Head, arms: SWPOTF Rystall
Chest/back, legs: NS Baroness
Waist: NS Scarlett
Backpack: ARAH Baroness

Design:

Crimson Asp is a fantastic figure/character created by the GI Joe Collector's Club for one of its convention sets. As with many GIJCC convention items, I just can't justify spending the cash when I can create a decent custom to fill the character slot in my collection.

In keeping with my Freestyle custom, I chose to make Crimson Asp out of a mixture of New Sculpt and Star Wars parts to keep from making an "imitation figure" instead of a true custom. The Baroness and Scarlet parts make for a decent enough body suit, but I used the Rystall head and arms to give the figure better proportions than all NS parts would have. Mixing in the Star Wars parts also adds in a nice design element and eliminated the problem of the massive freak shoulders caused by NS arms.

The skirt portion of the GIJCC figure, in my opinion, doesn't really work- so I ignored it on the custom.

Working within the boundaries of the best parts I had available, I went for a head design that was different from GIJCC figure- but without doing anything contrary to it. If the GIJCC head had its eye patch removed and long hair chopped off it might look like this. Special thanks to all of you on joecustoms.com who helped me create the wound design. The short hair style was a last-minute change, but it allowed for the use of the the Baroness backpack, one of the best backpacks of the entire ARAH run.

Colors & Paint:

Based on the GIJCC figure, with the lighter green having a metallic wash. I started the figure without planning to add any black. With just the light metallic green and dark green it looked too superhero-ish, so the piping lines on the torso and the boot bottoms were painted black.

Having done a few characters with red hair, I tried a new technique to make Crimson Asp's hair look different than the others. The base color for the hair is red, coated with a metallic red wash, then covered in a muddy brown wash. It's the first time I've put a flat wash on top of a metallic color or wash.

Sculpting & Modifying:

The hair and facial/temple fins were removed from the head. I originally used the comic pack ARAH Baroness hair, but it seemed to overwhelm and float over the head. I ended up changing the haircut to a very short style, which is epoxy sculpted. The wound along the forehead leading to the eye socket was carved and then texturized to look realistic.

The shoulder sockets were reworked to accept the Star Wars style arms. The arms lack lateral motion at the shoulders and any kind of elbow motion, but they look so much better than NS arms would have, so it's hard to complain.

Thanks for looking.