5/4/12 UPDATE: See the last post on p.1...

or, coming full circle, you might say.

One of the very first heads I ever had for consideration was a Dark Knight movie head. Something about the cut of the mask just doesn't do it for me, or at least didn't then. I've gone through 5 or so heads since then, with the gashapon head being the one that has survived the longest.

Two reasons I wasn't happy. One, that head is small. By himself, it was passable. But I couldn't pose Bats next to my Doc Savage, or really any other male figures without looking like a peahead. Two, I couldn't find an unmasked head that would ever look like the same guy.

I credit Chief and gijoey for separately getting me to where I'm happy. Chief for showing me the Renegades Duke head as his Bruce Wayne (totally blew away my attempt to use it for Steve Rogers - I actually ended up trading the old unmasked Wayne head to that custom, but that's for another post).

Now Chief also uses a TDK head for his masked Batman, but it wasn't until Joe sent me an extra TDK head, completely out of the blue, that I started to see what I was missing all along. Now, I did do some mild carving to get the mask cut more like how I see it should be. I also did a complete repaint. Now I think I'm happy...until you guys tell me I'm not.

I'm putting in a lot of pics, many just to show how he looks with others from my verse.

Oh, and I also replaced the cape again too. This one hangs more realistically, and is longer, though it's far from a traditional looking batcape, I like it better.




with a WIP Bruce Wayne figure:

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still like that batgirl more then anything....

but yeah you and Chief have sold me on that head, I need to find one.

I am still not sold on the cape, but the rest of it is pretty great, I wouldn't mind seeing doc savage smack him around but that's because I think Batman is a tool, so clearly your custom is Batman, since I want to see it beaten up by another custom.

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Really diggen the new head but not the cape.
I'll send you one.

^ That.

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lol- I had the same issues with the cape. Just doesn't look right.

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Your Catwoman looks badass! Imma do a quick search for that thread....if you dont have one, start one please!

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So maybe I'll head back to the first cape I did. The previous one was too short, and hung out too wide. It did have the perfect bat-fringe on the trim, but that was it. The first one didn't have that, but hung down better from the shoulders.

This one I like for the length, and for not splaying out too wide at the top. But it's weird, I grant you all that.

Will keep looking.

Oh, and thanks for the Catwoman love too

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Is your Robin Tim Drake or Damian Wayne?

And is Batgirl Steph or Barbara?

Can't wait to see the civie Wayne finished. I like the base parts. A good hefty athletic civilian build.

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very cool man i would so buy them if they where made for mass retail.

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so happy to see u show excal some love again. the batman is awesome, the cape look really cool. keep it as is, unless u can make it better. love the supporting cast aswell. robin kicks ass bruh. did u ever create a base or HQ for your verse, if so could you post it . love the work you put out.

For Batgirl, this is Barbara. Not necessarily an iconic look, but it's a costume that spoke to me as I was deciding how to make her. I do have a Steph planned too. For my EXCAL verse, I see a Bat-team coming together - where multiple versions of each can co-exist. When I get around to making a Nightwing, he will be simply an alter ego of the original Dick/Robin I made, for example.

As for this Robin? Yes.

lol. He's Tim, in terms of identity, but some of Damien's look made it into this.



Thanks for the kind words man. By HQ, you mean as in a set where EXCAL is based? Or as in a site where all my stuff is located together? Either way, the answer is no, but for now only. Both are planned, but my time is woefully limited as it is, so don't hold your breath. I do, however, have a massive EXCAL story update outlined, and a handful of figures to go with it, once I put on the finishing touches.



you know, I've had the body lined up for awhile, but I still wasn't sold on my previous heads, and so I also wasn't motivated to finish this. Now that I have the heads where I want them, I'm ready to go.

Question for the Bruce WIP. Go with a black dress shirt so that I can have either a jacket on or off, and have it look passable either way, or paint the torso a lighter color and find a vest piece for a suit coat, and go with that look only? My gut says the first option, because the jacket off look is a pretty solid look. That, and I have no clue what to use for the suit coat as big as he is.

My favorite part of the body is that it now comes really really close to matching the proportions of the Batman fig.

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I agree completely this kicks Mattel's 4" Batman's butt!

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The weathering effects on the light grey really works nicely. Makes the sculpting really pop.

well I finally got off my butt and (hopefully) fixed the cape issue for my EXCAL Batman for good. The first two tries I was unhappy with, and the third you all were unhappy with. Maybe this will do the trick. There have been a ton of great Bat-verse customs lately, so thanks to all those for inspiring me to get this done.

Same base figure as before, just a new cape. If this goes over well, I'll have to go back for my own albums and take all the requisite duo pics over again too.

But for now:





To get some good poses, I picked up one of the roof-top pieces that comes with the 6" Robin figure. Robin went to my son, and I nabbed the dio piece. But it was waaay too plastic-y for my tastes, so I decided to try to make it look more authentic. Like something I'd actually expect to see Batman walking along:



oh, and here is one of Batman controlling the crime-ridden streets of my computer desk for good measure...


This is by far my favorite cape yet. It's not "articulated" like obi shinobi's, but I don't want to mess up how naturally it lays right now. It has the necessary shape, length and coverage too. Only thing I might tweak still on my own, is to smooth out where the cape meets the cowl. But I don't think it's an issue in these pics.

The more my EXCAL Bats starts to look like traditional Bats, the more I'm tempted to swap out the legs for something more comic-accurate. But I think that would alter the essence of this figure too much, so I'm keeping him as is in that sense. The funny thing is that the dio piece is almost my favorite part of the update. lol.

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