TRU 50th Cobra Viper Officer


Ugh...this is one of those customs you start and it just was a mess from the word go.

I've always loved the colors of the Sonic Viper and had a distinct image on what I wanted him to look like.

The first step was the face plate. I had used a spray metallic red before and had mixed results. One time it looked fantastic...most times...not so much.

My first attempts came up bad as the red would pool up and look terrible on the face plate and I ended up sanding it off and going with a more traditional red...I was already disappointed, but moved forward. The gold paint was done with a paint marker but even after days of drying it was rubbing off to the touch and worse yet just smudgy, uneven and dull when I would clear coat it.

Finding a brown to match was a task. So many colors I think I bought six paints in an attempt to match most of them did not and were seriously not even close. Mixing also provided no match. I became convinced I was never going to exact match the color and settled instead for something at least close in the same vein of the character. Which lead to Hull Red (see second attached picture)...the results weren't awful...its a cool color but still was not looking like a Sonic Viper.

I decided to attempt another color called Earth...this made it even worse (see third attached picture). The new coat was awful. Making it look poop brown instead. I have included pics of both the Hull Viper and the whimsical Butt Viper a play on words...Viper Wiper...get it? He looks like the color of poo and and generally one of my worst looking customs to date.

Finally ordered a second figure to start over and came at the project from a different perspective. I was determined to do that red metallic face plate so I pried the helmet off, hung the figure on my spray dummy (an old ROC SE since I have multiple) upside down and let the pooling paint pool up under where the helmet would cover.

I used the spray gold this time that I had worked with in the past that covered well and didn't rub off like the paint marker did. Finally found a color for the jumpsuit...burnt sienna...and a bit of black trim.

Overall a huge pain in the ass but finished. And looking like I wanted it to. (first and final attached pictures)

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