(pictures added tomorrow, honest...)
A lot has been written about the cost of customised toys recently, with several high-end customs by the top names in obscure niche geekdom selling for over $1,000. People seem to think these things cost the price of the figure, and a bit of paint. I thought it would be interesting to show a breakdown of just how much cost can go into just one single custom.
I'm picking an example of a recent custom, just to let people know what they're in for. The example I've chosen is my recent Black Tracks figure, as it's a "simple" custom. This is not a HOW TO guide, this is a glimpse into the costs involved.
1 - The Base Figure - £10-25
Turbo Tracks, released by Hasbro. Use this mold if you have it sat in your collection, contemplate buying the United version for your collection to replace it. This a good rule I feel for any custom, use the cheap version if possible.
2 - Precision Screw-driver Set - £6-15
Like a lot of items on this list, there is a wide spectrum of price variation. As with all things in life, you get what you pay for. A $500 call girl gets you a night in Vegas you won't forget, a $50 hooker does the same thing on paper, but gives you herpes.
Yeah, first thing you have to do is disassemble that bad boy. Don't lose any bits now. You'll need containers for small bits, and probably some pin punchers to remove that bastard pin running through the windshield.
3 - Soldering Iron - £7 - £25
This has been proven by hundreds of customisers as the best way of removing Transformers tyres. Again, I'm not explaining how, there are plenty of guides for that, but you will need a soldering iron.
4 - Lavender - £3 (from any good herbal type shop)
You dropped the soldering iron on your leg! Ouch! That smarts mother fucker, you won't do that again. Now you know what your girlfriend risks every time she straightens her hair. At least you missed the carpet, right? It's good to have Lavender on hand to treat burns. Sounds effeminate, but we're taking apart (toy) cars with tools so we're butch men really.
5 - New carpet - price varies, excluded from final.
Move the coffee table to cover it.
6 - Nail Varnish Remover - Free from girlfriends make up bag / Isopropyl Alcohol - £5
Again, there is a cheap option here, but I guarantee that if you use all the nail varnish remover you'll never hear the end of it and really, that stuff EATS through plastic and is a pain in the arse to remove all paint. Go for the extra expense, and bathe your parts in isopropyl alcohol for 24 hours and rub that paint away with ease and use an old toothbrush (free!) for any grooves or corners.
7 - RIT dye - £4 per colour
This is the dye to use, trouble is it doesn't get sold in the UK. Look for it on ebay. I only trust black so far, and you need to experiment with a junker for resistance, finding the temperature that works for you with your equipment. Again, I know how but I'm not telling you here, that's not what this is for (about 170 seems right), but I will tell you this...read all the tutorials you can so you go in with a couple of methods to try, and for god sake, don't breathe in RIT dye or acetone as vapours from the heating procedure.
8- Acetone - £4
Not expensive, but another small expense. This stuff added in small quantities helps the plastic take the dye, rather than it just washing off after all your hard work. Again, experiment, but DON'T breathe it in.
9 - MSDS sheets - free, on the internet.
I'm nearly two weeks out from my big RIT / Acetone experiment and my respiratory tract is still suffering. If in doubt, look up the medical science data sheet for any potentially harmful materials you may expose yourselves to. A lot of customisers skip this step, but it's a free resource, so use it, lest the true cost of customising end up being even higher.
10 - The Junker - £3- ???
Yeah, that sucker wasn't free. It may be junk now, but chances are somewhere along the way this figure cost you money. Luckily, as your customising grows over time, so will your pile of parts and crap you don't want.
In fact, junker doesn't just apply to toys, because not everything you need for customising has to be bought new, you can use an old jar for holding isopropyl or other chemicals, you can find an old shit pan at the back of the cupboard - that no-one remembers buying and was somehow inherited - for your dyeing experiment.
11 - Spray paints - £7 each
Why do I need spray if I'm dyeing a figure?
Dyeing is great for bodywork for a nice factory gloss finish, and is great for joints as it doesn't rub off or increase the thickness by .5mil and create clearance / tolerance issues, but you can dye every part. If you dye the windshield of Turbo Tracks it will look wicked black, but you might find the window is a lot less...windowy than before (yes, I could get into opacity, but lets keep it layman, yes?).
If you've ever noticed that some Transformers age differently, or just have different shades out the box, this is the difference between coloured plastic, and painted transparent plastic. Classics Sunstreaker is the best example of this I can think of. Heck, even my actual car suffers from this after 15 years (a Pontiac Firebird, the plastic nosecone / bumper looks quite different to the paintwork now).
I also opted for spray paints for the grey parts of Black Tracks, as my first experiment with grey dye didn't work the way I wanted it to and was too dark. Yes, I actually made two Black Tracks at the same time, this offsets costs and gives me a bit more room to experiment, and means I can sell off one if all goes well.
So for some parts you're going to need to paint, and I ALWAYS recommend a base coat, of course before you do that I recommend...
12 - Masking tape - £2
Yeah, it's cheap enough. The real cost here is to your time and patience. I've found I've had to get real good at fitting tiny amounts of masking tape to small detailing, or window frames, and huge swathes of masking tapes to joints and parts you don't want covered in paint.
Sure, it's a pain in the ass, and another - admittedly negligible - expense, but taking the time to properly prep is paramount, and worthy of special mention in this increasingly more tutorially, not a "how to" guide.
So you've masked, you're almost ready to spray...
13- Mask - £5 - £25
A cheap mask will protect you from particulates, but these are better for dust than they are for aerosol,and they offer virtually no protection against vapours. Look at what you're doing, look at your work space and the chemicals you're using and buy accordingly. Sorry to harp on about protecting your lungs, but I don't want you all developing Yoda lung.
14 - Paints - (cost seemingly endless) £2 each
Okay, you're dyeing the figure, and your using sprays to base coat bigger areas. But damn, what about detailing? In this case, Tracks needs a quick bit of colour on his faceplate. Gold for e-hobby homage, light blue for Takara tribute, the choice is yours. Most figures will need more, but luckily, this was just a "simple" black repaint.
You can see on mine I've neglected to get around to this yet, I just don't want to rush the final touch before I find the perfect shade.
I also opted to use a gloss paint for his chest, as this tends to be what Hasbro would use, and as I didn't have any gloss black spray I opted for hand painting. Very, very light application prevents heavy brush strokes, but you should know this.
15 - Random Tools - £10 - £30
Pin punch set, pliers, scalpel, file, sanding paper, paint brushes...
The chances are the more tools you have, the less frustrating the experience. I found a small watchmakers kit had everything I needed, and this means next time someone drops a nuke I can re-enact a scene from Watchmen.
16 - Stickers - £1 - £15
For that finishing touch, you can't beat a good set of repro labels. I wouldn't say they are essential, I'd say they may be essential depending on your custom. Many people will opt for Repro Label Flames for their Black Tracks, I didn't for two reasons. One, I've never applied the sticker to my eHobby Lucky Draw Black Tracks and I wanted this to match, and two, I have a happy accident - a light ghostly flame effect is visible through the black dye showing where the old flame pattern used to be. I guess where the paint was affected the plastic even with it removed, this never happened with the paint removal on Generations Wheeljack - (which definitely needed a sticker set to finish the conversion to Marlboor), but like I said, happy accident, it looks cool and I'm keeping it that way.
Sticker wise, I was happy with a simple Autobot logo, long ago purchased en masse from Repro Labels.
Total Cost - £100
(estimate looking at what I paid for all the parts I used in making this custom, suddenly Botcon Road Rage doesn't seem so bad, huh?)
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Crazy, huh? Now obviously, with a lot of those items you only need to buy them once and then you have them for future customs as well, but just looking at it as set-up costs for your first custom, then it becomes pretty apparent that it is not a poor mans hobby. I guess there are fixed costs (tools, masking tape, base coat) and then variable costs (additonal parts, new colours, stickers etc...), but really when it comes to customising it's up to you how far down the rabbit hole you go. This was also an incredibly easy custom. No parts swaps, kitbashing,
glueing, dremelling, articulation adding...not even an add-on head from
Shapeways coming soon I promise.
The biggest variable cost though, is time. How much is your time worth? If I was working and earning $100 an hour, it would certainly be more cost effective to hire some bastard to do the work for me, but then there is the question of effort vs. reward. There is something very satisfying about investing your own time into making your own custom, something that makes the whole process mean more than another Takara variant.
Bear in mind as well, this cost break down presumes that this first custom attempt goes flawlessly. It won't. Even after experimenting with the temperature and immersion time for RIT dye for nearly two (ill making) hours, I still managed to fuck up the first part I submerged that actually mattered. I did everything right, but the plastic on Turbo Tracks is flimsier than the plastic on a (shitty) ROTF Soundwave, and as such it was much less resilient to warping. I dropped the temperature and fixed the problem, but the damage was done and I needed a new Tracks figure to replace these two essential parts.
So there you have it, if you haven't entered the world of customising, you now know more than you did and can go into it with a muchclearer idea of what it will cost you. If you already customise, then I've just wasted your time and probably depressed you a little bit.
Customising is more about learning from your own mistakes and forming preferences and skill sets that work for you, rather than following a tutorial or "how to" guide. Not that I am against those...
