Short guide for the customizer in e-bay

Many of the customizers after a long period working on other character's base to realize their own, like to start some scratch built. I started scratch built works since some months and find this WoW much more gratifying than starting from the work already prepared by some other artist.

The long boring part of the scartch built works is the preparation of the iron wire armature and the first layers of meterial (Millipuit or Magic Sculp or Tamiya Putty or Super Sculpey...) before to arrive at the buildings of the particulars that really customize the character. That is only the final part.

Many artists use some already prepared components, that is head, arms, legs etc... in order to skip directly to the final part of the work.

One of the most frequent obsession I have as customizer is: "I already customized that character and have several figures in the same position. Maybe with different colors, or clothes or whatever, but the position is often the one of the starting base figure.

So in this two years I started to search on e-bay some figures in the same scale of Eaglemoss Classic Marvel Figurine Collection (CMFC) that could be used for customizing new characters with a total differente pose at the start.

I'll not mention of course the DC Figurine Collection (also from Eaglemoss) that is absolutely 100% compatible with the Marvel one (just very few millimiters larger), assuming that all readersof this blog already know that DC chars from EM are largely used already to customize Marvels (see my Tarantula from Green Lantern as a sample in the section "See them all").

There are really severals and I will not go so deep in showing the results of my search, I'll just want give you collegues customizers some somple of what we can find. Of course I selected those that are frequently found at a low price (mostly 7-9 € and anyway not more expensive than 25 € in some case where the quality is enough high to justify that price).

The range of my  search is focused on characters form 75mm up to 90mm, scales from 1:18 up to 1:20.

First batch is a variety of 7 characters from Tamiya Pit Stop group scale 1:20. Try to imagine to convert all in A.I.M. soldiers or Hydra? 9€ for 7 characters seems a good choice!

Again from a Pit Stop diorama, this is Mandy Lowrider. I used this figure to realize geiger, she is really well done, sexy pose, already prepainted, costs about 7 € and is 90mm tall.

Another set of Tamiya Formula 1 Pit Stop in scale 1:20 with 8 charcters to be painted for just about 25€ (car not included, but can be changed with a nice robodroid and all the characters can be converted in A.I.M. members for a nice Marvel Comics diorama:

From the collection Inter Campione Miniature you can find several character on the same scale of CMFC, I used this (Zanetti) to get my custom of the Silver Samurai (cfr. "See thenm All!" section).
Cost/each about 7 €.

Also the Ma.K. group in scale 1/20 perfectly matches  our needs. I used one of those for Tiger Tyger figure.
Must be painted and in some case assembled. Thay can be found at asian sellers for 7€/piece. the quality is usually quite good.

Quite rare and quite cheap and very well made, this copy of Chris Redfield hase become Clay Quartermain in my Marvel Comics FC. 90mm, 14€ today.

20€ for this PHOENIX MODEL - THE LOST WORLD OF ATLANTIS - Hawk Woman, 80mm

Trifon Miniatures 90mm Bug War Space GI Chief for 18€ and others from the same serie

Lady Karlin 90mm By Denizen Miniatures 24€. I see C. Ricadonna in her.... Iraki sodlier 90mm for 9€, same price for a german sodlier Your Devil Dinosaur to be combined with a Moonboy, from Papo Toys just for 14€ and a couple of red color  layers: The whole "Fumetti 3D collection", that is in scale 90mm. You can get one per 9€,  they are not same high quality as Eaglemoss does, but enough good. I converted couple of them (cfr. my dr. Nemesis and my vector foe of the group U-Foes).  There are at least 10 characters that can be customized from this collection.  Other cutomizers already taken at full hands from this collection. 23€ for this unpainted Conan, 75mm scale, still fits our needs....  Last but not least american diorama figure called Jesus, in scale 1:18 I'm seriously thinking to buy this stuff for 9€ to convert in my personal view of Butterball... There are hundreds still to be shown, but I only wanted to stimulate you to start searching over Eaglemoss limits.... ehehehehe! byezz