Cobra Ice-Viper Officer continued from yesterday's post



As stated in yesterday's post, I started this custom project with the 25th Anniversary Arctic Snake Eyes figure as the basis. For those that don't know what this Snake Eyes figure looks like, here is a pic of him:

Now, as you can see he's quite different from what the final custom Ice-Viper Officer looks like. I also went step by step yesterday about how I popped the entire Snake Eyes figure appart to get it ready for painting. For the Ice-Viper Officer's helmet, I wanted it to look as close as possible to the vintage 1987 Ice-Viper's helmet. To get this look, I used a Cobra Air-Trooper's helmet from the 25th Anniversary line and using an Xacto knife, carefully cut the "mask" part off of th ehelmet leaving the helmet and goggles. Here is a pic of the pieces that needed to get some primer before adding the paint:

And here's those pieces after the grey primer spray paint was applied and dried.

So, on to the painting parts now. After the pieces had received the flat grey primer spray paint and dried, I applied the flat white spray paint to them. After a couple of coats of the flat white, I "mocked" the torso, arms and legs up and started the grey camo pattern applications where ever needed to be applied before final assembly due to not being able to reach areas with brush, etc. For his head, I used one from the 25th Anniversary Armored Cobra Commander and painted it sky blue. For his "fur" collar around his neck, I cut the shoulder pieces off of the "fur" collar from a 25th Anniversary Snow Serpent and painted it flat brown. Now it was time to start assembly and more detail painting. Once the entire figure was back together (torso/arms assembly glued back together and legs screwed back on and knee joints reattatched to lower legs), I decided that to add the real look of th evintage 1987 Ice-Viper, he would need his "fur" on his gloves and boots along with his small armor pads on his upper arms and thighs with his sai holders on them and his belt with buckle and his armor padded sling around his chest. To do this, I used a combination of "greenstuff" sculpting putty and actual pieces from the original Ice-Viper figure. Starting with the original figure, I used the dremel tool and carefully cut the arm and thigh pads off of him along with his belt buckle (I used this same method on Raptor to get his belt buckle off too) . After sanding the backs of the pieces smooth and the edges, they were almost ready to be applied to the custom Ice-Viper Officer's body. To get the "fur" on the ends of his gloves and boots along with the belt and the chest sling, I used the "greenstuff" sculpting putty. I started by laying a thin layer around his waist for the double belt and then while it was still plyable, stuck the belt buckle on and let it dry. Same with his arm and thigh pads, applied a small spot of "greenstuff" to the desired locations and built them up with the sculpting tools and then applied the small pads from the vintage Ice-Viper to the desired locations and let it dry for at least a day and did some detail sculpting to them as they were drying. For the "fur" on the ends of his gloves and boots, I applied the "greenstuff" around them and then after it had started to dry a little bit (around an hour or hour and a half after applying it), started to make the furry details in it with the sculpting tools to make it look like fur. I also used a small strip of "greenstuff" to make a goggle strap around his helmet. Then came the "fun" part, the chest sling! I applied the "greenstuff" to his upper torso first, getting it the way I wanted it and placing the "fur" neck piece on it and applying preasure so the greenstuff would form to the bottom of it so once dry, it would fit together well. I didn't leave the "fur" piece on though, just long enough for the form of it to start drying. After the upper torso piece had dried and been sculpted the way I wanted it, I started the lower torso piece using the same method. Once it was all dry, I had a fully moveable torso still. I painted his chest sling sky blue to match his head (the colors of the Arctic M.O.T.H. Ice-Viper that I was basing his color scheme off of) and the colors that Hasbro uses for the Arctic Cobra officers they release. I painted his gloves flat black along with his boots and the "greenstuffed" "fur" on the ends were painted flat brown. His goggle strap and double belt were painted flat black and his buckle was painted gold along with his goggles. His boots received the same grey detail as the vintage Ice-Viper has and his arm and thigh pads were painted flat black. The camo around the newly "greenstuffed" arm and thigh pads and lower arms and legs by the "fur" were touched up and finished with the grey and I painted the handles of the vintage Ice-Viper's sais flat black. The sais actually stay in the holders on his thighs just like the originals did! Added a red Cobra sticker from cobrastickers.com and slipped the spiked foot wear from the 25th Arctic Snake Eyes on his feet.

Custom Cobra Ice-Viper Officer "recipe"

Head - Armored Cobra Commander (2008 25th Anniversary single carded figures, Wave 6)

Helmet - Cobra Air-Trooper (2007 25th Anniversary single carded figures, Wave 4)

Neck "fur" piece - Snow Serpent (2008 25th Anniversary single carded figures, Wave 9)

Upper/Lower Torso - Arctic Snake Eyes (2008 25th Anniversary single carded figures, Wave 8)

Upper/Lower Arms & Hands - Arctic Snake Eyes (2008 25th Anniversary single carded figures, Wave 8)

Upper/Lower Legs & Feet - Arctic Snake Eyes (2008 25th Anniversary single carded figures, Wave 8)

Arm, thigh pads with holders, sais and belt buckle - Ice-Viper (1987)

Chest sling, goggle strap, double belt, "fur" on ends of gloves and boots - "Greenstuff"

Paints used:

Flat Grey Primer Spray Paint

Flat White Spray Paint

Tamiya XF-1 (Flat Black)

Tamiya XF-2 (Flat White)

Tamiya XF-10 (Flat Brown)

Tamiya XF-19 (Sky Grey)

Tamiya X-12 (Gold Leaf)

Tamiya X-14 (Sky Blue)