Then, knowing that this one Arnold sculpt
would be used for many, many movie
characters, I spent a lot more time on it,
and even bothered to make the hair shorter
than it actually was in T2 so that I could use
this sculpt for Predator (as is), for
Commando (with a little more clay hair on
top and in back), and then a lot more for
any of his other movies. Anyways, that's
why his hair's a tad short...
The other things worth mentioning that I think
makes this figure more realistic are: I weathered
the jacket to look like worn leather; I removed the
oversized metal zipper tangs and painted them in
for a much truer to scale appearance, and even
tailored the pants to have the side zippers at the
leg cuffs.
The weapons, boots, belt and grenades are off
the shelf from 21st Century and Dragon, while the
bandolier, pants and t-shirt are from scratch.
All in all, (and I seem to say this everytime I finish
a figure), I think is now my new favorite figure in
my collection!
Well, for now anyways...!
I have been planning on doing this figure for a
looong time. Being the big Arnold fan that I
am, I guess I've kinda been waiting to do him,
so that my skills would be developed to a level
The Barbie sections of every Toys'R'Us I
went to was sold out of these, so I ended
up picking one up on eBay. (Another
tell-tale sign this customizing hobby has
sucked you in: when you pay more for a
doll for it's 1/6 scale leather jacket than
capable of producing a
figure I would be happy
with. I didn't know if I was
there yet, but I finally
decided I didn't want to
wait anymore...
I started by buying a
leather jacket from the
first Harley Davidson Ken
doll set.
To do this figure right, I knew I'd
need to do two headsculpts: a
pristine Arnold, and then one with
the severe battle-damage he had
at the end of the movie.
Of course, once the first is done, it's not hard to mold and
make a duplicate. Then I dremeled off half his face from a cast
and sculpted in the endoskeleton. I'd thought about just
painting the endo parts silver, but then I thought, why stop
there? The sculpt was coming out pretty good, so why not
bare-metal foil it? I'm glad I did, as it gives off the illusion of
chrome endoskull much better than silver paint would. (I just
hope when I mold this head, the foil doesn't get pulled off by
the mold.)
Arnold Schwarzenegger as the "T-800" in
TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, 1991
you would for a full-scale
leather jacket!) The
leather pants are made
from scratch, as is the
bandolier.
The thing that really got me off my butt to do my own
headsculpt was when BBI came out with their G3
bodybuilder, which I guess is supposed to be Arnold.
Doesn't look much like him, but it's still a very nice
headsculpt in its own right. I figured if I could put that
much level of detail, but on a properly proportioned
head, I'd probably end up with a great likeness of Arnold.
In the end, I'm very pleased with how it came out. I'm
glad I put dates next to the figures when I finish them and
publish them to this site. You can literally see my skills
improve from figure to figure over time, which excites me,
as I intend on continuing and getting better hopefully.
The sunglasses were taken, I think, from a Barbie Ken
set of some kind. I merely dremeled the shape a bit to
more closely resemble the pair used in the film. The
endoskeleton is made by Aoshima. They released these
figures, but only with silvery paint ops. So, I bare-metal
foiled it, which looks a zillion times better.