Custom Number 7... Swarm

[packersfan]

It's time for my latest custom! This time it's Spider-man villain Swarm. When I first was doing the character in photoshop I tried cloning bees over and over again to cover his entire body to see what it would look like. I found it to be way too busy and not at all in keeping with my "Hasbro rip-off" style lol, so for a solution, I went with the sponge painting method to convey the business and movement that would be associated with a body comprised primarily of bees. Then I airbrushed everything else. I was kind of anxious to see how the two styles would work together and I think it came together quite well ... So that makes 7 of 12 customs complete. Since this is my second wave of 6, I'm back to blurring my upcoming projects on the box shots so I don't ruin the surprise. Juggernaut is unblurred since I already gave him away on a previous post and I'm working on him right now, so hopefully you'll see him posted soon Thanks for looking and any comments/criticisms are welcome as always.

[cloud]

He looks so awesome.
Would you mind sharing the process of how you painted the bees?

[SMC]

Great again! the bees are insane!!!

[packersfan]

Aug 23, 2009 22:51:34 GMT -8 cloud said:

He looks so awesome.
Would you mind sharing the process of how you painted the bees?

What I did was mask off the main bee bodies using Tamiya masking tape. I cut out two copies of the bee bodies, stuck them together to make a non-sticky template and then held it to my tape with my fingers and cut around it as many times as needed so they'd all be the same size. After my bee bodies, eyes ,mouth etc. were stuck on the figure, I sponge painted it. Then I removed the tape and masked around where my bee bodies would be, then I airbrushed it with yellow. After that, I removed the tape again and lined all the black on the bees by hand, which obviously took some time . Then finally, I made another tape template of a wing and copied the same method as I did for the bee bodies, but reversed so I'd have a cut out hole of the wings on a piece of tape to stick down. Once all the wings were done (which took a little more time lol) I masked off everywhere around them and sprayed the wings on using my airbrush with a 60% white paint to 40% thinner ratio using light, far away strokes. After that, I masked off and did the same with the body shadows, 60/40 but with grey paint. And that's about it. I think it's a pretty neat effect Thanks everyone for the praise and I'm glad to share any other tips you might want. I hope this helps. As you can see, my process of painting is kind of long and arduous, so there may be other time saving methods out there I don't know about as far as airbrushing goes as I am new to using one and customizing Muggs. Luckily I'm a patient guy lol... Thanks again.

[schrodingerscat]

He's actually kind of cute. The bees are really amazing.