Having a massive collection of Green Lantern figures in the roughly 4.5 inch scale, I really needed to make my Green Lantern Corps less of a sausage party. Already owning the rather hideous Katma Tui figure that Mattel had put out, and having already built Soranik Natu and Boodikka, Arisia Rrab was next on my list of female Green Lanterns to build.

The first step was to figure out what I was going to build her body out of. For the base torso I decided to go with the Young Justice Black Canary figure, since she has a very nice sculpt. This was easy, since Black Canary figures are cheap and easy to come by on Ebay. I was going to need a special set of arms and a skirt, so next I searched Ebay for a decently cheap Miss Martian figure. All that left was to figure out which head and legs to use, and I'd pretty much already decided I liked the look of the Ice head for Arisia, so I ordered a casting of that head and grabbed a pair of female Justice League legs I had lying around.

I had to drill out the inside of the head to fit on the torso's neck- Justice League and Young Justice figures don't use the same sort of neck joint, but after that, the body fit together pretty well. The one obvious giveaway about the assembled body was that Justice League female legs don't blend well with the Young Justice Black Canary torso, since Black Canary's legs are are shaped differently to properly blend in with the shape of her body. This is a problem easily fixed with a little sanding down on the torso, but I planned on skipping this step since that area would be covered and hidden by the skirt I was going to put on her. The skirt, made for Miss Martian's slightly smaller torso, was snug, but fit well, and gripped the body nicely, hiding the imperfections where the torso met the legs and not having a single gap anywhere in where it covered the body. Unfortunately, over time I started to notice a "bump" forming on the front of the skirt which I assumed was being formed from stress on the skirt's plastic caused by where the torso rather pointilly stuck out rather than blending in with the legs, so I did end up sanding this down anyway. I also trimmed down the skirt to remove Miss Martian's belt buckle, and make it better look like Arisia's skirt.

With the basics of the body's shape covered, I then got to sealing up the body and painting. I believe with Arisia I was able to permanently seal up the body prior to painting, since her paint scheme wasn't too complicated. Sometimes I glue the body together after painting if the paint scheme seems overly complex. Anyway, when I was all done, I was pretty sure this was the single most perfect paint job I'd ever done on a custom figure. The colors were solid and the paint even, the lines were were sharp and well-defined... unfortunately I didn't know how difficult the skirt was going to be.

The paint just wouldn't dry on the plastic used for the skirt, I'm not really sure why. I tried everything. Waiting, more heat, exterior sealants... nothing was working, so I took all the paint back off and then cleaned the plastic as thoroughly as I could with alcohol, after I'd dried off all the paint thinner. I think I also sprayed the skirt with an acrylic sealant prior to painting it the second time. The paint seemed to dry better this time, so once it was dry I attempted to slide the skirt over the figure and around the waist as I had during initial assembly prior to painting. I quickly came to realize that the addition of paint made the skirt very resistant to being pulled over the body, and what's worse, in attempting to drag it over the legs, green paint smeared all over the once finely painted figure. So I yanked the skirt off once more and unpainted it yet again. I then had to completely restore all the paint on the figure. This was time-consuming, and not so easy the second time, and although I was able to mostly repair the damage, the paint would never again look anywhere near as good as it did.

I pulled the unpainted skirt back on to the figure, knowing now that I would have to paint the skirt while it was on the figure, which was something I wasn't all that enthused about. But I got it painted, and dry, eventually, and I noticed a new problem. Although the "bump" on the skirt was now gone, sanding down the torso to make it smooth with the legs had made the torso somewhat smaller, and the skirt's fit, looser. Arisia now had a bad case of plumber's crack. So I tried filling in the gap with an overly generous application of paint at first, but the gap was just too big, so I ended up having to fill it in with Magic Sculpt. Then I had to paint again. After that, though, she was done, and blessed with a slightly more generous backside, though not enough to make her a Kardashian, thankfully.

Although I'm bummed out the figure wasn't able to keep the crisp, clean paint job I'd initially given her, she still came out very well, and I wish my camera could take better pictures of her, but I guess it doesn't do small things as well. She remains still one of my favorite custom figures I've done, and definitely my favorite of all the female Green Lantern figures I've done thus far. I'm still early enough in my customizing hobby that I still have a lot of learning experiences, and this was one of them. The figure retains full posability, though this is limited greatly around her skirt, and I think I have her scale just about right. Maybe a bit short, but it's hard to say, since Mattel didn't quite nail the scale on Katma Tui anyway. I'm happy with it.