Custom Figures – Farscape – The Good (Part 2)

Considering how “grey” many of the characters are in Farscape  – and I don’t mean literally grey, even though they’re got one of those – I’m as surprised as you are that I’ve got two pages of Good Guys. But I do. I hope you enjoy them.

I made most of them close to ten years ago, before I had a digital camera and in whatever light I could muster indoors. All of these were either made as gifts or for actual, playing clients. I have none at home!

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Chiana

We open with our literally grey character, Chiana: any other names unknown. She began as metaphorically grey, too, and Word of God is that her character wasn’t meant to last multiple episodes. But the creators liked what they saw, and kept her around.

She debuted with a different outfit that had bits of fur and a cobweb-like pattern to the rest of the clothing. Fortunately the characters on that show did not wear the same clothing every episode. Well… some didn’t. I liked the outfit you see here and had “fun” creating the stripes of different metallic flavors. Too be fair, none of those characters’ costumes are simple. Not even the “simple” blue robe that Zhaan often wore.

I didn’t do any facial sculpting here – only a paintjob of a Sideshow Toys generic female body. They have more than one version of that doll; I used the better one. The alternate has an awful neck joint and even worse face sculpt.

Chiana had the shortest span of finished doll-to-actor handoff. Gigi Edgley was a guest at two local conventions a week apart. I attended both, and vowed to myself to finish the doll in time for the second appearance. I did, the night before – or rather early morning of – the second show. And learned that same day that it was her birthday. So the doll turned out to be her birthday gift. She was charging for photos (obviously), but in my case, I got a freebie. I assume she still has the thing, unless it’s been lost or destroyed in a move.

 

 

 

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Joolushko Tunai Fenta Hovalis (“Jool”)

Jool was not a popular character. There’s the simple statement. Upon repeat viewings of the series, I have an inkling why, which is that she served too much as the “everyperson” for viewers’ tastes. Put in Simpsons’ terms, she was the Frank Grimes of Farscape. Incredibly educated and intelligent, intellectually curious to a fault, a bit arrogant — and constantly outraged by the insanity of life aboard Moya. You know, like any sane person would be. Viewers caught up in all the adventure may have fancied themselves just as capable of going with the flow and adapting to the constant threats as our own John Crichton (“American!”) did.

And I will courageously admit that I’d probably be screaming, whining, and calling shenanigans on those guys just as much as she did, were I in her place. A drawback is that my screaming doesn’t melt anything. I have no illusions about being heroic.

There you go. Jool was cool. And her doll did need a bit of facial sculpting (Apoxie Sculpt), not just in the forehead, but also the nose, ears, and probably lips (it was a long time ago). Oh! I also needed to embellish her… frontage. The doll body lacked Tammy MacIntosh’s cleavage.

The “leather” outfit was just stiff, black vinyl, cut and glued into this fashion nightmare that you see. The white spots are little beads of white fabric paint. You can find bottles with very fine tips.

The thigh-high boots are a softer vinyl and were sewn, not glued.

I avoid the bags of doll hair from Michael’s, et al, that are unwieldy curls of acrylic, but sometimes that stuff serves a purpose. Jool has a giant mop of tight red curls, and I found a bag of just that.

For some figures I managed to print out doll stand logos for them. I used the basic Farscape logo from the show and added their name. I tried to use interesting fonts that may fit for the character.

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Stark

Which side this fellow was on was not always clear.

<<cough>>

Well, obscure reference aside, Stark was not Farscape’s version of The Phantom of the Opera, but a damaged member of the Banik species.

I don’t recall which doll that I used for him, but like most of the others, the body was 1/6 scale and highly poseable. The face needed a bit of sculpting (Magic Sculpt) on the lips and nose to match Paul Goddard, and of course, the “metal” mask was all clay.

All of the clothing was hand made. Farscape costumes aren’t really off-the-shelf in the land of 1/6 figures.

 

   

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Sikozu Svala Shanti Sugaysi Shanu

I found yet another use for Sideshow Toys’ generic “Art S. Buck” female figure (the good version) to make Sikozu. She’s on the “Good” page, but had a not-so-good side, too. But then, everyone on that show had moments of darkness, regardless of their general alignment on the Hero Scale.

No sculpting on the face, and if the hair looks like red yarn, that’s because it is! In the reference pics that I had at the time (magazine writeups), her hair always seemed to be that thick, and more wavy than curly. Appearances varied from episode to episode, though. Fun!

Sikozu’s orange outfit began as thick, black vinyl and was put through a through paint job. It’s hard to see in the photos, but I used “pearl” paint on the face to bring out the shininess that it had on the show.