Custom paint: Freddy Krueger

Hopefully next time I'll post something about my trip to Tokyo (which was pretty sweet, btw), but for now, I'll talk about my latest repaint.

Freddy Krueger

I bought this Freddy Krueger bust bank at a GameStop. A few years back, my friend bought me a Predator bust bank as a gift. So now it was payback time!  My friend really likes the  A Nightmare on Elm Street -movie franchise and has a few Freddy figures in his collection. Immediately when I saw this bust at the shop, I thought that it would make a great Christmas gift for my friend. It wasn't overly expensive, so I went for it.

There is a problem, however. The factory paint, it looks horrible, or maybe "acceptable" at best. The paint job is so flat and clean and I couldn't stand it! For some time now I have wanted to try out repainting something else than dog figures. And since my Cthulhu custom paint went rather well, I gave this one a go. I couldn't possibly make it any worse than it already was. >_>

I was stupid and forgot to take a picture of the bank before I started painting it. I already painted one arm before I remembered to take a photo of how it's original looks. No big deal, but it still bothers me personally. With that said, I also like to confess that the second picture above is not by me, I copied it from some web shop. My point is, how unflattering the original factory paint job is, as you can see from this sales picture. Based on the picture alone, I wouldn't  have bought it. To me, it just looks that bad. But, since I saw it in an actual store, where I was able to hold it in my hands and look at it from every direction, I saw potential! The sculpt itself, looks really nice and the only thing I'd change if I'm being nitpicky is Freddy's left arm. It looks too stiff in my eyes. Maybe it would look better if the fingers were bent a little more or posed differently, instead of being so straight and flat like they are. In short, I hated the original look of the bust because it was all around too "clean" but the sculpting was very good.

the primer turned it all glossy, look at that hat

Before I started painting, this time I used a primer spray meant for plastic in hopes it would make a difference helping the paint stay on (the bust is PVC material). Unfortunately, I can't tell if it was helpful or not XD because I didn't notice any big difference between this paint job and the ones I've done before. Whenever I actually have a plan, nothing will go smoothly it seems. I opened the spray bottle and the damn nozzle broke off!  I still tried to make use of it, but rather than spraying the primer evenly around it was more or less leaking everywhere....
I think Freddy's hat got an extra thick layer of the primer, so I tried to play it safe and left the bank to dry for two days before starting to paint it. Still, the hat remained a little shinier and stickier than the rest of the figure.

Rather than painting it felt like I was just "dirtying" everything up more or less, with very very  watered down paint. Not very noticeable, but I did darken down his hat along with the sweater. I hated the original skin tone of the figure for Freddy's lovely burnt up face (and hand), so that was my main area I tried to "fix". I think it came out real nice. I also repainted his eyes. Those original black holes didn't look very appealing, so I repainted them with a color that was something  closer to  actor Robert Englunds's eye color. I dry brushed some gold paint to his knife hand to give the glove some extra detail. I also really wanted his finger knives to be bloody rather than clean. Too much time was wasted trying/failing to mix the perfect blood red tone! I used a toothbrush to create the mini splatters around the blood stains.

no blood on the knives and no eye shine

now with blood and eye shine

I finished everything off with a few layers of matte varnish to protect the new paint job and then added the final touch with some glossy varnish over the bloody fingers and in his eyes.

I also want to point out a mistake I made, even if I tried to cover it up. After painting some area of the figure, I put it down to take a break, but then I noticed I had somehow managed to accidentally dip Freddy's left hand fingers into some black paint. I did my best to wash it off, but you can still see the tip of the middle finger is darker than the rest of the hand. :P

before & after

I sent Freddy along with some other goodies to my friend, and they arrived just in time for Christmas, even though I was running a  little late sending them off. A few weeks ago I went to  visit my friend and I was happy to see he had put the bust on display and to my surprise he was actually using it as a coin bank!

there's a god damn cat hair in his palm

This was a fun project and I'm happy with the result. I wish I could have taken a few more photos in much better light.  Natural light is a rare resource in Finland in the middle of December by the time I get home from work and the ceiling light in my hobby room is not good enough I have come to notice.  In my desperation to get a photo in good light, I took the figure outside one day  and snapped a few. Well they didn't turn out that good either, now Freddy looks too red all over! I swear it does not look like that in real life, like it does in the outside photos!