightly bigger, and filled in his cheeks some and resculpted his jawline to better match McAvoy’s likeness. The nose was made just slightly more bulbous as well. Then I got to working on his hair. I looked at several screen captures from the film, trying best to capture his hair style. I felt I did a pretty good job of translating it here. After sculpting was done, I just repainted it completely (yes, including the eye detail, which is never fun), and fit it onto the body. After that, Xavier was complete and ready to fight for Mutant equality!