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Hey everyone. Happy New Year to you all! I hope you had a great holiday season with friends and family. I’m back with my first official reveal of 2019 (although he was made in 2018). Here is MCU Age of Ultron Captain America.

A quick disclaimer, the eyes on the helmeted head in all these proper photos are cross eyed. I actually did not even notice it until after I was done taking pics and I was editing them. Once I noticed this, I went back and fixed the eyes. They now look like this.

Cap here was made for a regular customer (well this is only his 3rd custom of mine, but we have plans to continue working together). Originally, the commission started out as a 12” Marvel Legends figure. For any of you who have been following me on Instagram for a while, you may have seen the beginning of this figure back in the spring of 2018. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy working in that scale at all. Working in 1/6 scale shows all your flaws in your sculpt, and I ultimately was unsatisfied with how the figure was turning out. In the end, I stepped away from the custom because I didn’t feel I could make it well enough to justify the price tag I sold it to him for.

In the end, my customer understood, and I offered to do the same figure, in 6” scale, using the new Infinity War Captain America body. This would make for a much better representation (scale wise) of this version of the character than what was officially released by Hasbro. Thankfully he was on board, as this custom was quite the fun one to put together.

To make it (more) screen accurate to his Age of Ultron costume, I swapped out the lower arms with some modified Ant Man 1 arms. Both sets of hands, the shield and both heads came from the Captain America/Crossbones 2pk figure.

I had to do some sculpting on the boots, chest and lower arms as well. Since I am god awful at symmetry (stars in particular), I decided to try to copy the star from the 2pk Cap’s torso and transfer it onto the new body. I used Blue Stuff (a blue mold making material that can be turn pliable again when exposed to hot water) to make a cast of the star on Cap’s chest, then filled the mold with Apoxie Sculpt. Once it was set, I simply sanded it to the appropriate thickness and applied to the chest of the new body.

I installed magnets on his wrist bands so his shield would attach without a strap. I also installed them on his back so he could store it there as well. In the end, I wish I would have thought of a better way to make this work (the connection on the wrists) as I found the placement of the magnets made it difficult to get natural poses out of without turning the bicep swivel (which breaks up the sculpt on this figure). In the end, I had to add a strap just for stability, but attached it with magnets so it could be removed so the shield could be stored on his back.

As for a paint job, Cap received the full treatment. Full repaint from head to toe. 5 shades of blue, black washes, the whole 9 yards. I love painting realistic/movie figures. While the bold, bright colours of the comic figures are very dazzling, something about a gritty, realistic paint job is just so fun! I used my airbrush for my base coat of dark blue, but used my brushes for everything else. With the movie figures, I find it important to use brushes for texture (adds to the realism). I did paint around the eyes on both the heads to keep the printing tech Hasbro uses in tact but as previously stated, I ended up repainting the eyes on the helmeted head due to cross eyes UGH!.

Overall, I am pretty happy with how Cap turned out. In retrospect, I wish I would have gone a different route with the magnetic shield attachments in the wrist (not sure how exactly), and maybe added a bit more brown to his base coat of hair so he’s not super blonde. But for the most part, I think this Captain America looks pretty bad ass and I was happy to see my customer enjoy him as much as I did while he was hanging out with me.

Thanks for stopping by everyone. Up next, a quick and easy MCU kit bash I through together. Less of a custom, more of a kit bash. Followed by a classic Guardian of the Galaxy member. Stick around to check it out!