Making heroclix customs

I got into making custom figures for heroclix some years ago. I built myself a little "body" shop where I took extra figures to convert into variations and characters they hadn't made for the game yet. I have pics of many of my works, old and new, on my facebook page, but you can see some here. There is a small market for customs making on Ebay, but it's no where near what it was when I was making them more often.

To make my customs I used a dremel tool and cut off arms, legs and heads and re-matched them with other bodies to create the desired appearance. Super glue and paint would take care of the rest. I used a few other tricks too back then that were pretty effective. I like to think I'm not half bad at making customs, but have to say that there are others out there who make me look clumsy.

As for those tricks, check this out.


That's my custom Surtur, the Fire Giant from years ago before Heroclix went under for a while. I made him from the upper body of an original Hulk figure and the legs of some Mage Knight figure that I don't remember off hand. I drilled out the hand and inset the sword from some Warhammer 40K pieces I had laying around. The horns were tentacles from a Brainiac figure. The flames? This was the neat trick. They're made of toilet paper. Yep, toilet paper. The tissue was mixed with Elmer's glue and put on the figure with a little tricky manipulation. Once dry, I coated it a few times with brush on super glue to harden it. It's actually very effective.

I think I made him even before giant figures or right around the time that giants came out. I used the flight base to denote that he was a giant (house rule it) because I didn't have any cool dial making programs. I still don't.


Now this was my take on Strong Guy before he came out. I used a Mage Knight figure's upper body and arms along with a Hydra agents legs and head. I used my toilet paper trick for the little tuft of white hair on his forehead and the rest is repaint. There were a couple of hand sword things to sculpt off with the dremel tool, but that was no issue. I made him for several people before he finally came out in a set.

It's fun to look through the customs that people make. Some are really awesome and some, well, they aren't. But I have enjoyed it. The figure up top is one of my many duo figures I made, it's Thor and Lady Sif. Click on photos for larger view.