Stoner Usagi Yojimbo (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)
What’s up everyone? Back again with another official reveal. This reveal is a touch delayed due to not being able to ship it out to my customer as I awaited the final payment for the figure. Because he had not seen some of the accessories included in this, I didn’t want his surprised to be ruined. So here is Usagi Yojimbo from Ninja Turtles lore but with a twist… this Usage is high AF!!
Ok so for anyone who does not know, I am an avid marijuana user. Lol. Maybe its not something to be proud of? I dunno. But we all have our poisons, and weed just happens to be mine. So when I was approached to make a stoned version of everyones favourite samurai rabbit, Usagi Yojimbo, how could I resist? I kept this customer on my wait list for quite some time to ensure I didn’t miss the opportunity once my schedule cleared up.
Usagi was a pretty insane build. One of the more challenging ive put together. He is made out of a heavily modified Shang Chi body with MCU Dr Strange arms. His skirt came from a Silver Samurai figure, and his swords from a Redpool figure. His head, hands, feet and armor were all fully sculpted.
Most of his weapons/accessories were custom made as well. I made the carrot nunchucks out of apoxie sculpt and some wire, the torch using some toothpick, some string and hot glue, the doobie out of apoxie sculpt and the bong was purchased on eBay, filled with epoxy to mimic water and stuffed with cotton to simulate smoke. The neck part of the scarf is from a Hobgolin BAF and the tails are fabric with wire to allow for some dynamic posing options.
To modify the body I had to take out about 0.5” in the legs to bring him down to the Neca Toon Turtles scale (although he still is a touch bigger than id have liked him to be). I also did similar in the arms to avoid the monkey like proportions of having longer arms. His feet were modded to show 2 toes in his ninja socks and his hands were built from scratch so he would be able to hold his accessories (he only has 4 fingers so hands needed to be fully rebuilt).
The head on this guy was definitely the most challenging component of the figure. This was only my 3rd full head sculpt, both the previous ones were for a Baxter Stcckman. It was also challenging because ive never had to rely on a facial feature to sell the fact that the character was baked off his ass. haha. It took multiple attempts, and I had to redo certain spots 2-4 times before I was happy with how it all looked, but in the end, I was pretty stoked with how it came together.
The other time consuming piece of this custom was his scale armoured shirt. To make this, I made a mold (using Blue Stuff) of some scale that I liked from the Hobgoblin BAF piece. Then, I would roll out some Procreate as thin as I could get it (I used a rolling pin and baby powder), and pressed it into the mold to get the scale texture on it. I would then remove from the mold, apply a few drops of super glue and put on over the torso. Thankfully, I was able to keep most the seams on the side so I didn’t have to blend too much in which would have lost the scale mail design. It was an interesting challenge but im satisfied with the results.
Overall, im really happy with how Usagi came out and am happy I can finally share with all of you. I decided to add in the doobie and the carrot nunchucks as a surprise, which prevented me from sharing this in its fully glory. But I am happy my customer is satisfied with him and now Usagi has a new friend to get baked with. Lol. Up next: my swap figure I made for my buddy New Collector, Puma! And shortly after that Ill be ready to reveal the other 4 members of my All New X-Men customs. Cant wait!! Stick around!
