Attack on Titan / My Little Pony mash-up!

This is one of my favorite custom My Little Pony creations thus far. For anyone who hasn’t seen  Attack on Titan, it is a Japanese anime (based on a manga) in which the human race has taken refuge within enormous walls, built to protect themselves from enormous man-eating giants (the titular titans.) I enjoyed the first season of the anime, but don’t recommend it for anyone under the age of at least 12, as it is rather violent and gorey.

This pony was inspired by one of the more frightening encounters in the series during which our hero Eren Yeager attacks the biggest titan to ever be encountered, the “Colossal Titan.”

Image credit http://operationrainfall.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Attack-on-Titan-Eren-and-Colossal-Titan.png

As you can see, the Colossal Titan is a huge and imposing monster! To recreate this character in pony form, I chose one of the Generation 3 “Styling Size” ponies, specifically Rainbow Dash. This is what she would have looked like out of the box:

 

image credit http://www.strawberryreef.com/images/Ponies/R/RainbowDashStyling_300_L_spoosh.jpg

The pony I used looked no where near as nice as this one. Mine was a frizzy-haired, stained mess! The G3 styling size ponies are a nice, heavy toy that stands up well to any customizing (and play) and is easy to work with. For the Eren figure, I wanted something proportionately smaller, so I went with a Friendship is Magic My Little Pony blind-bag “Apple Jack” figure.

image credit http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NjkyWDkyMg==/z/~7sAAOSwq7JT1IrS/$_35.JPG

The Colossal pony’s features were sculpted with Apoxie Sculpt, as it cured to a rock hard material without baking. Lots of people bake custom ponies sculpted with Sculpey, but this never seemed like a good idea to me, and Sculpey is too fragile to stand up to the flex of a vinyl figure beneath it.

Eren’s 3D maneuvering devices were also made of Apoxie Sculpt and I used flattened aluminum wire for his sword blades.

A close up of Eren's gear

Both figures were painted with acrylic paint, and Eren is suspended by vinyl coated copper wire that was drilled and epoxy glued into his back, then fed down into the Colossal’s front leg through a hole in its back.

There is a tiny blood-splash where the wire / spear pierces the titan's shoulder

This pony is for sale, but I do love the attention that it brings to our table at shows! It is a great conversation starter. So many people think it is just a skinned pony (eww!) until we start talking about it. Here are some more pics:

And here is the Colossal pony enjoying his debut at the 2014 Boston Comic Con!

Even this huge crowd couldn't intimidate this titan! ROAR!

Any suggestions for my next giant-sized custom pony? I have about 4 more of the large styling sized ponies laying around! 

Angry Birds Pony

This is just a quick post to share a little custom I made in 2011. She was made from a FiM Styling Sized pony and was a pretty straight-forward re-hair and repaint. No sculpting here!

The hair is mostly black with streaks of red, yellow and blue (the colors of the main bird characters) and she has a green ribbon to match her pig cutie mark. 

A few old custom ponies

I first stumbled upon the idea of customized My Little Ponies back in 2004. I don't remember what pony I saw first, or which customizer made it, but as soon as I saw one, with beautiful designer hair and fancy colors, I thought "that looks like fun- I bet I could do that." 

A little background: I was 8 years old when the first My Pretty Pony (predecessor to My Little Pony) came out in 1981. These ponies were large, hard plastic beasts with gorgeous blonde hair just begging to be braided. Unfortunately for me, because I already had a My Pretty Pony when the smaller, more collectible ponies came out in 1982, my parents didn’t feel that I need a My Little Pony. So I never really had My Little Ponies as a child (note: Good for my parents on that decision!)

Although I was fully aware of their existence and the accompanying television show, I never really fell in love with ponies as toys. This slight detachment is probably what let me cut, re-hair and repaint ponies without any sort of nostalgia or regret for altering their forms. Although I researched enough to avoid potentially destroying a valuable figure, any pony was fair game to me (don’t worry pony fans, I never customized a HTF pony! – that’s shorthand for “hard to find” for all of you non-pony people.)

Back to 2004: At some point during that year, I was surfing the web and stumbled upon custom ponies and decided I wanted to give one a try. It is common for pony customizers to use a "pony name" aka customizer handle. I chose "Eruna"- the origin of the name is pretty lame, and I don't use it anymore... but it's me. I should've just gone with Kukta. 

This was my first stab at a pony. “Kill Bill” was one of my favorite new movies, so I made a “Bride” pony. She was a pretty simple re-hair and a full body repaint. I used hair from a wig.

This was an ok first attempt

From there, my designs became more complicated. I made fully sculpted ponies, Hasbro-inspired re-roots with custom symbols, original designs, pop culture designs- you name it. I enjoyed making customs quite a bit and even entered a custom into the My Little Pony convention Customizer's Corner in 2005 (I think.) However, in 2008 I basically stopped making them for no particulat reason... the G3 ponies were giving way to the weird 3.5 ponies and the poses I liked were getting harder to find. I picked the customizing habit back up in 2014, but I'll save those for another post!

Here, in no certain order, is the gallery of custom ponies that I created from 2004 – 2008. Enjoy!

"Calaveras Dulces" was an original design, sold to a woman in Mexico off of e-Bay.

"Lil' Fluffy" was a 3-headed pony inspired by Cerebus but named after the 3-headed dog in Harry Potter. She was bought on e-Bay by a woman in Mexico (not the same buyer as the sugar skulls pony.)

"Lizzy" was a gift to a woman in Utah, based on a design that she made. She tried to have someone else execute the design but it didn't come out well, so I fixed it for her (completely re did it, lol.)

"Persephone" a commission by a woman in Maine who requested a 'mermaid." The crystals are real Swarovski (ooOOOoooohhh!) and the fins are made of fantasy film.

"Dark Star" my first Xenomorph pony. Sold to someone on eBay.

"Purple People Eater" - one of my personal favorites. 

"Rainforest Dreams" is an original design and was made as a gift for a loyal customer. This is a "basic" custom, i.e. repainted but no sculpting.

This is an original design that was entered into a "Peacock Swap" for pony designers/customizers.

"Silver Bells" was a winter/holiday pony of my own design. Sold.

Zenomorph II commissioned by a woman in Pittsburgh.

"Pony Ride" was commissioned by a woman who wanted portraits of her pet ferrets riding a pony. 

"Purgatori" was created for a comic book swap. 

"Devil's Heart" was a giant styling sized pony commission.

"Sugar Plum" was a sweet little "fakie" Christmas pony.

"Firefly" was my own original design.

"Goldie" is another "fakie" baby that became a merpony. 

"Jamaica" was a commissioned pony. The clothes are all sculpted and this was the first time I ever created dreadlocks out of mohair. It was a fun experiment. 

"edward Scissorhands" was one of my best. I was commissioned to make him by a woman in Germany who wanted me to use real scissors (???) The scissors on his hands are the blades from tiny grooming scissors! This one came out really good, however, she requested that I make it a near identical copy to another customeizer's Edwards Scissorhands (the pose, hair etc.) The difference is that mine has no tail. 

"Doctor Tongue" from "Day of the Dead." This was a fun one!