| Legion Reserve Statuettes by Jim Gallagher Presenting more custom-made Legion figurines by Jim Gallagher, including the Legion of Super-Pets, Honorary Members, Reservists and the Legion of Substitute Heroes! The Legion of Super-Pets
Q & A with Jim Gallagher: J & T: How do your new super-animals figurines compare with the original Legionnaire statuettes you've made? For instance, is Comet based on the Johnny West line as well? Jim: Yes, it is a Marx horse, so it is in scale with the Legion figures I did. I tried to find other animal figurines that would be in scale too, but I think the dog and cat are slightly too small for the other animals. I bought the horse on eBay and the dog on an Internet site that sells dog figurines. The dog was a Dalmatian and the horse was a palemino so I spray-painted them both white. The cat figurine I happened to find at a flea market... The monkey is a composite of a Planet of the Apes action figure and a [Splinter] action figure from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set that looked more like a monkey than a rat, and which I happened across at a comic shop. I bought the Planet of the Apes doll over eBay, made a latex mold of its head and cast it in plaster. Then I added bigger ears and trimmed away some excess fur around the neck. Then I replaced the rat head with the new monkey head. I made his shirt and pants by smoothing out the rat's furry body with contour putty. Then I added the belt and spray painted the cat and the monkey with flat white paint and then repainted them with acrylic paints (I didn't think the acrylic paint would stick to the glossy finish of the figurines unless I painted them with flat paint first). Then I added the capes, coated them in drywall mud to make them stiff, sanded them and painted them and added the S emblems.
The horse's harness was made with shoelaces that I glued on and then painted. Proty is just a lump of plaster that I built up over a miniature Spider-Man figure and then painted with a light wash of cream colored paint. I may mount them on bases at some point and put them on a shelf on the wall to match my Legion figurines. Honorary Member & Reservist Statuettes Joining the Super-Pets are Honorary Members Pete Ross and Elastic Lad Jimmy Olsen, and Reservist Insect Queen Lana Lang!
The Legion of Substitute Heroes And here are the one and only Legion of Substitute Heroes: Polar Boy, Fire Lad, Night Girl, Chlorophyll Kid, Stone Boy and Color Kid, with special guest the White Witch!
Q & A: J & T: How did you do Elastic Lad to be so stretched out? It looks like you "broke the mold" with Jimmy. Also, he looks like he is blushing a bit in the pic -- was that an intentional coloration? Jim: Those are his freckles. I may have put them on a little too thick. I didn't make Pete's as thick. Each figurine has two wooden rods running through their bodies from their shoulders, down each leg and anchoring into the base. The feet almost always break off when I pry the doll out of the mold anway, so I just made Jimmy's dowel rods a little longer than usual when I cast him and then when his feet broke off I just glued them back on a little farther down on the rod than normal and filled his legs in with drywall mud. The heads are also all replaced from the orignal mold, so when I glued his new head on, I drilled a hole into the base of his neck and another hole into his new head's neck, inserted a dowel rod and glued it in to extend the neck. Then I filled in the gap with more drywall mud. This was the first new figure I did. I thought it would be fun to make Jimmy stretched out. Plus his and Stone Boy's costumes are so drab and dull I wanted to find a way to make them both a little more fun and interesting by having them display their powers. J & T: What material did you make Insect Queen's wings out of? Jim: I wanted the wings to be transluscent yet stiff like the other capes. First, I tried starching several different types of sheer fabric, but the fabric was too sheer to hold the starch. While looking around my house to see what else I could use, I came up with the idea of using plastic, so I cut her wings/cape from a transluscent jug of vinegar and glued them on with a hot glue gun. They aren't as shiny as they look in the photos. That's because of the flash. J & T: What sculpting method did you use to create the faux-fur look on Polar Boy's collar and cuffs? Jim: I wrapped Polar Boy's head, neck and forearms with pieces of shoelace. Then I just dabbed on some drywall mud with a paint brush and let it dry, leaving the texture rough. J & T: Stone Boy's face and hands have a nice spackled, stony effect. How did you achieve this? (We also really liked the way you colored Dag's tights a darker orange than his shirt. This was a Silver Age coloring detail that got lost over the years. Bravo! :) Jim: There's a product you can buy that comes in a spray can that adds a faux stone texture. I had just a little bit of it left from another project, so I painted Stone Boy's skin gray first, then sprayed the texture over the top. I didn't want to put it on too thick because it would've obscured the detailing in his face. J & T: Your chest symbols look very nice and clean. How do you create them and place them on the figures? Jim: I took Night Girl's, Stone Boy's, and Polar Boy's emblems off of a website and modified them in Adobe Illustrator. I streamlined them to make them less hokey looking. I took a picture of a park sign with a tree on it when I was in New Zealand over the winter and scanned and traced the tree, modifying it a little for Chlorophyl Kid's emblem. I drew Fire Lad's and Color Kids' flames and rainbow in Illustrator too and I scanned an ant sticker I found in a hobby store for Insect Queen's emblem. Then I printed them all out to our color printer at work and decopaged them on the dolls the same way I did my other figure's emblems. Fire Lad's and Color Kid's boots were done the same way. Elastic Lad's name was put on with presstype. J & T: Do you think you'll ever do more Legion characters -- like Rond Vidar, Kid Psycho, Timber Wolf and Chemical King? How about R.J. Brande? Are there any super-villains that are tempting to do because they are visually interesting and could prove extra challenging to make three-dimensional? (ie. Mordru, the Fatal Five, Time Trapper) Jim: I don't have any plans to do any more figures. It's time to move on to something bigger and better. I think with 35 human and 5 animal figurines on my wall, some might call me obsessive if I did any more. :-) Still, you never know... J & T: Awesome job, Jim, and we look forward to seeing whatever other projects you move on to. :) :) |
