Master Chief Mini Munny

In the distant land of vinyl enthusiasts there is a neat little “Do-it-Yourself” type doll action figure called MUNNY that allows you to adorn and decorate it to your heart’s content, the only limitation being your own imagination. Needing a gift for a friend (who just happens to be a fan of everybody’s favorite Spartan supersoldier), Cacodaemonia decided to put her creative skills to the test by starting with an amorphous 4-inch tall MUNNY and expertly transforming it into Master Chief. Crafting the armor from small chunks of Super Sculpey (except the codpiece, that part required an extra large chunk baby!), coating the entire thing several times over with Gesso, and then painting the completed figure with acrylics, the entire evolution took approximately five million times the length of my attention span. If you are curious about the process or find yourself desiring some instructions on exactly how to do this project, hit the jump for a handy-dandy picture with accompanying text tutorial. If you are lazy like me, you can ask her nicely to make one for you, assuming you are willing to make an adequate reimbursement. I wonder if she accepts Commander, Grade 4 accounts. I bet I could get at least three MUNNIES with that!

“I used a Mini Munny (4″ tall), made by Kidrobot, as the base. Munnies are soft vinyl Do-It-Yourself toys that can be modified in endless ways.

First I dealt with the ears according to this tutorial: heat the Munny to soften it, cut the ears out then stick them back into the head facing the opposite direction, secure them with hot glue, pack some tin foil into the ear hole, and cover it with Super Sculpey. The tin foil is necessary because if you filled the ear with solid Sculpey, it wouldn’t bake properly. The tin foil is just a filler that won’t melt or behave strangely in the oven.

After that it was pretty straight forward. I began cutting up small chunks of Super Sculpey with a utility knife and laying them down on the Munny to form Master Chief’s armor. That was the most time consuming part of the project, partly because the armor is quite complex, and partly because I had to redesign and simplify much of it to fit the small, oddly proportioned Munny body.

Once I had all the armor sculpted, I placed all the Munny parts (head, two arms, body) on a cookie sheet and baked them for 15 minutes at 275 F (130 C). After it had all cooled down, I spent about 30 minutes smoothing some areas – mostly the rounded parts of the helmet – with sandpaper.

Next I coated the whole thing in several coats of Gesso. You can apply acrylic paints directly to a Munny, but I was painting over Sculpey as well as vinyl, so I just wanted to make sure the whole surface would be fairly uniform.

Painting it was actually the easiest part. Master chief is basically three colors – grey-green, dark brown/black, and yellow – so I painted flat colors in the appropriate areas, then used a detail brush for areas (like the etched lines on the visor and dents in the armor). To get the grimy look of the armor, I dabbed it with watered-down acrylic paint on small pieces of a kitchen sponge.”
-Cacodaemonia

*Images posted with permission.