Custom New 52 Batman figure

AAAHHHHHH!!!  I can sleep at night now because he is FINALLY done!  The crown jewel of my figure collection.  How can I call myself a Batman fan without having MY ultimate version of Batman?  Here is an honest review of the figure that I created for myself and my thought process along the way.

The Beginning

I hate making customs of Batman.  You think making a guy that is mainly three colors would be easy, but for me, he is not.  On top of that, being such a huge fan, Bats needs to be perfect.  Any slight flaw is unacceptable making this an even bigger pain.  I was so intimidated by this figure that the base figure that I purchased for this custom sat on my desk for a year.  A freaking year!  Well, after some time, I grew some balls, bought the rest of the parts and materials, and started on this project.  Every aspect of this figure had to be perfect for me and to show you how obsessed I mean, it took five figures to make.  While the head, cape, belt and hands all come from the same figure, each figure had a flaw on one of those items, so I took the perfect aspects of those items and used them for this custom.  Yes, I know that I am crazy.

Original vs Custom

So what can I do to make the custom better than the original.  If you read my review of the retail 52 Bats (which is the base figure for this custom), I stated some of the aspects that I didn't like.  I thought the gray of the suit was too dark, not a fan of the utility belt,  head was too small, etc.

No, he is not taller than the original base figure, the custom is on a stand.  Yes, the pic is crooked because my photo skills still suck.

So here is all that I did before final paint was applied:
      Filled in peg holes:  I hate peg holes.  Both for how they look and for what a pain they are to fill in.
      Resculpted the waist:  Since the new utility belt that I was going to use had more of a dip in it, I          needed to add some sculpt in the waist so I wouldn't see the gap left behind from the old belt
     Swapped the hands:  I hate the half open hands of DCUC so I removed them and used the hands          from the DCC figure.  Since the articulation is missing from the DCUC figure, I added a screw            from where I cut at the wrist and hollowed out the gauntlet to fit the screw.
     Added the knee pads:  I think this is one of the coolest parts of the new costume detail, so I had to        add it to the custom.

Paint

Arg, this was the biggest pain.  I decided to airbrush the gray on since it is the primary color of the figure.  Airbrushing is tricky, well for me, because light colors will look differently when applied with an airbrush versus a paint brush.  Meaning?  Mess up on any part of the paint process, and this guy is getting returned to step one and being painted again (this happened three times).  I also chose not to add any sort of shading to the figure because I felt that the new etched in costume details show off shadows really well and I didn't want to lose that.

There are two shades of black on the figure, glossy for the boots, and gauntlets.  Matte black for the symbol.

Finishing touches

Once all the paint has been applied and sealed with a sealant, I added the cape, belt, and head to figure.  I left the cape unpainted but painted the head and neck piece to match the gloss black of the gauntlets and boots.  All done!  Better paint, better look, and NO articulation lose!

But WAIT!  There is more!  To be my ultimate version, this figure had to go above and be on the standard custom.  I loved unmasked versions of my famous characters.  I have no clue why but I think it is awesome.  I took the Infected Bruce Wayne head off of another figure, sanded the infection off (insert crude joke) and repainted.  Added the mask off of the Unmasked Batman figure from way back and BOOM!  Head swapping power!  Okay, now he is done and goes to my special UV, dust protecting acrylic case.

What I Would Have Done Differently

Nothing!  The guy is effing perfect.  Just kidding.  There is always something I want to improve on.  For Batman, I usually like a leather looking cape.  I used it for the ultimate Pre-52 version that I made a few years ago.  I also wish there was some hand articulation.  I have a ton of gadgets for Batman to be posed with but the one open hand makes it hard to do.  In the Pre-52 version, I had this but it looked horrible when posing a fist, so there is always a trade off.

Usually I try to stay away from artist specific looks since there are a lot of artist that draw Batman.  I had to use the Jim Lee cape, hands, and head this time because I think they are so well executed.  Thankfully, I really don't think the sculpt of the DCC figure really translated that well from the pages to figure.  A lot of artist are drawing old Bats closely to how Lee draws him and the figure's head could easily pass for a Finch and some other artists head.

Next, the cape is a little long because the figure it came from stands about seven inches and I placed it on a six inch figure.  I know another customizer that made something similar to this, cut the cape shorter on the end but I couldn't bring myself to do it.  The cape is so awesome and I wouldn't change it for the world.

Lastly, I feel like it needs some action feature.  I am going to do a write up on how the term "action figure" is being misused but, for now, I will just say that I wish this figure had something.  I wanted to add a magnet somewhere on the belt so I could store a gadget or two on him (in the back so the cape would hide it.  I tried this with a custom Robin I made once and it just looked like garbage.  Granted, I was pretty new to customizing but once you add a magnet to the belt and one to the gadget, it really takes away from the realistic look.

Well, that is it.  Feel free to leave a comment or two and let me know what you would have liked to see in this version of the Bat.