Sgt. Slaughter (2016 Fwoosh Secret Santa Figure Swap)
Hello everyone. The time to unveil my latest work has finally come. My entry to Fwoosh's annual Secret Santa Figure Swap this year was none other than this guy: Sgt Slaughter!
I really struggled with making a selection from the list I was given this year. After challenging myself with this past summer's Summer Swap (see my Jeff from SCUD: the Disposable Assassin), I really wanted to one up myself. The problem was, there was no characters on my list that would really allow me to do that. But let's be serious, how do you one up Jeff?
As the weeks passed by, I jumped back and forth on which character I would do. At first, I was all over Red Sonja, then I changed my mind and was favoring a Marvel Legends style Damian Wayne Robin. Then I switched to Ken Masters from Street Fighter. But I really wanted to do a GI Joe as half of the list were Joe's and I could tell my recipient was pretty into them. But I am not a GI Joe fan to any degree, and I tend to struggle to stay motivated working on figures I don't connect with.
In the end, I turned to a friend with similar tastes to my recipient to help me make a selection. I gave him the list and told him to pick someone and that's how I decided on Sgt Slaughter. Although I wasn't taken by his choice from the list I didn't expect him to be as challenging (and enjoyable) as he proved to be.
I made Sgt Slaughter using an interesting mix of parts. I used the torso (shoulders and upper thighs) of a ML Kraven figure, the arms, hands and legs of a Nuke figure, the head, hat and whistle of a WWE Sgt Slaughter figure, and some alt hands from a Captain America (from the Onslaught BAF - thanks for the pointer Omarali) and a fist from Sentry. The glasses came from an old random WWE figure. The big gun is from a Punisher Figure, the revolver from a Misty Knight figure, the staff thing is a modified staff from Nico Minoru and the flag was graciously donated by Salem Crow (thanks buddy!) and attached to a kebob skewer with a little apoxie sculpt for details. Phew!
I opted not to use the full body from Nuke for a few reasons. One, I felt that he was too big to scale with the current ML line, something my recipient made very clear he wanted. Secondly, I wanted him to be bulky but a bit shorter and not quite as wide as the Nuke buck was. So, hence the Kraven torso.
I originally thought all the challenge of this figure would be in the painting of the camo... wrong! After sanding down all the straps and knee pads on the legs, I had to sculpt some folds in the clothing, something I am historically, not the best at. But after a few failed attempts, I think they came out really good. In fact, I really surprised myself. All the faults i did make were hidden by the camo paint job thankfully but I think they blend in with the folds from the base figures pants quite nicely.
Aside from pant folds, I also sculpted the singlet tank top, the mustache, the wrist straps and added bulk to his shoulders (I had to heavily modify the shoulders to accommodate the larger arms of Nuke's) using Apoxie Sculpt.
In regards to the paint job, I had quite a bit of fun painting Slaughter. The camo initially scared me as I'd never done anything like it before. But as each layer of color was added, it slowly looked more and more like the pattern I was hoping to recreate. I was quite pleased with the end results. I was also very happy with how the skin tone ended up looking and the finish on the boots and weapons as well.
When it was all said and done, Sgt Slaughter ended up taking me about 40 hours to complete (something I assumed would take me under 30 hours - I seriously undercut my sculpting time estimate). I am quite happy with the finished product for my first GI Joe figure and I hope my recipient was too!
If you're still with me, thanks for checking out my in depth write up. And if you haven't been following along, make sure you pop over to the Secret Santa thread of the Fwoosh Forum and see all the amazing reveals that the customizers of the Fwoosh Forums have to offer. There's some real good stuff coming out of this group and I'm proud to have my work featured alongside theirs. Cheers!
