Circuit Breaker

from Spawn figure "Cosmic Angela"

The first step was to remove all the "Angela Kibble" such as spiked armor, weapons, mask and braid. The only piece I left on was the bra, partly because I didn't realize it was a separate piece until I started to paint. Then I carved off the spurs on her boots and removed the straps on her left forearm. Note: I left the pegs for her wings on for two reasons: one, they are much harder plastic than the rest of the kibble and two, it gave me a ready place to put a wire through for hanging her while she dried, as well as in display. Anyway, the kibble and the figure are made of a very soft plastic, so it was easy to remove them with a pocketknife.

Now that I had torn down the unneeded bits, it was time to build up the metal straps and other details using structural paint. I got a 2 oz. tube of structural paint at a campus-area bookstore for $5, choosing the clear-drying version. This was a mistake, and I'd advise anyone wanting to duplicate my Circuit Breaker to use colored, so it'll be possible to see it and trim the dried paint into flatter shapes. As a result, my strips are a bit lumpy in places. Structural paint is a bit of a pain to work with, it'll turn any brush into a rod pretty quick and it's kinda goopy when applied with a pin or wire. It dries to about half or one third of its wet volume, so the straps aren't too bad. I also used the paint to raise the cut of Angela's bikini bottom to Josie's more modest style, flatten out the spiked high heels, and most importantly, to build the figure's hair. Just dabbing the paint on from the tube directly gave a wonderfully realistic hair styling, although I had to add several layers to compensate for drying.

The next step was painting, and here's where it almost fell apart completely. I took some of the kibble carved off the figure to the hobby shop so I could compare paint colors, but didn't realize that the plastic is slightly translucent, turning darker as I painted more of the toy. Hence, the color match was useless, and I had to paint the entire figure, including painting over the elbows, knees and neck. The only functioning joints are now the shoulders and hips. In addition, I started painting the toy with a pin, for greater control and the ability to lay on a thick coat all at once. When I looked at the results the next morning, it appeared as though Josie had a severe skin condition...all mottled and lumpy. Returning to a brush, which took about 8 coats to fully paint the remaining bodyparts, I managed to reduce some of the lumpiness on the already-painted side (scraping the paint off to retry turned out to be a Bad Idea). Still, it's no showpiece.

Painting the hair, I used a drybrush blend of orange, yellow and brown which I varied from top to bottom to create the strawberry blond effect. The eyebrows I painted orange with a pin, then after the orange had dried I added a line of yellow and immediately tapped it with my finger to lift some of the paint off and leave a yellow-orange peppering to her eyebrows. I painted pink over the shocking red lips of Angela and drew in her eyelashes with a .25mm tech pen to finish the face (also added blue irises).

Several layers of clearcoat throughout the process finished it off. While she doens't look exactly like Josie from the comic (especially the boots, which I decided not to try and modify), Circuit Breaker's look changed slightly with every new artist anyway, so I feel I kept to the spirit of the character.