Things are really picking up with Royalt1us’ Fifth Annual Character contest.  The first poll of the second round is The Heroes.  Following this will be The Ladies, The Reptiles, and The Evil Warriors.  The top two from each round will continue on to the third and final round. The winner will then be sculpted into a highly detailed mini statue by Royalt1us, himself.

Again, these are all original fan-created characters.  So, it’s a pretty cool thing to support. Stay tuned to Nerd City for further developments.

To cast your vote, head over here.

The votes are in and Ebon Horn (Rhino Beetle) is the winner of Gatchagrey and Royalt1us’s Bug-Shido staction contest.  The characters were all original creations from Gatchagrey’s amazing Bug-Shido universe. The winning character, Ebon Horn will now be made into resin mini statue by the amazingly talented Royalt1us. The details of exactly how the statue will be done are, as of yet, unclear, but I’m hoping that this character will be sculpted in the 6″-8″ range, so that he can be displayed along side all of Royalt1us’s other creations.

Discussion over how this “staction” figure should be made are all taking place in this thread at The Four Horsemen’s Fantastic Forums.

For a whole bunch of kickass Bug-Shido art/ characters, check out the official deviantART page here.

And, to check out the awesomeness that Royalt1us is capable of, check out his online store here.

Of all of the fan-made characters from the He-Man.org message boards, Ink-Shot is my favorite.  I voted for him in Royalt1us’s contest last year, and have always thought it would be cool to attempt my own custom of him.

I’ve always dug the under sea characters for some reason.  Mer-Man is certainly a favorite of mine, but the reason that I really love Ink-Shot is that he reminds me of this dude from Battle Beasts brought into the MOTU universe.

But I digress.  Our friend, Madtinker76, has done it again with his amazing Ink-Shot custom based upon a recent Manga Spawn figure.

From Madtinker76:

I have seen several interpretations of this character in the Fan Art section, but a friend in UK, Dave came up with a more Mecha look for our Squidy Villian.
Um recipe: Mange Spawn Series 34 was the base figure, used ML Banshee’s legs as the arms to allow posing and articulation that Spawn just doesnt have.
The fingers are tendril from a Spawn Creech figure and went well with the squidy look.
The Two larger tentacles on the back are from a Marvel Select Doc Ock.
The base of the head is a Xmen Classics Juggernaut with epoxy and tentacles from a toy octopus.
Painted the armor a blueish green, and tried to paint the arms and the head with a white pearl to give a wet slimy look..

For more of Madtinker76’s work, check out his page at Figure Realm here.

It’s that time of year again!  Royalt1us has put out the call for your original Masters of the Universe character designs for his 5th Annual Fan-Based Character Contest. As in years past, the winning design will be immortalized in a resin mini statue.

From Royalt1us:

It’s time for Royalt1us’ 5th Annual Fan-Based Character Contest

For 5 years now I have held a custom character contest here on He-Man.org as a way to motivate and challenge myself to try new and more difficult things in my quest to learn how to sculpt. As well as do something fun for the members here.

The past 5 contests have been:
2005- Custom Fan-Based Character Bust won by GLADE.
2006- Custom Fan-Based Character Staction co-championed by OOZOR and COPPERHEAD.
2007- Custom Fan-Based Character Staction won by PO-LAR
2007- Custom Kids Fan-Based Character staction won by LAVA-SHARK.
2008, due to time constraints, Custom Fan-Based Character Staction 2nd Chance won by SPY-FLY.

So this year I want to do something special, but I haven’t got all the details worked out yet so I’m not going to post how things are going to go down just yet. However, I do want to kick things off with a
Call for Characters!

For the next 2 weeks sumbit the characters you want to enter in this years contest. And just like any other year, the rules are pretty straight forward.
Charcters must be submitte by midnight on November 15th.
All characters must be Original Fan-Bases Characters.
Characters can be submited with pictures or writen bios or both.
Characters should be given some sort of name and affiliation.
While I’d love to see all new charcters, no previous characters are excluded from this years contest.
And this year Character designs and ideas should be designated as either 80s, 200x, or MOTUC.
(What I mean by that is designate what style of figure you would want it to be: MOTUC, 200x, or 80’s. You can designate 1 or 2 of the 3, but not all 3.)

That’s it for now. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. This thread will be updated with the Contest Format in two weeks, so Bring on the characters. And post them in this thread. As many as you want.

Pics of a few more current submissions after the jump. (more…)

The exciting news is that Royal-T (Royalt1us) and Gatchagrey are announcing a poll in which you can choose which one of the creations from Gatchagrey’s fan-created Bug-Shido world, Royal-T will make into a mini-statue.

From Gatchagrey:

To my delight, fellow fan, Royal-T has agreed to make my dream come true
and create a mini-statue of ONE of my Bug-Shido Characters. But with over
55 characters to choose from, we thought we would hold a little character
contest and let all of you help decide which character that will be.

The contest information, rules, and polls will be posted soon. We want to
invite all of you to join in the voting, and post ideas, and even designs.
Because, just like Royal-T’s own contests, when all is said a done, the
winning character will be sculpted, cast, and made available to everyone
who wants one.

Stay tuned for more info and get ready for an Royal Battle of Insect
Proportions. I hope you all have fun with this as much as I plan to.

To keep things simple, this is a contest to decide which Bug-Shido character is worthy of being sculpted into a mini-statue. To do this we are going to organize the 50+ characters Gatchagrey has dreamed up into four groups. Each group will be made of similar characters; for example Big Guys, Females, Winged, and Non-Winged characters.

In Round 1, you will be allowed to select your favorite 4 characters from each group.
In Round 2, you will select one of 4 Round 1 favorites (one from each group).
In Round 3, the Final 4 characters will go head to head to decide the 2009 Bug-Shido Champion.

For each poll, we will post the artwork Gatchagrey currently has for each character. For some this will only include his original design. For others this will include commissioned, and non-commissioned, works done by other artists. We hope each design will be given equal consideration, regardless of the artwork presented. Vote for the concept of the character over any of the art that may or may not be available.

We also invite anyone at anytime to post their own art of any of the characters in order to bolster support for their favorites. The Final Four will be drawn up by Royal-T to demonstrate his initial take on the design for the sculpture.

Links to the polls will be posted as soon as they are up and each poll will last 10-14 days. So stay tuned for updates and look for the battle to begin sooner than later.

(more…)

How awesome is it to see a painted version of Royalt1us’s Spy-Fly?  I say quite awesome.  Quite, indeed.  The paint job by He-Man.org member, The Doctor, stays true to this piece of original concept art by Buffalo Bill Man and really emphasized the cool details of the sculpt.

Here’s another image of Spy-Fly with his pals Po-Lar and Lava-Shark (also sculpted by Rolalt1us and painted by The Doctor):

You can still get your own Spy-Fly here.

Spy-Fly, the latest resin figure from Royalt1us, is finally finished and available for purchase.  I’m loving the pose and the translucent resin wings.

Get your own Spy-Fly here.

Royalt1us has just unveiled images of his nearly clompleted Spy-Fly figure (he says he’ll be done in about a week), and it looks awesome!  He’s done a great job of capturing a traditionally MOTU crouched pose and made it look a bit more dynamic.  Also, I’m loving that the wings have been cast in translucent resin.

Fore more info on Spy-Fly, check out this thread at He-Man.org.

Royalt1us has recently befun sculpting his highly anticipated follow up to the Lava-Shark resin mini-statue, Spy-Fly.  He has just unveiled images of the head sculpt this week.  Not only do these images serve as a preview of how awesome that Spy-Fly is going to be, but also as a reminder that I need to get painting on my Lava-Sharks!

For all the latest on the progress of Spy-Fly, check out this thread at the He-Man.org forums.

This image of an amazingly painted Lava-Shark is courtesy of He-Man.org user Flitzi.  The hammerhead style is the original sculpt by Royalt1us.  Hovever, he also created a second, great white style variant as well.  The sculpt, well as this paint job (also courtesy of Flitzi) is heavily inspired by the original creation of MOTU artist Eliliano Santalucia, Might Bite.

For more info on Lava-Shark, click here.

For more info on Might-Bite, click here.

To get your very own Lava-Shark or Might-Bite mini-statues by Royalt1us, click here.

He’s finally arrived!  The Great White-style variant of Lava-Shark is here!  And I’ve actually really got to say that I think I prefer this version.  The suclpt is inspired by the unreleased character Might Bite, created by Masters of the Universe artist/guru Emiliano Santalucia.  For more info on Might Bite, click here.

V. 1 vs. V. 2:

To get your own Lava-Shark V. 2, click here.

Here’s a qiuck work in progress of the alternate Great White haed version of Lava-Shark by Royalt!us. It’s still unknown if there will be anything else about this statue that will differ from the first version. Although, Royalt1us has indicated that there might be some changes.

After working on him on and off for months, I finally have Royalt1us’s Po-Lar in a state in wich I am happy enough with him to start showing him off. I’m sure that I’ll continue to nitpick him and re-paint little details for months to come, but I felt that it was time to show where I was at with him.
It’s been quite a few years since I have wielded Citadel paints and size 000 brushes, so this has certainly been a learning experience for me. Techniques such as drybrushing, blending, and ink washing, although familiar, totally needed to be relearned.
What I’ve decided to do is move on to my Lava-Shark statue and continue to hone my skills and from there come back to Po-Lar and touch up little details. Now, on to Lava-Shark…

It’s official!  The votes are in and the winner of Royalt1us’s 4th Annual Fan-Based Character Contest is Spy-Fly.  What does this mean?  It means that out of all of the fan-created characteds submitted to this contest by He-Man.org members, Spy-Fly got the most votes.  Therefore, he’s going to get the same sclupting treatment as Po-Lar and Lava-Shark before him.

The two other finalist characters were Ink-Shot, the squid guy, and Wraptor, the mummy snakeman. My vote went for Ink-shot in the final poll, but I’m still super excited to see what Royalt1us does with Spy-Fly. I’ll be sure to keep updating on the progress of the sculpt.
And yes, I’m almost finished painting my Po-Lar and will have pics up of him soon.

This amazing sclpt by He-Man.org user Royalt1us is finally up for sale here. In the next couple of weeks, he plans to release a more traditionally sharky, great white-style, variant.