Custom My Little Ponies: How-to, progress pictures!

These two ponies I'll share are not actually new. What makes them interesting is that I actually took some pictures of my work as I went! This isn't really a how-to, but it will give you an idea of some of the steps I took in completing these projects.

The first one I'll share is my Purgatori custom from 2008. Here she is again, finished:

Lovely little thing, she is

And here are some progress shots. You'll see that I was mainly focusing on the wings and how I put them together. They are basically a wire mesh glued to thin aluminium wire, which was fed through holes in the shoulders and down into each leg. So the weight of the wings is supported all the way down into the feet.

Here you can really see the sculpting and the nice way that Apoxie Sculpt blends into the vinyl of the pony. Note the wire at the base of the wing.

 You can also see that I haven't added the hair yet- that is always the last thing to do: rehairing. No fangs yet either.

In this last shot you can see how I have filled in the wing membrane and started to add the "finger" bones to each wing. The fingers are sculpted onto both the front and the back. 

And voila! Isn't she lovely? 

Nest up is a restoration and customization of a really sad looking G1 Twilight Sparkle. This was for a contest at the MLP Area. First up, lets take a look at this sad girl. Reports are that the family dog used her for a chew toy. 

Ouch! That doesn't look too good. Twilight Sparkle was a So-Soft flocked pony, so the first step was to remove the flocking, which was easily wiped away with acetone. This removed the paint as well. 

Her head didn't look too good, either. I cut all of her hair off then used pliers to pull the plugs out from the inside. 

First thing this girl needed was some ears, I used Apoxie Sculpt to form a new ear tip for her left ear and to fill in the hole and build an ear on the left. The damage was close to her eye, so the brow had to be rebuilt as well. She also had a little nick on her upper lip. 

In the background you can see a bottle of mint hand lotion. Hand lotion (any scent) is great for keeping Apoxie from sticking to your skin. 

After her head was repaired, I rebuilt her missing leg and her dinged back foot. The blue tape and spool are to help her keep her rearing pose while the Apoxie cured. 

That's it for the progress pictures, unfortunately. Since I wanted to keep the rearing pose I decided to give her a long flowing skirt. She was completely sculpted with Apoxie Sculpt and re-haired with Nylon hair. 

As you can see, the repairs blended seamlessly with the original body. Overall, I was very pleased with this piece.