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 Making an Alternative Alternative Version of Cutey Honey Takara's Alternative Version Cutey Honey is a nice figure , and really the only downside is the fact that her costuming is so stiff that her otherwise exemplary articulation is limited by it . In order to get the action back into the Cutey action figure I decided to alter the alternative costume , chopping off the legs of her body suit and turning them into thigh high boots and converting her top into a mini skirt . Since I had already removed her stilettos for another figure , I took the boot feet from Harley and slipped them inside Cutey's , certainly they are now a bit more functional for action , if not for glam .   When creating sword fighters , typically the figure is going to need a shield , that said I began work on a shield for Cutey . Originally I was going to create a shield similar to the large round shield carried by my Warrior Maiden but upon consideration of the slender long sword carried by Cutey changed my mind in favor of a small round buckler . Bucklers are interesting shields , they are small parrying devices , more suited for speed and as defense against thrusting blows rather than sweeping hacking strokes . They can also be used to strike , an extension of the warrior's hand not dissimilar to an armored fist .  The main body of the buckler is the front cap from a pin back button , which I hammered out to increase its concave shape . I left a lot of the roughness in the look of the hammered metal because I wanted it to have a battered and well used appearance . The cross support bands are tension springs from a picture frame , the same type used to create the attachment plates on my Kissy Honey battle armor custom . The buckler's rim is an aluminum rod bent and curved to shape and is held in place by the tension spring cross bands that have been bent and curved around the edge . The center boss is a brass lamp finial glued on top of a bent washer that makes up the center boss plate . The brass bolts on the face of the buckler are brass brads glued to the surface . Though not shown , the handle of the buckler is a small dowel , drilled out to accept a bent aluminum rod ( the same size used to form the rim ) that forms the handle attachments which has been simply glued to the center interior side of the buckler . All I need do now , is get my hands on a corinthian style greek helmet , which I think will finish off this figure quite nicely . Fortunately Ignite makes some very nice cast bronze greek helmets .  Impatience has always been a failing of mine , so with the ever lengthening time it is taking me to save up money for an Ignite Hoplite , I decided to try my hand at creating a Corinthian style Greek helmet for Cutey from scratch . I drew out a pattern for the helmet on paper , taped it onto some sheet brass and cut out the shape . Using needle nose pliers and a hammer I bent and hammered the pattern to shape ; fitting it to Cutey's headsculpt . The design is not a strict historically accurate corinthian helmet , but a loose interpretation , based on a variety of sources to incorporate the basic elements and look that I wanted for this helmet . A dremel is used with an engraving bit to add the edging trim .   Once again my impatience led me to thinking up alternative methods for creating the crown of this helmet . Having seen Greek helmets with the crowns painted with designs and solid colors I thought that by doing this I could save myself some work by creating the crown in sculpey which I could then paint and finish to appear metallic . To test this idea , I went into my graphics program and created a comp of the crown in color to see how it would look . I haven't made the final decision for the paint scheme , or any design pattern to paint , but having a painted crown does work , and when incorporated with more brass for the plumage crest , adding plumage I think that making the crown from sculpey will work .  With the crown completed in sculpey , baked and sanded to smoothness , next came the creation of the crest that will hold the plumage . Again , the pattern for this was drawn on paper and that pattern cut from sheet brass . Once again I used a dremel with an engraving bit to cut in the edge trim . At this point I am thinking about painting the crown black and adding red plumage .  With most of the major construction done for this helmet , I'm actually quite happy with how it looks and how it really completes the vision of this cutey Custom . I would imagine that as far as fit goes , this handmade helmet is probably much better than the Ignite helmet , and it certainly is more of what I conceived in my mind's eye for the helmet for this figure . Once finished , replete with paint and plumes , this helmet should really make this figure shine .  The costuming colors for this Cutey custom were instrumental in deciding just what kind of color scheme I wanted to carry thru in the helmet . The real brainwork involved was more a subtle decision about how far I wanted to take the paint ops and plumage of the helmet . This is where a graphics program comes in quite handy , allowing me to pre-visualize the color scheme without putting a lot of time into painting the actual figure . Because of the simple and graphic look of Cutey's costume , I decided that I was more interested in carrying through that simplicity to the helmet , and figured that any differentiation in colors should be within the crest plumage . From there it was just a matter of deciding whether to make the crown black or red . Both work , but considering the balance of colors , I'm leaning heavily towards the solid black crown and the way it tends to help balance out the rest of figure's color motif . If Cutey had black hair , I might favor the red crown .  Because of the way I created this helmet ,a sheet of brass that was bent around and shaped , there was a slight gap at the back where the two ends of the brass meet . I cut out and shaped a cover for this gap and glued it on the back , so that it continues the line of the plumage crest down the back ; not a perfect solution but a satisfactory " workable " one . I did one last pass with my dremel engraving bit just to bring out the edge trim a litle more and then polished the brass with the dremel's polishing heads . A final buffing by hand and buffing cloth and the crown is given a paint job with black acrylic paint . Once dry , clear acrylic sealer is sprayed on in several coats to give the brass and acrylic paint a unifying gloss that also serves to protect the surfaces . Now the fun part begins , taking dyed horsehair and beginning the process of adding the crest plummage .  Painted black and given a gloss sealant really hides the fact that the crown is super sculpey . As far as the balance of the costume colors , the black crown does a great job of providing just the right amount of weight in contrast to the reds and in conjunction with the gold .  I've never done this before , but did a bit of research into adding horsehair crests to helmets which is not unlike wigging a doll head , or making a tassel . Being that this is 1:6 scale I don't need to go the full route that might be needed were this a full scale replica but similar techniques are used . The horsehair is gathered into swatches and tied together at the center . The swatches are purposely too long and will be trimmed down once all have been glued into place . By keeping the length long I can give myself plenty of leeway when it comes down to the final length of the crest , whether I decide to exaggerate the size or keep it closer to reality which was around 5 to 8 inches in length . I'll probably try to keep as much length to it as I can for the sake of dramatics . The main reason I chose horsehair , aside from accuracy , is stiffness . I won't have to worry about the crest sagging over tiime thanks to the stiff bristle of the horsehair . Once the swatches are tied at the center , the swatch is folded in half and a needle and thread are used to weft and wrap the tuft of hair , securing the hair so there's no worry of shedding as time goes by . Plain old Sobo craft glue is used to cement the individul tufts into the recess of the crest . Once finished , if this figure falls over , I will have the added benefit of getting a hands free dusting of the figures surrounding this one . .  Sobo glue dries fairly quickly , so while I wait for the first tufts to dry I'm assembling the successive tufts , and gluing them in place . I'm learning what number of swatches I need as I go , the first black tuft used 4 tufts , which I thought was just too many , so on the remaining tufts I'm using three ; it seems to give me the color swatch width I'm looking for . As a means of determining how long I want the crest to extend from the helmet I took one of my photos and did some cropping in my graphics program to get an idea of the proportioning . I don't want it to be too short , nor too long .  The horsehair crest is almost complete , with the major plugs glued into place . The back portion still has a bit of a gap between the main portion of the crest and the end tail so I'll need to add another tuft there to fill it out . Once this is done , I can then begin trimming the crest down to size .  Starting the trim job on the crest has raised some interesting thoughts in my mind , whether to go for a traditional look for this helmet , or follow a more " over the top " look . There is something very appealing about having the crest extending out for around a foot and a half proportionately , in an sort of manga/anime-esque style . One thing is certain , I can always trim it down , but if I decide I like the outrageous version better it'll be difficult to make the hair longer . I may have to let her stand around like this for a while to see where my whim leads . I really like the way she looks here with the insanely large crest .  Well . I decided to trim about another 1/4 inch off the crest , but have decided I'm gonna keep a lot of the length , just cuz I think it looks cool . If later I change my mind , I can purchase one of Ignite's Hoplites and swap out the helmets , this is supposed to be a custom anyway and my aesthetics are disposed to a really outrageous crest for Cutey .  Considering that this was my first metal helmet and my first use of a striped horsehair crest . I'm pretty happy with the end results . The horsehair is a bit wild in certain places and so I might go back in with some styling gel or some such stuff to get it all straight and in line , but the helmet at this point does have a certain battle worn wildness to it that I think is not displeasing . 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