Do you like figures? Do you ever wish you could make your own? Well, we can’t help you actually make a figure, but we can show you how one skilled amateur figure crafter turned the Genesis of Aquarion Zessica Wong figure above into a female pilgrim from Dragon Quest.

Check out his explanation, complete with photos, below.

The role of geeky figure crafter will be played by this muscle-bound hunk with a knife.

▼ “Hello!”

The anonymous figure crafter, whom we’ve decided to call Villand, because of his underwear, posted a series of photos and explanations of process by which he transformed the figure of Zessica Wong from Genesis of Aquarion into a female pilgrim from Dragon Quest. Villand, aside from intimidating us with his knife and guns, apparently enjoys making figures!

First, here’s the original Zessica Wong figure that our mystery crafter used. Not the lack of pilgrim-like modesty.

Villand apparently chose this figure since it was close to the final design he had in mind. He also recommends buying used figures exactly for this kind of thing, so if you mess up, you won’t mind throwing it out!

Before we really get into the details, here’s the reference image that Villand used. Aside from being taller, he also apparently wanted the figure to have a smile. Just because you’re religious doesn’t mean you can’t have fun!

Now, here are the tools our hero used to transform Zessica into a pilgrim. You’ll note he has assembled: An X-ACTO designer knife, epoxy putty in two colors, a number of carving tools, sandpaper for smoothing, glue, and a few other items. He also recommends buffing up, because all that carving can apparently be quite the workout.

Now, since he’s used an old figure, Villand points out that the only thing he needed the putty for was making the new clothes–no need to start from scratch! But he did need to get rid of all the extraneous parts of the old figure, so the first step is tearing it apart like that psychotic kid next-door in the first Toy Story.

And here’s what the stripped down version looks like reassembled. Our hero tells us that he didn’t get any photos of this process, but it looks like, in addition to removing the unnecessary parts, he also sanded down the paint and added some putty to the hands (to make gloves), thighs, and breasts, in addition to making new hair.

Next, we move on to the putty! He used a rough pattern to get the right size and basic outline down.

And then he taped the putty to the figure while it hardened to get the right shape. Villand also mentioned that he used a “tack weld,” so the putty would be easy to remove once it hardened. You may be wondering about the gray paint on the figure. Though we don’t have any photos of it, this is apparently surfacer, which he says is used to get it ready for painting. It smooths over any of the little scratches that may be on the surface of the figure and makes it all a uniform color, which makes checking for scratches easier as well.

Villand also made a hat and a staff for the pilgrim. He notes that the staff was made from the leftover parts of a different plastic model.

Next, Villand used some putty to cut out two crosses, one for the figure’s clothes and one for her hat. Just as before, he then taped them onto the figure to get the right shape.

He also “grew some grass” on the stand! If you want the same look for your stand, all you need to do is lay some putty on it and then hit the putty with the bristles of a toothbrush before it dries. A pretty clever technique, if you ask us! And it’s “as easy as grass growing,” Villand says.

Here he’s laid out all the individual parts. Villand mentions that everything up to now is the most difficult part — basically all the crafting, cutting, and molding. But, the figure crafter points out, if you slack here, the final product will definitely suffer!

Here’s the figure assembled to see how it will look. Villand also points out that he didn’t think he could draw the face, so he bought a decal.

However, he decided that there’s something wrong. “The eyes look dead,” he explained. This was fixed by taking some white paint and carefully adding spots to the eyes.

▼ Before adding spots to the eyes…

▼ …and after! It’s kind of hard to tell, because of the reflection,

but look at the upper right part of the irises.

Unfortunately, it looks like Villand had some trouble here and had to remove the spot from the left eye, but he accidentally removed some of the decal as well! Fortunately, he was able to repair it without too much fuss, as you can see above.

Now, we move on to the rest of the figure, starting with painting the body! Since the character is basically going to be wearing tights, he just painted everything the color of her tights.

▼ He painted the “grass” on the stand green.

Villand also painted the hat yellow. You’ll note that really only the edges and the cross are actually yellow on the final figure. He used masking tape to block off those parts before painting over it again with blue once the coat of yellow paint dried.

▼ The same was done for the clothes.

And here’s the coat of blue paint! You can see how using the masking tape would make this a lot easier than just trying to be really careful.

And here’s what it all looked like once the paint had dried!





You can kind of see, though, that the masking tape wasn’t quite applied perfectly, and the blue paint got in places where it wasn’t supposed to be. For those places, he just used a small brush to fix everything.

▼ Like this!

The next step is applying Mr. SUPER CLEAR, a sort of finish intended to maintain the color and cut down on the glossy look of the paint. If you make figures and you haven’t heard of it before, here’s an English guide to using the product.

Here’s the figure post-Mr. SUPER CLEAR. You can see that it has a sort of matte finish and the reflection isn’t so sharp anymore. Perfect for photography, too!

And here a few final shots of the figure before attaching the robe.

Here’s his setup for taking photos of the final version and a few more shots of the figure!

Finally, Villand had a few more points about the process.

– The direction her head is facing is slightly different from the original.

– The thighs and breasts are apparently slightly larger.

– The boots are the same as the original.

Our hero also mentions that the entire process took about two months to complete. He notes that since he was using an old figure as the base, it didn’t require as much work.

Well, that was quite a journey, wasn’t it? Still, we found it pretty impressive! We doubt we’ll be making any figures of our own any time soon, but we definitely have a new appreciation for all the work that goes into making a good figure.

Good job, sir! Maybe next time you can immortalize one of our crazy pranks!

Sources/images: Himajin Sokuhou