018. Have a Merry Christmas by Kitbashing your toy!

Merry Christmas Comrades!

Amidst the family gatherings and roasted meats, and all the socializing, lets not forget when the nephews and nieces come to visit, there's always a surprise to be had. Most families would be busy decorating their houses and such, and to add to the scenery, I've always added a touch of figurines. Just a little shift of the glass shelf where you keep the toys and figures and comics are sure to leave the kids engulf into the Christmas mood.

Usually, the most time consuming part of leaving your toy collection for the kids to gawk at, is the diorama part. Most times you can get away with draping cloth with unique textures or print out a picture of a scene in a movie and stick it in the background. 

It's amazing what lighting effects and drapery can do instead of putting alot of
effort into making or buying a diorama.

As long as it looks complicated and bada$$, there's no reason why the nephews and nieces
won't adore coming to your place every Xmas!

Or you could make a conventional one like the one below. The sky is the limit when your lifestyle is surrounded with toys and figures, agree?;D

Today though, I'd like to share a kitbash recipe that I've been working on. It's for my nephews and nieces to gawk at this Christmas when they come over. And it's base on a superhero that has been my favorite since the 90s! The Flash!

My fascination with The Flash started when John Wesley Shipps first appeared as the flash in a tv commercial for the television series in the 90s.

Since then, I have devoured Flash comics and Flash content in every known media. Oh boy! those were the good years.

The days when superheroes weren't skinny lads in costume. No offence Gustin!

Hero crossovers like these spurred my imagination and my love for
the scarlet speedster grew.

Back then, the SupermanvFlash races spurred my imagination and my love for the scarlet speedster grew as he won the races(oops..spoiler).

Then again, after a long hiatus, CW gave the flash franchise a burst of new life.

In case you're wondering, I did a retouch of the Flash emblem to keep him in-line
with CW's TheFlash Season 2.

But, and that's a big but...so far, I havent seen a really awesome 12" figure of my favorite superhero...yet. I'm sure Flash fans will agree with me on this when I say: we need the flash in a highly detailed 1/6th scale figure!

Sideshow has made a prototype which is awaiting licensing rights to the figure, but heck, I can't wait any longer and it's Christmas, my nephews and nieces need to see something. Therefore, It's up to me to kitbash the Flash!

Photocredits: toynewsnetwork.blogspot.com(a great blog that has went on a hiatus)

The Concept

Behind every great toy is a concept, especially if you're talking about hero costumes. The flash I would be kitbashing would be a real-world Flash, so his gear would have to be something inspired by modern day science and military technology. I know, some of you might say that it's okay if it's a teeny bit outlandish because with Star Labs, anything is possible, but I'm trying to re-imagine a Flash that is more true-er to our time. Here's what I used:

The Head

First Ingredient: Captain America's Avenger head

Finding the head for TheFlash was an important task for me. As with the other Captain America heads, the "A" alphabet on his forehead is grooving outwards and that would be a problem for me as I'd have to carve the head. I'm no professional sculpt artist, so if there's a situation to avoid it, why not? I'd rather add to a headsculpt than subtract to it.

What I did was to add putty on certain areas to make the head smooth.
The next step was to paint the head with a shade of red and add "ears"

Here's the final headsculpt.

The Body

As you can see from the picture above, there's a shirt that he's wearing. What I did was die the arms red. I didn't want a suit, like a water-tight suit because I thought that it'd take away the element of him being more of a altruistic guy in a soldier-like attire. The flash that I have re-imagined here is older and has more experience, he's been taught more fighting skills by his friend, Bruce Wayne then when Barry first started fighting crime, so his attire is adjusted as such.

Some of you might say that his attire now, cannot fit into his ring. In my defense, I'd say that there's no such technology that can keep a great high performance suit inside a tiny ring. And if Flash is the fastest man alive, finding his stowaway suits throughout the city and changing into them wouldn't even take a second~!

I've chosen Naked Snake's body vest to be TheFlash's body armor. 

Flash's body is covered with a utility vest that has an in-built defibrillator
and a temperature compensating mechanism for when he becomes super hot.
It also acts as a protective shield against any stray projectile, much like a kevlar.

As you can see from the description, The body vest serves multipurposes in the Flash's fight against crime.

The Arms and hands

As for the arms, Flash would need some sort of lightweight protection, something in the form of kevlar or carbon-fibre so that his arms can articulate quite freely in the case where he needs to rotate his arms to create a whirlwind. Which also means, he can't wear pauldrons.

Snake Eyes bicep guard is something which I need for Flasher

It would look really really cool if I could add Snake Eyes's pauldrons along with his bicep guard for the flash, but it'd be a hindrance if Flash needs to create a whirlwind to get out of sticky situations.

The wristbrace and hands are very important to me.

I feel that the gloves of TheFlash would need to be friction resistant and would need to have excellent gripping power and hard callouses on them just in-case Barry needs to execute his "supersonic punch". With that being so, I have chosen to go with TDK's gloves.

Look at those callouses on those gloves! <3

As for the wristbrace, after awhile of brainstorming and thinking, I came up with....nothing. There's no wristbrace from Hot Toys, Sideshow, ThreeZero etc. No wristbrace that fits with Flash's personality and utility that the Scarlet Speedster needs.

I imagined the wristbrace to provide lightweight protection, structural support(so his bones dont break easily when he does the "supersonic punch", much like how boxers have it) and I imagine the wristbraces to be equipped with ballbearings that slide up and down his wristbrace to create a sort of "pendulum" effect, so he generates more weight going forward when he swings his arms through running. This is valuable as it adds extra weight to his supersonic punch.

As you can see, there are also no straps on his wristbrace. It is strapped by
3magnetic straps. No fuss of untying

Pants

The Flash would want his pants to be streamlined, but not too much until it traps heat, it must also allow the heat his body is generating to leave the suit. As for this, I am spoilt for choice here. I didn't want it to be a suit, although I think Superman's suit would have looked nice. 

But for this, I'd have to go with Thor's pants(the first movie) as it's simple and its cool and doesn't shout out too much of Thor's character.

Thor's pants here is just about nice, it looks cool but it also doesn't
scream out it's master's name. btw, Thors' helmet does look like it
can belong to hawkman right? just saying...

Kneepads and Boots

For no reason whatsoever, CW and CBS has churned out Flash's that have no intention of wearing the iconic yellow boots. Just sad. 

CBS has no excuse to leave out the boots...

For me, Flashs' boots need to be in it's iconic color but at the same time, updating the color palette to modern time by replacing yellow, with gold. And that's how my Scarlet speedster will look like, will be in red and gold.

I imagine Flash's boots to be friction resistant, no straps like how the wristbraces are and lightweight. During the initial stages of coming up with the boots for Flash, I was considering Falcons' or Hawkeye's boots but I soon find out that, having military boots would be too heavy and having straps and laces wouldnt help in running and easy-wearing.

Falcon's boots have smashingly good looks, but it is too heavy though

Hawkeye's boots are the closest to my idea of The Flash

So I was shopping on ebay for Hawkeye's boots until I saw the perfect boots for TheFlash. Thank goodness I delayed my purchase.

Look at the boots, no straps, easy-slip-on, lightweight and it looks futuristic
without looking ridiculously out-of-this-world.

The moment I laid my eyes on Flynn's boots, I knew that was the one and there was nothing else that comes close.

As for the kneepads, I thought Flasher would be glad to know that should he trip during his lung bursting run, his kneepads can always break his fall and prevent his knees from shredding off when he skids on asphalt. Haha, yeah, that was pretty graphic aint it?

Looks good once it's assembled don't it?

The Finishing Touches

Once it's all assembled, all that's left to do is to put on the Flash emblem and color the whole "suit". I had two shades of red when I painted the Flash; Metallic red and a maroon sort of red, for the "ears", boots and emblem, I painted them gold, instead of yellow. There's also no white in the emblem as I thought that would be like announcing to any bad guys to "Shoot here" directly into his chest.

The emblem is made of clay, just like the ears. You can also make them with putty.

...And...Voila! here are the final pictures! The Flash doesnt have the "lightning streak" on his hips though as I thought that would be excessive, and adding a gold belt would make him look like batman, so I just left it how it is. I hope you like it! If there are any comments, do leave 'em below.

Liking the "weathering" effects on the suit and emblem?

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