Darkseid has always been one of my favorite villains, but I was never interested in making a figure of him until I saw the magnificent sculpt by William Paquet ..... man does that guy have talent!!!

I used Sabertooth as base, but rebuilt most of body. Sabertooth, IMO, is one of the worst proportioned FC figure. In many ways, he's classic Liefeld .... bulking torso with misproportionate legs and arms. This is further compounded by the fact that the torso design greatly hinders the range of movement of his shoulder joints. Poor Sabertooth can't rest his arms anywhere near his sides. His resting pose reminds me of an old SNL skit .... "Hi, I'm Hans, and I'm Franz and we're here to PUMP YOU UP!!!"

But I digress .... I reconstructed his torso, removing much of the latissimus dorsi, allowing his arms to rest to his sides. I added 4.0 cm of Magic Sculp to lengthen the legs (2.4 cm to the upper thighs, 1.0 cm to the lower legs and 0.6 cm to sculpted feet). This increased Darkseid's height to 11" (a scale height of 7'6" according to DC Universe guide), but more important, it gave him normal looking legs. The femur is the longest bone in the human body and yet Toy Biz gave poor Sabertooth a little stump for a thigh.

In addition to giving him short legs, TB also gave him puny legs and calves. I'm sorry but the laws of physics and physiology (even in the comic world) dictate that such puny legs could not support such a massive frame. I added Magic sculpt around the thighs and lower legs and bulked it up by 50-60%.

This project also gave me an opportunity to explore rocky skin texture. My results are a little "busy" IMO. This is what separates novices like myself from professionals like Paquet. They know the limits and boundaries of detailing and when too much becomes too busy for the eyes. I repeated the process for the arms and was going to do the same to the torso before I ran out of Magic Sculp. Oh well, Darkseid wears a shirt so it shouldn't matter too much.

I went with a passive facial expression instead of the angry clenching teeth look that Paquet took. I'll admit that my knowledge of Darkseid comes mainly from STAS. There, he seems more like a calm omninous emperor. Even in battle, he has a calm demeanor as if he isn't concern about the competition.

I also wanted to experiment a little with this head. I rotocasted a hollow head using a translucent yellow resin. I tried using clear polyester resin, but the polyester surface doesn't take paint very well, especially if you apply the surface curing agent. I inserted LED lights behind his eyes and painted the outside of his eyes with red translucent glass paint. When you press the LED, his eyes light up to mimic the Omega blast. I also inserted the Commtech Vader chip into his head. I've always thought James Earl Jones had the perfect voice for Darkseid. However the Vader's phrases doesn't match Darkseid very well, but the lightsaber noises works great for the Omega Blast :-).

Painting .... this is where I really regret putting in all those excess rock cracks and holes :-P. I used an airbrush to do a rock bleed. It doesn't look too bad, but not near the levels of guys like Ron Kenyon or Jerry Buchanan.