Six - Action Figure Photographer

2025 Retrospective ------ What a year! With everything that goes on in my personal world and the broader crazy world; collecting and sharing photos of action figures with other like-minded collectors provides a respite and a sense of community/belonging. Thank you for being part of that. ♥️ These are my favourite photos from the past 12 months. I tried to grab one from each month, but some months had more than one that I thought was pretty good. Hope you had at least some good in 2025 and best wishes for 2026!

Head's Up 2025 Reviews! ------ For those that are new, or just wishing to revisit, about once a month or so Breacher does a review of a 1/12th scale vehicle or accessories. The slides show the scoring and comments for most of 2025's reviews. More reviews will come in 2026! I still haven't unpacked my Rattler or Dragonfly Haslabs yet. I'm trying to find reasonably priced SNAKE armor and an AWE Striker. I may well be tempted to pick up the Acid Rain 1/12 FAV (which is just a red Fans Hobby FAV). Just before X-mas my tank was delivered from RamenToys. Tankalicious. We've got so many manufacturers making dedicated 1/12 vehicles now, I think the bottom has fallen out of the customising/converting market! I'm still keeping my eyes open for some decent third party Dreadnok rides cause I don't reckon we'll be getting any from Hasbro any time soon.

Custom Time! ------ Here's a little info on what you need to get started customising your action figures, vehicles, accessories and making dioramas for action figure photography. I've tacked in a little retrospective of the projects I've tackled over the past year, so if you are looking for more details, please scroll back theough the page to look for the 'Custom Time' posts. Enjoy!

Crimson Guards ------ G.I. Joe Classified

Custom Time - Dreadnok Chameleon Swamp Skier ------ Disappointed with the look of the new G.I. Joe Classified Series swamp skier, I was planning to do a quick custom time with some drybrushing and weathering. Then I saw @toygains video on YouTube where he adeptly walks you thru doing it - and being a video it is inherently more interesting than some photos! Go and watch Gains video, its good stuff. So I'm left still wanting to customise this thing, and I could do some drybrushing and weathering, but what if it was more like the original? I fully expect Hasbro to re-release this in a retro colourway at some point. The sculpt is there for that. What looks like extra exhaust tubes are actually frame tubes that could be dark green. Same with the tube/handrail at the rear... Digging thru the spray paint tub, I found a can of lime green and a can of dark green. Not sure what they are were bought for. Maybe for repainting that LOL convertible? I test sprayed the lime on a piece of foam and, I don't know if you can see it in the photos, but it looks so good, almost pearlescent. I hummed and hawed over what to do with the skids. Silver drybrushing on the black does look great. Perhaps I could just paint the skis themselves? To hard to mask up and I didn't have a pot of gloss dark green to paint by hand. Eventually I decided to go full OG and spray the whole skid dark green. It needed a little more detail. I added some red paint where the shocks are, I reckon the Noks would put like sports shock on this thing. The engine is mostly drybruahing with silver paint. I was going to spraypaint the exhausts chrome, I don't have any chrome spray but I did have a chrome pen. It mostly worked, just hard to get the thick nib into all the places. Overall I think it turned out OK. Yes, it is missing the chameleon graphic, I did think about masking this out. Maybe at some point I'll try painting it back on. What do you reckon - hit or miss? Do you have one, will you be customising it? ------ #gijoeclassified #thisweekincustoms #chameleonswampskier

Zanya ------ G.I. Joe Classified Series Dreadnok

Head's Up - Swamp Skier! ------ Look out for an upcoming Custom Time for this. I can't leave it that colour. Might paint Zan a little too.

Pirate vs pirate!

Quick Custom Time - The Black (Valaverse) ------ Ooh, I gave into FOMO and made an offer to a guy on ebay. He had like six of these for sale so I'm pretty sure he is a scalper. Is this a nice figure? Yes. Figure of the year? No. Not with the rest of The Black releasing soon. Plus Stanky Leg Stormtrooper, two sets of condiment Joes, the pink Ewok, king-sized Apocalypse... The Black is a good figure that is great value (at RRP). The execution just feels a little...rushed? Underdone? The torso isssue, the lack of deco on the body, no vest, no wash on the leather parts. But I am a sucker for Cthulhu tentacle beard dudes. So here's a quick custom time to add a little detail. Its subtle, on the shelf you probably won't notice the difference. There is potential to go wild on those tentacles and make them highly realistic. Beyond my skillset and patience for today. The torso. Plain green. I literally would have preferred plain black, or an ookier green. What is this? Is it just a top or green skin? I tried adding shade and highlights with a vision of it being like pressed mass of seaweed. Maybe it is just a green top and its a dude in a Scooby Doo mask. "The Black is Mayor Johnson?!" "Rayorar Rhonson?" "I would've gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!" Is Valaverse going to put out a Great Dane figure for The Black line in 2027? You heard it here first. ------ #valaverse #customactionfigures #sixinchaf

Phanost! ------ The Four Horsemen's Infinite Legions Phanost from the Glyos universe.

Heads Up - Masters of the Universe Origins Castle Grayskull ------ I had to bust this out to use as a background in a recent new He-Man photo. This box has been collecting dust in the garage for the last three years. It basically turned into a narrow table for storing other action figure boxes. Working on the backlog (whilst simultaneously growing it!). With Mattel working on new six-inch MOTU lines, how long do you reckon it will be before we get a six-inch scale Castle?

May the 4th be with you! ------ For me Star Wars was always more about the original Kenner 3.75 inch action figures than the movies. There is like 6 hours of the original trilogy, but I would have spent hundreds of hours playing with those figures. Those adventures and stories were what became Star Wars for me. The Black Series six inch line lets older collectors, like myself (and probably you too) relive those memories chasing the nostalgia. The kriginal geilogy figures are being re-released with newer sculpts and better paint. I can only hope that someday we'll get a Snaggletooth and Death Star Droid. I guess I've seen Star Wars figures in these colour blocks so many times in 'retro inspired' media I'd come to feel like all the early figures had them. In researching this today, to make sure I was using the 'right' colours, I looked at old cardbacks on archive websites. The original 12 figures didn't have the bright colour block backgrounds, that was just the figures from the subsequent A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back waves. They had coloured backgrounds, but not like the classic retro colours. Did I miss someone from the original 12 figures? Help boost my engagement stats and shout it out in the comments! Have a great Star Wars day!