Lizard's Rant

One of my favorite things about running SportsLizard is receiving photos of customs from customizers to post in our gallery. Being just an average customizer myself, I enjoy helping first time customizers get their start and seeing the fruits of their labor, but I really enjoy seeing what the best of the best can produce. One of my favorites is Gordon from Chipper’s Customs. His work is scattered throughout the gallery, but he has produced several gems: a Ty Cobb, Cy Young and a Tiger Woods (all with heavy sculpting, which I think takes immense talent to do correctly):

Gordon was recently nice enough to answer several of my questions about how he came to be such a great customizer. Here’s a copy of our interview:

How did you get started customizing?
I was fascinated by some of the work done by customizers, in particular Matt at bluechipcustoms.com. I had tried to do a couple of customs of Martin Lapointe for a friend and a Henrik Zetterberg for myself and gave up on them. I think I was trying to use some old Testors paint that didn’t take well. I sent the pieces to another customizer to do. I got those back and bought another one. I started to look at them andrealized I could do this if I read, and read and read some more on the
techniques used in making them. So I studied up as much as I could between Jomo’s site and Sportslizard. Read every tip that managed to leak out on Spawn and tried something really easy for my next attempt. It was a junior high player for a friend’s son. Minimal decals on it and 12″ scale, so it was easier to paint up.

About how much time a week do you spend customizing?
If I am able to do a lot on the weekends it can be up to 20 hours. If my weekend is tied up, it can be as little as 5 hours spent at the bench during the week. This would be actual workbench time. Other activities related to customizing could add at least another 10-15 hours. This would be looking at reference material for ideas, reading up on paint, decal and sculpting techniques, piecing together stuff from the parts bin for some new poses, and gathering graphics. I have a sizable folder on my computer of future projects/potential pose material.

Do you do customs primarily for yourself or for customers?
It’s close to 50/50. I’ve done 25 customs, and currently have 12 of them in my possession. A couple of them will probably go on e-bay at some point. I like to do them for myself, but need to sell some to justify the time I spend doing them.

How long does it usually take for you to make a custom? I know it varies by the custom, but I don’t think most people have an appreciation for just how long it takes to plan, create decals, prime,paint, apply decals, etc….not to mention any sculpting or modifications, of which you do a ton of.
That’s one of those questions that’s really hard to answer. For example I’ll be doing a Greg Jennings 12″ in his Western Michigan University jersey. That alone took me 4 hours just to do the graphics work on, let alone all the time spent trying to scour the web for logos for it. There are a couple of logos on it that I had to create from scratch. I’ve already got probably 7-8 hours into it before I even touched any plastic. That’s not typical, but you can easily get 4-6 hours of research into a
figure sometimes just for the logos and covering your bases for graphics, depending on the player. Decal creation can take a few hours if you are able to use logos already out there. Prime and paint can vary depending on the colors needed. I rarely go for a straight out of the bottle color, usually mixing up colors to get as close to what I want. Doesn’t always work out as planned, but that is what I prefer to work with. If you have to work with lots of intricate stripes it eats up lots of time. The sleeves on my Marshawn Lynch probably took me 3-4 hours, if not more. I have been giving customers a quote of 4-6 weeks to finish up a custom right now. You can easily put anywhere from 20-100 hours into one if there is enough
sculpting involved.

When you make a custom for a customer, about how much do you charge? The reason I ask is because I think a lot of first time customizers see it as a profitable business, whereas in reality there’s no way that a custom that takes 20 hours and costs $100 is profitable. Essentially, most customizers I know just end up simply covering costs for supplies, figures, shipping, etc. If that’s the case with you, how much do you think you’d realistically have to charge for a custom to make a living (let’s take your Cy Young as an example)? A few thousand dollars?
I usually look at $45-50 as a starting point, and the more”complex” the fig gets the more the price goes up. I will go cheaper sometimes if it is something that is personally challenging or interesting to me. The Cy Young I did for what I’ve been told was a very good deal, and I figured it was. I just really wanted to try and pull that one off. I am a huge fan of baseball, and its history.

In order to make a living that same figure would have had to cost upwards of $1500.

When I started the customs section on SportsLizard in 2004 the hobby was an extremely tiny niche. I’ve watched it grow to the point where my site, Jomo’s site, and the Spawn forums are absolutely flooded with budding customizers. Why do you think there’s so much interest in the hobby, and how much can it grow?
I think there are lots of various “camps” for those getting into it. Some get into it as a way to combine a previous hobby, model building or 2d art, with their love of sports. I think others look at it and see strictly $$. Others see it as the only way they could ever get the players wanted that they want for their collection, and don’t want to pay someone else to do it. I would fall into the wanting players in my collection and some $$ to help with customizing and my personal collection,
along with just wanting to challenge myself.

I think for growth of the hobby, you need to divide it up. For high school, college, semi-pro or non “big Four” sports you will always have the opportunity to customize for yourself or others. I would assume it would be next to no chance of any license being given for any of those sports/organizations. As for pro sports, the more figs you have being put out as original figures, the less demand for customs to be created. This applies to the stars and superstars only though. Your minor stars could be hit or miss, and lesser players will always have an opportunity for demand for customs on them. I think the area that will impact the hobby the most would be the Legends lines. A few years ago a Barry Sanders figure would have had huge demand from people wanting customs done. Now that his figure has been released, soon to be in 12″ format, you are going to have little to no demand for a Sanders figure, unless it is a repaint into a uniform not released. If you are a Bears fan and you want a figure of Mike Singletary are you going to take the chance of paying anywhere up to $100 for a figure that you might find out in a month or two will be coming out for almost 1/10th of that? I could probably go through several negative areas that are highly debatable amongst customizers, or even debatable on how some of the would impact the growth of the hobby.

Have you ever made a custom specifically for an athlete? If so, what did they think about it?
My first custom was for a friend’s son and they loved it. As for pro/college athlete I’ve yet to do that. The Jennings I mentioned previously I do want to get into his hands somehow. I’m amazed at the number of athletes that have had customs done for them. I posted up on Jomo’s site this question before I received your questions. The list was very impressive from superstars to little known pro and college athletes.

In my book, you are the king of trying out new techniques, whether it’s sculpting or painting or any other aspect of customizing. What’s the best new technique that you’ve developed through your own trial and error? The worst?
I think most of the techniques I’ve tried are just from reading and interacting with the guys that have been doing it for years. Whether it be painting or sculpting the best thing I’ve done is study what others kindly offer up. The only couple of things that come to mind that I had not read previously were “snaking” out Apoxie-sculpt for sculpting, and the pearl wash for uniforms. I’ve only used the wash technique on a couple of figs, but really liked how they turned out. They give the uniform the “shine” that you have in reality. I’m not sure how popular it is for everyone though. I think most people have gotten use to wanting a dull-coated flat color figure. I’d have to say “snaking” out AS to do wrinkles has been the best thing I’ve come up with.

The worst thing I’ve tired is priming with silver spray paint and then airbrushing white acrylic over it. I might have come up with an answer to that, but won’t know until I do some further work on a few pieces sitting on my workbench. The silver
paint is great at leaving the details on the figure and covers in one coat. It doesn’t hold the airbrush paint on real well though.

What’s the craziest idea you’ve ever had for a custom? Will you try it?
Craziest idea as far as sports customs would be a Muhammed Ali standing over Sonny Liston sculpts. Crazier than that I’d like to try a Pitt or Hulk sculpture to work on anatomy and detail, as those are my weak points when it comes to sculpting. I think the Pitt or Hulk is more likely to happen as opposed to the Ali/Liston. I don’t see anyone paying the $$ it would take to do a Ali/Liston and it’s not something I’d keep in my collection.

What’s your favorite custom (either that you’ve made for yourself or that you’ve seen someone else make)?

My favorite one that I’ve made is hands-down my Ty Cobb/Jimy Austin custom. That would be the last thing I sell from my collection. It is my favorite sports photograph of all time, and as I said I am a huge baseball fan. There are way too many that others have done that I really like to have a favorite. How’s that for a Politically-correct answer?

How can interested collectors contact you?
I can be contacted via PM on Spawn boards as “Dont taze me bro”, or e-mail to chipperscustoms@comcast.net

Anything else that you want to add….
Want to thank you for your support of the customizing community Adam. Also thanks to those on Jomo’s board that are always willing to help me out, offer advice, tolerate my antics, and help to make this hobby as fun as it can be. And another thanks to the pros over at The Clubhouse for help with improving my sculpting skills.

I’d like to step on the soapbox for a bit and just tell any out there questioning whether they can customize, or a customizer unsure if they can take the next step, if I can do what I’ve done so can you. I’ll encourage you to have patience, study, study, study, don’t be afraid to ask questions, and try to challenge yourself a little at a time to try something different. I am far from an artistic person, but by doing what I just did I’ve been able to accomplish things I never thought possible in this hobby.

Also don’t give up when you get what we call Customizer’s Apathy, or CA. CA is when you lose the desire to customize. If you keep involved in the community it seems to come around and I’ve seen some people break out of it with stunning work Get involved and stay involved, actively. Don’t be afraid to post up progress pics and ask for advice. There are some of us
that love seeing progress pics and offering advice. It will help your work in the long run, and avoid the negative emotions from “finishing” something only to have things pointed out that could have been corrected earlier on and much easier. I can be reached for any questions via e-mail or PM, and am more than willing to help out. Just beware though, I believe in the
saying “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats
for a lifetime”.

Thanks again Adam.

Thank YOU Chipper. I’ve always enjoyed our emails.

To be honest, I’m most definitely suffering from CA (probably for about 2 years now) and - in large part because of seeing your creativity - I just recently started one…a challenging one for me: Vince Carter’s dunk over a 7′2″ guy in the Olympics (see video). Between the hoop and the 2 figures, it’s getting pretty interesting. I just got done with all the sculpting and primed the figures and it’s really starting to come together. By the way - I’ve spent at least 20 hours so far and I’m probably 25% done on it. When it’s all done I’ll be sure to post pics for everyone to critique it.