Brainiac 5 (CW's Supergirl)
Hello everyone! At the beginning of the year, I posted for open commissions and the response was overwhelmingly positive! I had over 25 commissions requests for all different sorts of characters/figures. I ended up picking 3 options from the bunch of requests and this is the first of them to be completed. Here is, Brainiac 5 from TV’s Supergirl.
This custom figure has a cool little back story. When I originally posted for commission requests, the actor who plays Brainiac 5, Jesse Rath, reached out to me to ask if I would be able to make a figure of his character. Now, most of my long time followers know, I am not one for DC options. I generally stay away from them because I just don’t follow the brand and I like to have some sort of connection to a character when I make them. However, this opportunity was just way too cool to turn down, so of course I told Jesse I would do it.
So happy I did because he was honestly, the best customer I have ever had the opportunity to work with. His feedback was helpful and collaborative and he was easy going as could be. Plus getting reference pics from the guy who spends his days dressed as Brainiac 5 was super cool. He was able to provide some close up looks of the costume which made the project a lot easier to get accurate.
Brainy was made from an interesting little kit bash. The torso is a Agent Colson, the legs are from a Han Solo Star Wars Black, the arms were from Director Krennic, hands from Colson and the splayed open hands from Miles Morales Spidey. Both heads were modified Storm Trooper Han Solo heads. The arm swap was pretty tricky, but managed to pull it off without too much of a struggle.
There was a TON of sculpting that went into this figure. Wayyyy more than I anticipated doing actually. I used 2 different sculpting mediums for him. Procreate was used to extend the jacket over the crotch so I would not loose the waist swivel. Apoxie Sculpt was used for the remainder of the sculpting which consisted of 8 or 9 sessions on the torso, a few sessions on the legs and prob 5 or 6 on the heads (that hair was a real bitch to get right).
When it came time to paint, I realized that the human head idea that Jesse and I talked about shortly after I had started working on the figure would be problematic as the neck of the figure would be his blue alien skin color but the alt head would be skin tone. To rectify this, we opted to go for a mid transformation look on the face. I think it turned out pretty well. I also feel that the likeness on the human head in particular is pretty decent (considering that has never been my strongest point). I plan on going back to the alien head and fixing the left cheek (which i sanded flat by accident and did not notice until I took proper pics). It is currently driving me nuts and I want to fix it before delivering it to Jesse in June.
Overall, I am pretty happy with how my first of 3 commissions has turned out. I really enjoyed working on this figure, and really enjoyed working with Jesse. I am excited for him to receive it (lucky for me, he shoots Supergirl in my area, so I will be able to meet with him when he is back in Vancouver to deliver the figure to him personally - prob sometime in early June). Looking forward to getting a pic of Jesse in full costume holding his mini me - ill be sure to post it here when I get it. Until then, keep checking back for my next reveal which will officially finish off my 90’s X-Factor team… thats right, Random is on deck and I’m super stoked to share! See you all next time!
