From the moment I saw examples for this project, I was excited. I loved the way these looked, from customs posted on the web, to examples that companies, like NECA, had produced. I also knew that this was going to be a challenging task.

I wasn't sure what figure(s) I would do, so when in doubt I usually do Cobra Commander based customs. I had perused Marvel's G.I. Joe run and had some ideas, but things shifted dramatically after talking with Matthew and he mentioned making customs based off of the first Nintendo G.I. Joe video game.

Gen. Hawk, parts-wise, is very simple, though I did make two changes. First, I made was to leave off the visor for his helmet, partly because I didn't have an extra, and also, it is never seen in the game; not in the character select screen or in the actual gameplay.

Secondly, I cut and removed the wings from Hawk's jetpack mainly because the art on the select screen is inaccurate. Honestly, it looks more like the Cobra Jet Pack from 1987. This particular figure was released in 1991 whereas the game was released in 1990, which could account for the discrepancies. Also, like I did for the helmet, the in-game pictures don't appear to have wings on the pack either, much less the missiles.

The paint scheme, however, was the most difficult, the most important, and, amazingly enough, the most satisfying. After taking screen shots of the character select images, I made a swatch with the colors used. Next, for cohesiveness, Matthew and I chose paints that were closest to the game and the ones our characters shared. As you can see from the end results, we went completely different directions with our paint schemes.

I wanted to make these figures look as close as the character select screens as possible. All of the figures and accessories started with a base color of black, and I painted the highlights and lowlights. For the most part, if you cannot see it on the character select screen, then I left it painted black.

My first idea was to create packaging that reflected what NECA has done with all of their Nintendo based 7 inch figures. Matthew did a great job setting up this idea and creating the 3D renders. He gave me a template, and I modified/created the images for the packaging.

On the back of the box, I changed the in-game screens pictures to show the six playable characters from the game, including text that describes all six missions. I also changed/updated some of the text and logos as well. The inside of the box shows a shot of the in-game picture for each character, and there is an opening to show the actual figure in the packaging with their character descriptions. There was not one for Hawk, so I had to get creative. Note the designation of MMS-82 for his double-barrel machine gun, referencing the vehicle which his v1 and v1.5 figures accompanied.

The filecards were done as an afterthought. When Matthew and I realized that our customs were going in different directions, he suggested for his to have vintage style packaging. Since he did most of the legwork on the 3D packaging, I in turn created the cardbacks for his customs. Since I had already created his three filecards, I decided to make them for my characters as well. If you notice, the images are different from the character select ones, including different colors and poses. These images were shown when the game was paused and the player could chose a different character. The texts for these came from the Nintendo instruction manual. They are close but not exactly the same as the text used for these versions of the characters. I wasn't sure which text to use for Gen. Hawk because, as I mentioned before, this version had not been produced yet. Still, I went with his 1991 filecard because I felt that it best represented the character in the game.

Though this was a challenging and time-consuming project, it has been extremely satisfying and will go down as one of my favorite group projects.