Making a Custom Nendo of my OC Aurelio [Custom Nendo #3]DiaryPrevNextPrevNext

Hello My Freak Collection I'm back with another custom nendo... And a redo of an older one!

As a heads up this will be picture heavy! Content warning: I like to swear

I love my OC sons. I love making them come in pairs and triplets. You can see my various OCs on my Toyhouse account. BUT since I've already made Valentine (my favorite child) I needed to make his other half.
Aurelio Claudius (or just Boss) is Valentine's designated wild animal handler. Cannot be separated. He needs to hold the child leash. They have a story and all that but basically Valentine likes him a little too much. He's a well adjusted human that openly pines on and clings around his scary mafia boss and its Normal.
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I REALLY need to do an updated ref of him with actual scaled art LMAO but I have his doodled reference sheet and some other pictures to get a good idea of him Update: he now has a full ref!





(These below are commissions!)




If you want to see more pictures and info on him, it's all on his profile I linked! But besides that

When planning his nendo I knew a few things to do and others were kind of spur of the moment... I knew that as much as I wanted to have his full outfit (shirt, suit jacket, and coat) that there'd be 0 way I could fit it all on a nendoroid doll or even have the joints be poseable at all. So I settled for keeping his suit jacket and coat off since I've drawn it plenty of times anyways. The allure of a man in 500 layers is lost in nendoroid form anyways LMAO

I planned on doing my previous eye method for custom nendoroids and the same "real" hair approach, but I ended up doing neither due to various reasons I'll say later in the article.

This also took a long time, less because of how hard it was, more because I was busy. Like several months to a year. If some pictures look bad, I got a phone upgrade by the time he was done

I used some pre-existing nendoroid parts, so here's a part breakdown:
FACEPLATE: ITEM #512154 (Default, but I'd like to have the other some day)
BODY: ITEM #719689, ITEM #872633 (Hands, cigar)
CLOTHES: Various places on AliExpress (boatload of OB11 and nendo clothes on there)

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FACE

So my friend very graciously donated their Mink nendo face for me to modify (since they also really like him and they're a Saint) and my original plan was my usual: prime the pupils of the eyes, paint them over with acrylic paint, shade with watercolor pencil, seal with MSC super clear.

Unfortunately uhhh I made a fucky wucky really early!! I tried to clean a stray speck of paint and it just sorta smudged and i forgot this hardens in like 5 seconds and well. Running it under water was a bad idea.



My friend had a better idea after: waterslide decals. Fellow gunpla fans know what those are, but for those who don't they're basically stickers that slide off and become adhesive when wet and apply without glue. Same friend also drew his eyes for me (since I'm bad with cel shading and stuff) and I went through the trial and error of putting them on.

I acetone'd away the mistakes.



I printed out the eyes in different sizes on plain paper until I decided the size was good.




A VERY important thing is to paint the whites of his eyes BEFORE putting on the waterslide decals. It took a lot of fiddling with more acetone to get it perfect, but I eventually got there!



And here he is with both eyes!



I then mixed more acrylic paint and put on his scar, and put on about 2 coats of MSC.



I really like how these eyes look, a lot more than if the first plan worked.

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CLOTHES/BODY

I bought a dress shirt, tie, pants, and shoes. His pants were a little tan so I decided to bleach the color out as much as I could without damaging it.

I lost the pictures, since it was a while ago, but to make his chains I just got small gold curb chains and attached them to jump rings, then sewing the jump rings under his shirt's collar.

His tie bar is made of polymer clay. But there wasn't anything gold enough, so I made my own gold paint with gum arabic, Pearl EX pigment, and water. I sealed it with a glasslike coat of Triple Thick-- I've used this stuff for jewelry before and loved it.

I krazy glued it onto his tie, but a previous coat of paint (with no triple thick) chipped off so I redid it and sealed it.

This stuff is like liquid gold.

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HAIR

I tried to go with the synthetic hair to make a tiny wig like before, but in the end his bangs were super hard and I was just kinda unsatisfied.



When looking up options I remembered a lot of clay artists use polymer or air-dry clay of some format. I can't put this in the oven so polymer was out, and I've had bad experiences with general air-dry.

The option I found instead was something called "Paperclay"-- the actual brand name. It's a lighter version that supposedly holds up to sanding, doesn't crack much, and doesn't shrink much either. The only cons seem to be price and that it dries out EXTREMELY quickly; I was able to keep it wet by having it in an airtight bag with a wet paper towel.

I found paperclay really easy to work with, maybe even a little easier than polymer. So long as you have the right tools, water to keep it wet, and patience, it's not as hard as it seems.

I wanted to recreate a nendo more faithfully, so I decided to keep the idea of front/back hair parts intact. It also allows me to change faceplates.

I started with wrapping the Bald Ass nendo head in clingwrap.



I built a solid circle layer (like a hat) around the back of his head and sculpted around it and piled on strands.
I couldn't take many pics of this part, but I imagine you get the idea!



To make the front part, I let the back fully dry and covered it in clingwrap again. And just the same as the back, I added on, making sure to leave room for his ears to fit.


I blended where his front hair and back hair meet by sculpting to the edge and making the lines meet.



I let it fully dry for a day, and CAREFULLY pried all the parts off.



Fit test!



I sanded and cut off the excess and then painted him with acrylic paint. I started from the edges all around the inside to outwards.



I decided not to coat his hair out of worry that my sealant might not agree.
But other than all that, he's done! (Besides the specks I filled in with paint later)



His back hair has a snug fit, but I just put a little bit of blue tack to make his front hair stay on and it works really well.

I'm really happy with him! He's cute... Wittle boss

I also decided to make Valentine's hair out of paperclay with the same process! I wanted to make them match, since I knew he'd look better anyways. I'll keep the pics under a cut.

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MAKING VALENTINE 2.0:

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And here's Valentine's hair remade!
He's gotten other changes in the meantime like new boots.



They can hold hands now :)



I just have one more custom OC nendo in progress before I'm done with my main trio!
If you have any questions about my process or anything (like if you want to attempt the same), feel free to ask me anything!

That's about it, thanks for reading! Bossentine Real