Sideshow Darth Matul - repainted

This is the Sideshow 12" Darth Maul figure from the film Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (which I actually really like!)

This is another really good figure that Sideshow produced, and looks great just as it comes... however the eyes always looked a bit sleepy for me. And although you can use that to get some great arrogant cocky looking poses out of him... I just wanted a tad more anger out of him. But not too much. So I repainted him.

The problem I quickly found was that it wasn't the paint on the eyes that made him look sleepy, it was the sculpt.. they were sculpted quite closed (as are many of Sideshows figures it seems), so it was impossible to give him any kind of look that I wanted to recreate from the movie or the promotional images.

I didn't have time to resculpt the eyes (which I would have liked to have done) so I cheated. When I was painting the eyes, I carefully took the paint of the eyeball slightly over the eyelids... essentially making the eyeball appear larger when you're looking at it. This allows me to give him the expression I wanted.

If you look at the figure really close up in hand, then you can see what I've done... but if you look at the figure from a normal distance? It just looks like he's got wider eyes. Fantastic!

I also repainted the tatoos, as I've never seen any figure of Maul that have the design of these accurate to the film. They always seem too thin and 'weedy'. So I fixed that ;)

Here's a before and after pic to give you an idea. I'll post some more pics when I take them, hopefully soon.

(as always click on the images for larger versions)

BEFORE

(I got the before pic off the internet, my apologies to whoever it belonged to, but I forgot to take my own... duh. This was the closest one I found that has a paint job similar to my own)

AFTER