King Arthur (King Arthur and the Knights of Justice)
Happy New Year everyone and welcome to 2021. So far, its pretty fucked up (Surprise right?), but hopefully it’ll swing around. Anyways, kicking off the new year with my first reveal of 2021 and this one is a gooder. I made this for one of my good real life nerd friends. Here is King Arthur from the Knights of Justice.
King Arthur and the Knights of Justice was a Saturday morning cartoon that aired on Fox Kids. It followed a high school football team who find excalibur and turn into the Knights of Justice who can time travel or something? I dunno?
My buddy Elvin wanted to commission me to make a figure for his collection, and after going back and forth on character selection, he came up with a great idea that would likely never be replicated by another toy company: a line of figures based on King Arthur and the Knights of Justice. He asked a few local customizers (myself included) and one of our mutual friends, Stranded Customs, to make more members of the Knights of Justice. Soon enough, he will have a full lineup of Knights. Can’t wait to see them all together!
Arthur was made using a Hobgoblin body with Bucky cap boots that were fully resculpted. The head was an MCU Captain America (the early version, ya know, before they actually looked like the actors). I used glove cuffs from Shatterstar, knees from the Hobgoblin BAF, feet from Invincible Iron Man (again, modified) and the mask from a Tactical Killmonger figure as the base for the mask. The shield started as the old school cap MCU shield that comes in the Peggy Carter 2pk and the Sword is from something.. lol I am not sure, I just found it in my fodder bin, but I have seen it used elsewhere in the recent month or so.
This custom was a labor of love. Lots of time went into him and I hit a few spots that were very frustrating. First up, that fucking mask was the biggest pain in the ass. I used magnets to attach the front part of the helmet to the face. This allowed the mask to move up and down on his head. In retrospect, it definitely would have been easier to have a helmeted head and an unmasked head. But in my silly mind, I put function over fashion and I think the end product slightly suffered because of it. I am still happy with the final look, but if I could start again, id do alt heads.
The other challenging piece of this puzzle was the cape. I bought a third party wired cape off eBay and when it arrived it wasn’t what I was expecting. I ended up having to improvise and cut the wires in the cape to repurpose it for this figure’s set up. I ended up connecting the cape wires to 2 magnets which attached at the front of the chest. It ended up working better than I thought it would to be honest.
Aside from the cape, Arthur’s shoulder pads also attached via magnets embedded into the shoulders. Originally, this was only the case to make it removable for painting, which upon finishing, I would glue the magnets together to keep a permanent seal. But because everything held in place so well, I ended up not gluing anything and leaving the option to remove the shoulder pads, the cape and the mask of the helmet.
Lots of sculpt went into this guy. To start, I had to add chainmail armour to a few spots that didn’t have it (back of the calf, head, neck and those pesky peg holes). To do this, I took a mold of the existing chainmail on the figure using a reusable mold making material called Blue Stuff. I then used that mold as a texture stamp and applied it on wet apoxie sculpt to add the chainmail effect. I think it worked really well, particularly on the back of the legs.
Aside from the chainmail, I also fully resculpted his torso, as well as armor plating on the legs. The boots were also fully sculpted and are my favourite part about this figure. I also had to apply a very thin layer of apoxie sculpt on the crown that I made out of styrene to give it some durability. It didn’t help much as I broke parts off the crown multiple times. Oops :)
When it came to the paint job, Elvin wanted it to glisten so we opted to go with a pearlescent white and a bright, shiny gold. He also got the candy coating finish of Testors Gloss Coat, a product I can no longer buy in Canada. This figure got the last of it (I already miss it, my replacement is no comparison). I ended up using brush on Dullcote to give the face a matte finish so he didn’t look so sweaty.
As you can see from the pics, I had a lot of fun with this figure. He was fun to pose (even with his wired cape - which I generally love but can find frustrating to pose), and his assortment of hand options made for some great shots. I’m happy my friend had this idea and asked me to make King Arthur himself. It was a real honour and im stoked to see the whole team assembled.
