| Legionnaire Statuettes by Jim Gallagher
This may look like the trophy wall from Superboy's basement but it's actually from the workshop of Legion fan extraordinaire, Jim Gallagher, who hand-made each and every one of these beautifully molded and painted Legionnaire statuettes. Each statuette (except for the smaller pets) is approximately a foot high and sits on custom-made shelf units in Jim's house. We were astounded when he first sent us these pictures and we just had to ask him how he went about creating these masterpieces.
How Jim Did It "Basically I made molds off of two old dolls from the Marx Johnny West cowboy doll series from the sixties. They were the most anatomically proportional dolls I could find. I used a plaster mold to cast the dolls themselves (in plaster), which makes a pretty lumpy undetailed casting, so then I used a latex mold to recast the heads and hands and replace the lumpy ones with new highly detailed ones.
"I poured plaster into a tupperware container until it was about half full. Then I sprayed the doll I was molding with cooking oil and laid it into the plaster until it was half submerged, with the feet against the side of the tupperware box. Then after the first half of the mold was set, I sprayed the entire thing with cooking oil and poured another batch of plaster over the top. After I dug the doll out of the mold I cut a hole in the end of the tupperware container. Then when I was ready to cast, I put the two sides of the mold together in the tupperware, stood it on end and propped it up with two paint buckets. I used a funnel to pour plaster down into the holes in the bottom of the feet. After I filled the mold with plaster, I stuck two wooden chopsticks or dowel rods down into the mold, running them down to the shoulders of the doll-cavity, and letting them stick out about an inch. This gives the plaster something to cling to and helps to pry the plaster doll out of the plaster mold. It took some work to pry them out. I used a matt knife to do it and it's common for the molded figure to break apart in the process. I used wood glue to glue them back together after I got them out of the mold. The wooden rods also gave me something to anchor the figure into the base later. After gluing the figure back together, doing some cleaning up and replacing the head and hands, I poured plaster into a cream cheese container, and sunk the wooden rods into the wet plaster, up to the bottom of the feet. I used drywall mud for any patching or sculpting. I just smeared it on with a brush and smoothed it down with water. After it dried I smoothed it more with fine sandpaper. For the skirts, capes, and gloves, I dipped cloth in dry wall mud, draped them on the figure and let them dry. then I layered more mud on top to make them sturdier.
"When they were all done I used acrylic paint and water color brushes to paint them. I used an exacto knife and those little nutshelling tools with the curved pointy ends for almost all of my detailing.
"I drew the emblems on my computer at work in Adobe Illustrator and printed them out to our color printer. Then I cut them out with an exacto knife and decopaged them onto the figures using transparent acrylic medium. It's like clear acrylic paint. Each male doll stands about 11.5" tall, not including the base. Females are about 11.25" tall, not including base. The bases add about two inches to each doll. All 25 together occupy about 2.5' x 4.5' of wallspace.
It's All in the Details "I've given Dream Girl a barette and added buttons and that little bit of lacing to Colossal Boy's collar. I also added a brooch to Princess P's collar and revamped the shorts and gloves on Sun Boy, which were never quite right. I've also made flight rings for everybody and they look great. Unfortunately, you have to hold the dolls' hands about three inches from your face to really see them, but they look really cool. "I fantasized about having a set of those Legion figurines ever since I was a kid and used to literally have dreams about making them. I finally decided to take the plunge and see if I could pull it off and I just LOVE them." Q&A Session LSH: So, which Legionnaire did you tackle first, Jim? Did you do all your favorites first? (In what order did your "Marx Legionnaires" join? ;) JG: The first one I did was Princess Projectra, followed by Duo Damsel, Invisible Kid, Chameleon Boy, and Colossal Boy. After that I forget, but I know Shadow Lass and Bouncing Boy were the last. Projectra turned out to be one of the best because I put more time in on her than on most of the others. But then I realized that if I was ever going to get them ALL done, I was going to have to cut some corners. LSH: How did you decide on the order to put them on your custom shelves? JG: I originally had them arranged in the order in which they joined, except that I spaced out the girls so that there were 2 boys for each girl. Otherwise all the girls would've been grouped together at the beginning and end with about 8 boys in a row in the middle. Their current arrangement is based on color balance. I toyed with dividing them into teams from different Adventure stories. The team who first fought Universo, the team who fought the Sun Eater, the team who fought Mordru, etc. But that didn't quite satisfy me because alot of my favorites got grouped together and alot of my less favorites also got grouped together. Also the colors weren't distributed very evenly. So I rearranged them, trying to space out the blues, greens, reds, etc. so that there was more visual appeal. I'm sure I'll rearrange them again at some point. LSH: Timber Wolf and Chemical King are noticeably absent from your Silver Age line-up. Do you have plans on doing figurines of them next? JG: I didn't bother to do Chemical King and Timber Wolf because they barely appeared in the Adventure run (well, Chemical King barely appeared period) and neither one did much for me. Plus 25 is a nice round number, as opposed to 27. LSH: Again, truly an amazing effort... Thank you for sharing, Jim! :) JG: Thanks for your interest and your offer to include them on your website. I love your site and can't wait for the next quiz. Jim has also made statuettes of members of the Legion Reserve, including the Legion of Substitute Heroes and the Legion of Super-Pets! |
