Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Painting Part 4 - Custom FUNKO POPS!

Are you familiar with Funko Pops? They're little vinyl figures with giant heads (sometimes bobbleheads) made in the likeness of various pop culture characters and personalities. Virtually every fandom has Funko Pops: movies, tv shows, video games, musicians, anime, athletes, the list goes on and on. They're fun little collectibles for your favourite pop culture content, and a rather large collectible industry has grown up around them. Some rare figures can sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

So, combining my love of making custom presents (see Christmas books) and painting small things, this year I've started making custom Funko Pops as birthday presents for my family. My digital sculpting skills aren't that great yet so I don't design them from scratch, but there are many websites where you can buy custom Funko Pop components. I mash them together, print them on my 3D printer, and paint away!

This is the first one I did, for my father-in-law. He's a handy guy and he's worked as a carpenter for years, so he got a little hammer. He told me I gave him too much hair.


This is my wife. I liked this one for the detail on her tattoo, which of course you can't see in this picture. She loves to bake cakes (you can see her cakes in the background of several of these picture). This is one of the first models I had to physically re-sculpt, because her classes didn't come out properly. I had to use clay to repair the glasses frames and her hair, and I was pretty happy with the results:


This one's my daughter. It's not in the official Funko Pop style, but this one fit her perfectly. She loves the devil horns and demon wings. And at least she got to have details on her eyes.


This is my sister in law. She loves band t-shirts, and David Bowie is her favourite artist, so she got a little "Bowie" logo on her shirt.

Everyone loves the dog the most, of course. I had to repaint it, because I originally used a photo of her as a puppy, then saw her in person and realized her colours had darkened and changed. 


This is my older niece. This one is actually a repainted version of a character from the old Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. I painted her as her D&D character (she loves cloaks), but her hair really is electric blue. She also got the nicest base so far.


This is my brother-in-law, and it's my favourite one so far. The logo on the hat was some of the first free hand painting I did at this scale, and I think it turned out pretty good. I was really proud of the stitches on the baseball and glove, but of course you can't see them in this picture. There's also a really nice salt-and-pepper effect on his hair and beard. 


So that leaves my mother-in-law, son and my youngest niece (and me of course, if I feel like making one of myself). I've started work on my niece, her birthday is the end of this month. I may do my son and mother-in-law for Christmas, though realistically I'll probably do them for their birthdays early in the new year.

Anyway, back to work/painting/writing/preparing for the Annual Halloween Haunted House.

Hugs & kisses,
-CDGK


4 comments:

PT Dilloway said...

That's really cool. I hadn't seen anyone doing that to Pops before.

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

That is really creative. You may have started a new trend.

Patricia JL said...

Those are so cute!

Loni Townsend said...

I love your Funko Pops. I want to do some of my characters, but I haven't figured out the custom aspects to make them fit quite yet. You will have to share your secrets when I have more time to reach out and ask.

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