I held off for quite a while on purchasing any of the movie Iron Man 2 figures (I specify "movie" because I picked up plenty of the comic figures), but the other day, I finally broke down and bought a few, because I decided to go through with a rather ambitious (read: too time-consuming for me to stick with very long) project. Marvel Cinematic Universe custom figures.
The basic idea is to create figures for characters that are in the movie, but will never have "life in plastic", or to make characters who'll probably never reach screen.
My first completed custom for this project is, as the title suggests, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Phil Coulson.
I've only ever seen one other Coulson custom (in a sort of more traditional S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform), and , while it was great, I wanted something a little closer to the actual movies.
I started with a 25th G.I. Joe Infantry Trooper figure (from the Firefly box set, Version 1b if you're curious), sliced the face off of the head, shaved down the knife sheath, pocket, and whathaveyou from the upper legs, and chopped off the lower legs below the knee. I replaced the lower legs with those of Infinite Heroes Commissioner Gordan and sculpted over the leg straps and lower leg seam. I shaved off the rolled up cuffs and sculpted jacket sleeves, then sculpted in a button-up shirt collar. For the face, I took a random pilot figure (not sure what his name is) from Star Wars Episode 1 and molded a copy of his face onto the previously mentioned faceless G.I. Joe head, then sculpted on the rest of the hair. The suit jacket is a trimmed up version of Doctor Rex's coat, and the tie was cast in blue-dyed latex. The whole thing was then painted and given a dusting with some acrylic matte clear coat to prevent paint rub.
I've still got to do a few touch-ups, and in the second picture, you can see that I failed to paint the inside of his crotch black, but that's been fixed, as has the small paint rub on his elbow joint.
Other Movie figures I've got on the pipeline are S.H.I.E.L.D. agent (in my interpretation of the classic uniform) and a Werewolf By Night (although it's a simple repaint without much new detail) on the way, as well as an Iron Fist (but that may be a ways off)
Let me know what you think.