Hello Realmers! I've been a long time lurker but I haven't joined or posted anything until now. Recently I've really liked reading comics with X-23 in them, first in All New X-Men and now in All New Wolverine and All New X-Men Vol. 2. As soon as I saw the ML Spider-Girl figure I started making plans in my head on how to turn it into Laura Kinney along with another All New X-Man (more on that later). However, I had never repainted a regular action figure before, just a few Transformers and those were more straightforward repaints and not human characters, so I spent a while doing research on the different techniques you guys use, trying to find new head to use, and gathering reference images. I think I first started her last December and have been working on her off and on until last week when I finally finished her.

So, she is made from the aforementioned Hasbro Marvel Legends (Araña) Spider-Girl, a cast of Hasbro Marvel Legends Emma Frost's head and hair from Star Wars Geek on Ebay, and the old Toybiz X-23's clawed fists. I wasn't originally going to use the old figure's fists on mine because I thought it was going to be tough to splice them onto the Spider-Girl figure, but then I saw someone (horton'sheroes I think) use the old figure's fists like this and I realized it was actually going to be a super easy swap. All I had to do was cut the I-bolt shaped joint from Spider-Girl's hands (well actually from White Tiger's again, more on that later), heat and pop the pin out of the old figure's fists, sand down the outside of the of the I-bolt shaped joint a lot to fit in the fist's holes (the inside surprisingly fits the pin fine), and trim one of the sides of the pins down a bit to make re-inserting them a bit easier. Then I just had to heat the fists back up and re-insert the pins. Pretty simple and probably old hat for a lot of you. I also did some minor sculpting (not my strong suit) and added the high collar, belt, and X-buckle. For paints I used pretty much all Testor's paint including: Testor's Acryl Gloss White, Gloss Black, a mix of Chrome Yellow and International Orange, a mix of Burnt Sienna with yellow and orange, Chrome Yellow for the X-Men buckle, 2 dots of Green Zinc Chromate for the eyes, Tan, Skin Tone Base Light, Skin Tone Warm, and Burnt Umber for shading on the feet, fists, and face along with a couple others on the face I can't remember. For the claws however I used Games Workshop Mithril Silver. Everything except for the claws was topcoated with Testor's Dullcoat Lacquer spray paint and the claws were given a few coats of Future Floor polish.

It turns out painting white over black plastic is a real pain in the butt and all the intricate detail weren't all that fun to do either, but the part I was worried about the most, the face, wasn't so bad. Overall, I'm really happy with the results and I learned a lot about repainting human action figures as opposed to Transformers, even though there are a couple things I wish I could change. I kinda wish I had used a different headsculpt as the Emma's face (or at least how I painted it to look) is really not screaming Laura Kinney to me. Oh well. Feel free to leave me some suggestions for better heads and hair. Next up, I'm working on young Jean Grey in her All New X-Men uniform to go with X-23 using a cast of ML Spider-Gwen's head and ML White Tiger, which is molded in white and will be a whole hell of a lot easier to paint light colors an white over hopefully. Also, I might experiment with using vinyl stickers or electrical tape to do the intricate details on her costume which could save me a headache or two. That won't be for a little while though because I want to have a clean desk for a bit. Thanks for looking!