First of all I want to thank Shinobitron. My very first contest I entered here on the Realm he offered a prize for the Rock'em Sock'em Robot contest. I ended up winning and I received an awesome custom SteelJaw transformer. That experience left an indelible mark on me. I vowed to myself that if my skills ever got to the point that my customs were desirable (I don't know if I got there yet but I figure what the hey) I wanted to follow in his footsteps and give someone else the great experience I got. So in essence this is me paying it forward.

So with no further adieu, it is my pleasure to present Snake Armor He-man!!!!

I wanted this prize to be desirable, so I cheated and used a figure that is pretty rare (well it is here in the United States). That way I knew there was a good chance that the winner will be happy with the prize despite my skill limitation.

The first thing I did was give He-man some new legs so he can stand up straight. I used DCU Cyborg right leg and a DCU buck's left leg. After an extensive search I came up with ML WarMachine's boots, they looked the closest to the original boots that came with the figure that I can find. I was not happy with the snake grabber gimmick so I opened his armored arm and got rid of it and the button. I wanted a more mechanical looking snake grabber so I cobbled together a gundam piece and the claw part of ML Doc Ock's tentacles. I replaced the piece inside his arm with a rod now the snake grabber is removable. Finally I sculpted in the button and added a DCU fist.

I was tempted to change the arms with a more articulate one but in the end I used the original ones. This is the first He-man figure to come with single jointed elbows (to my knowledge) so I thought it would be cool to pay homage to the four horsemen by leaving it as is. The head that came with the figure was pretty cool but I really like the Ice Armor He-man head. He looks super duper pissed and it looked better to me. Added a ball joint in his neck to give it a little more articulation. I gave him a dirty metal paint job because I thought the original figure looked too clean. I got rid of most of the red in his costume except for all the emblems and replaced it with tin blitz bronze. I purposely made the green in his outfit brighter than the other colors because I thought it needed just a splash color to break up all the browns,bronzes and gold colors in his armor.I repainted his power sword to match his armor. Lastly I used Darthomas's flesh tone method to paint his skin. As you can see it looks nothing like his but hey I tried.


Well I think I blabbed on long enough. I just want to thank all who participated and to all the voters. Good luck guys and may the best MOTU custom win.

Recipe:
Ice Armor He-man head
DCU Cyborg and DCU buck legs
ML WarMachine Boots
Gundam and Doc Ock parts for the snake grabber
Snake Armor He-man base