You may be reading that title above and be just as confused as I was when my customer commissioned this figure. "What the hell is Angela doing in Marvel?" Last I saw her she was gracing the pages of Spawn way back in the 90's. So I did a little research and apparantly, thanks to a legal dispute between her two creators Neil Gaimen and Todd McFarlane, in which Gaimen won and sold the rights to Marvel, she now graces the pages of Guardians of the Galaxy as the Asguardian long lost sister of Thor. Which, I think, is a much better fit than the angel bounty hunter that looked like a cross between Xena Warrior Princess and Dog the bounty hunter. Seriously, look at her hair in those early appearances. It's ridiculous. Anyway, hot on the heals of her Marvel Legends release, my customer asked me to make a Marvel Universe 4" scale Angela but he wanted it styled after the the ultra detailed and masterfully crafted Sideshow statue. Boy, did I have my work cut out for me.

She was made entirely out of a Marvel Universe Valkyrie figure with an ass(gard) load of sculpting going on. Each area of leather and armor was carefully layered to create depth and texture. Whenever I'm sculpting things like this I try to pay close attention to the scale of what I'm working with. Like, how thick would a strip of leather or plate of armor be at 1:18 scale? Technically it would be about 0.10-0.18 millimeters, aka too-frikin-small-to-measure. But, if you're starting to sculpt something and it looks like the character is wearing a sleeping bag rather than a tight fitting corset, well then you've got a problem. Also, I don't always "sculpt" the ultra small details. As you may have seen in my Flexible Armor, and Weapons Tutorials (both techniques of which I used on this figure), I often just get the rough shape of what I want, let the putty cure, and then carve and sand away until I have the shape I want. I find I can get much crisper edges and sharper points this way. Especially when I'm working on things like Angela's shoulder pads, which are too small to hold while sculpting.

I tired out some new painting techniques on this figure as well, specifically her skin tone. I used several different layers of flesh, reds, browns, grays, even blues to create a skin tone that's a bit more lifelike.

To accompany the figure I've included a handful of accessories, including a pose-able skirt (another tutorial!), wings from an Angel figure, customized weapons, and her signature floating ribbon thingy which is also fully pose-able. That specific item took some cleaver ingenuity that I pulled directly out of my ass at the last minute. I tried making it out of cloth like her skirt but cutting cloth that thin just leaves you with a handful of strands. So I actually sandwiched a tiny wire into a thin, thin layer of ProCreate, then hand painted all the details. So, you can bend it, twist it, and wrap it around her like a douchebag hipster and his favorite scarf.

There a full video of her on my YouTube channel and a ton of WIP pics on my website. Just search "Supertomcustoms". Thank you for looking and if you have any questions, hit me up in the comments below!