Penance from Arcana Studio Comics

Wow it seems like forever since I've posted a new custom. I gotta work faster... or smarter... Screw it, you can't rush art. :p

Penance is the title character of the mini series Penance from Arcana Studio. It's a story about lies, murder and revenge in the superhero community of Atlanta, GA. The main protaganist is actually an ordinary police detective that is caught up in the middle of it all personally and professionally. Check out Penance and Arcana Studio's other titles at > http://www.arcanacomics.com/

I was commissioned by Sean Wise, the co-creator of Tales of Penance, to create this Custom Penance AF. Sean was referred to me by my good friend and AF customizer extraordinaire Matt "Iron Cow" Cauley. Thanx much to both of y'all!

A lot of work went into this job and it really challenged me. As you can see Penance has a mix of the standard superhero leotard and futuristic armor. The gauntlets (I think that's what they're called) were a major source of frustration. They weren't something that could be easily swiped from another figure, trust me, I looked. Nope, I had to create them from scratch. It took no less than 5 tries. I finally ended up constructing them by cutting the basic forms from sheet styrene, gluing them all together, then to his forearms and then sculpting over them with Aves Fixit Sculpt. I did the same for the Eye motif Amulet and Belt Buckle. The armored lower legs came from an HML Ultimate Iron Man which I spliced onto the legs of the DCUC Manta base body. I removed, dremeled and sanded off the unnecessary features and sculpted the needed details. Painting Penance was quite the adventure too. Red doesn't show up on black all that well. Most of the veins of red were done by painting them in white first then going over the white in red. Luckily painting uneven lines is something I'm very good at.

Enough blah, blah... onto the recipe and pics.


Reference & WIP Pics >



Finished >




Recipe >

ML Moon Knight Hood / Cape - airbrushed black, then green
ML MK Head Cast - sanded a bit to modify features
DCUC Manta Body
DCUC Superman Fists
TNA Wrestler's Forearms - Gauntlets created with Styrene and Aves Fixit Sculpt
HML Ult Iron Man Legs from knees down - features created with Fixit, Styrene and Braided Elastic
Belt made from Styrene
Eye Amulet and Buckle made from Styrene & Fixit