THE ROCKETEER - 1/12 SCALE HANDMADE ACTION FIGURE
After writing the past three write-ups in a dry “step-by-step” format, I’ve realized that’s kind of boring. Don’t get me wrong I scour YouTube for old clips of How It’s Made like everyone else, but I’m over just explaining how I make things. I want to do something a little different.
I feel like I made all three of the figures I made up to this point at major crossroads of my life - the first one (Batman 1939) was made after I lost my boring day job and decided to pursue a career in Graphic Design instead, and the figure was finished right before I married the love of my life. The Kamen Rider figure was made after I left my first Design job after two years of toxicity, and was finished before starting work at a certain girl-lead nonprofit - a job that was incredibly fun and fulfilling. The Batman Year 100 figure was started shortly after the pandemic started and right before there were massive layoffs at the girl-lead nonprofit. The Rocketeer figure was the first figure that I felt that what I’ve been doing could maybe be… art? Sort of?
So, here’s the basic just of what happened: at the end of 2019 I ended up getting a design job at a really well-established non-profit known for the cookies that their members sell on a seasonal basis. It was actually a really great environment to work in, and it was very low-stress compared to the situation I left at the previous job. During this time, I was working on projects and ideas at a leisurely pace since it felt like things were going pretty well - I actually thought that I’d be working at this non-profit for several years at the very least and making things on the side.
And then the pandemic hit.
Pant pattern drawn out on fabric. This was about the point that I started upping my sewing game.
I’ll never say that the job itself was stressful, but I became a ball of nerves while trying to do my work from home - mainly because the major financial drivers for this non-profit came from in-person events in many forms, and they had to cancel ALL of the ones they had planned. I was feeling very uncertain of my position since I was one of the last people hired - and a graphic designer at that, a job that they farmed out to cheap labor in the past. At this time, I saw a post from Gallery 1988 about accepting submissions from new artists. Gallery 1988 is a pop culture art gallery here in LA, and they normally don’t take new artists. I had been following Gallery 1988 for several years and knew that I wanted my art - whatever that would be - to show there.
I mulled over it for a little bit. Should I submit my stupid little action figures? Or maybe I should try and make some real art (tm) and try to submit later? I decided to submit pictures of the action figures that I had made so far (Batman, Kamen Rider, and the newly finished Batman Year 100) and figured that it was better to take a chance rather than lose this opportunity to be part of THE gallery that I wanted to be part of. I went back to stressing about work, expecting to hear nothing back from them.
Then I lost my job. I was one of several people let go. It was really bitter sweet - I loved the work environment pre-pandemic, but things had become so incredibly stressful that I was almost glad it was over. Until I realized that I was one of millions of people in the US unemployed. But then I got an email from Gallery 1988. Of course, I’d get my rejection email from the gallery on the same day that I got laid off! Would things really go any other way?! I start reading:
“Hello and thank you so much for your submission. We so rarely do a public call and this year we were so impressed with what's out there - we were blown away…”
Alright, here comes the part where they tell me that my work is good, but it’s not the right fit for them, so on and so forth…
“We wanted to invite you to our upcoming group shows as we think your style and work would be a GREAT fit.”
How I usually start sculpting the boots for my figures.
WHAT THE FUCK?! REALLY?! Oh shit, I got in! They actually want my artwork! Also, I got my pick of shows to enter! The first show I wanted to be a part of was their 30 Years Later show which was only two months away. The stress of losing my job during a pandemic quickly went away as the stress of having to make a piece in record time (at that point) took its place. That’s the double-edged sword of validation.
I had a little bit more than three months to get a figure together, so I had to pick a subject fast! As you can guess from the name of the show, I needed to pick a subject based on a movie from 30 years ago (from 2021). While there were a lot of awesome movies to choose from, I couldn’t help but pick the Rocketeer - I was drawn to the challenge of creating his helmet and rocket pack! Funny enough, I’m not the biggest Rocketeer fan in the world - I loved the movie as a kid, I love the character himself, and I think he’s cool. But I’m definitely not a hardcore fan. That being said, I think the character has an inherent appeal for artists - he’s visually appealing, and the design presents a lot of interesting challenges. Several aspects of the Rocketeer are both simple yet incredibly difficult to replicate. So yeah, I went with the Rocketeer for my figure for the show.
Process
So, I still want to talk a little bit about process - especially since this was one of the most challenging figures I’ve made. There were two factors that really made this challenging: I had never worked on a figure against an imposed deadline (especially something this complex), and I ended up getting a new job a few weeks after I found out about getting into Gallery 1988. I don’t know what I’d do without coffee.
The head was sculpted using Magic Sculpt over a sheet styrene “armature” to help keep the shape consistent - basically, I just created flat templates of the head shapes using Adobe Illustrator, printed the templates, glued them the sheet styrene, abd cut them out. Once the shapes were glued together to make the armature, I covered it with the Magic Sculpt and was able to smooth it out creating a near-perfect representation of the Rocketeer’s helmet. Once the putty was cured, I just sanded the sculpt down to refine the shape, then carved and glued on details. This was pretty simple considering that this was one of the parts that stressed me out the most before starting - after all, the helmet is one of the most identifiable parts of the Rocketeer!
The finished sculpt before priming.
Starting on the rocket pack.
The part that caused me the most stress however was the rocket pack - just looking at pictures of it made me puke. At first glance, you might think “stick two rocket shapes together, add some vent details, throw on a few hundred rivets, then call it a day!” But you would be very wrong in that assessment. Those twin rocket shapes form a “V” shape with all of those vent details carved in at an intersecting angle, meaning that I can’t create those details while the rockets are separate. I mean, I could’ve done it that way, but I would’ve had to be way more precise and I don’t have the tools to get to that level of precision. I’m still proud of what I did to really nail the look of the rocket pack though - it was almost entirely constructed of highlighter tubes, pen caps, and a few Gundam model parts! I even used a comb to make the heatsink between the rockets! Anything that wasn’t the right shape was sculpted using epoxy putty. The rivets were made using a technique that I saw from a YouTube video - I made a “punch” from my pin vise and the butt of a mini drill bit, and punched the rivets from an aluminum can. I had to glue all 8,000,000,000,000 one at a time by hand, but it was almost worth it!
Working out the details of the rocket pack.
Primed and ready for paint!
Sewing was pretty straight forward, though it took a lot of time to sew everything together - I had just purchased a sewing machine at this point, but using a sewing machine is fucking terrifying so the entire outfit is hand sewn. For the jacket, I cut the pieces I needed from that amazing leather I sourced from Goodwill and I airbrushed those pieces using several brown tones. I have a lot of pins and needles with flat heads that worked perfectly for buttons on both the jacket and pants. Speaking of which, the pants were made from an old khaki shirt I found at Goodwill as well - it’s actually really thin, and feels like a perfect in-scale simulacrum of actual khaki fabric. The boot tops were made from another piece of fake leather found at Goodwill and painted a darker shade of brown.
Because I was running low on time, I ended up completely hand painting the sculpted parts instead of airbrushing them - but I think that works better considering that hand painted pieces look a little more organic - in fact, I don’t airbrush skin tone, leather texture, or anything else that’s supposed to be organic. For the rocket pack, I used Culture Hustle’s Mirror paint - which, due to the slightly rouch texture of the piece looks more like brushed steel instead of chrome (which was intentional).
Conclusion
What I think was really crazy about this figure was that I was making it so fast, that I didn’t even have time to just enjoy the process - which lead me to feeling really impressed with myself seeing the finished figure. This was probably the first time I’ve really been able to distance myself from a piece that I’ve made and see it objectively. While it showed at Gallery 1988 privately and online, it was still a pretty major milestone to have this piece shown at a gallery - here’s to many more gallery shows!
