It’s been a wille… wyle…. while since I’ve made a brushable custom. As you may know, Kirin have taken the MLP fandom by storm, especially adorable little Autumn Blaze. As with other cute or interesting (or a combo of both) characters, I wanted to make a brushable custom of her.
 
Started with a Rarity brushable as a base. I trimmed the sides of the horn down a bit, then stuck 2 pieces of wire in it and bent them to shape. Same for the hair tuffs on the front legs, and the tips of the ears. I then used Sculpt-it and body putty for car models to make the horn and modify the ears, and just body putty for the tufts. I then carved and sanded them. I also cut notches in the hooves.
 
All of the scales on the back and head are hand painted. For the scale outlines I drew them out lightly with a pencil, then used a custom fine tip brush I made (I’m talking maybe 5 or 6 fine bristles here). I also decided to glue the head to the body and fill the gap with body putty.
 
To make the front mane and rear hair tufts, I used my method of heating up a needle and making new holes in the body. Problem is the legs on G4’s are almost completely solid, so I had to drill them before using the needle, then dabbed a bit of glue on the end of the plug of hair before inserting it. In the case of the neck, the plastic is very thin there which I predicted would give me paint trouble when I inserted the hair plugs, and I was right. Wound up having to repaint the area around the holes (luckily the mane hides any difference). The other mane was pretty standard. Curling it was tedious, and most of what I curled wound up getting trimmed off.
 
As for the tail: The only way I was able to make the base of it solid was to tighten up the hair and hold it in position, then soak that part in super glue to make it solid. Afterwards I applied body putty and smoothed it out. It’s about as best as you can do to make a lion tail. The hair is Dollyhair Tigerlilly. I also got Jack-o-Lantern which was more reddish and shiny, but felt the muted look of the Tigerlilly looked best, and is almost a perfect match for the color of Autumn’s hair (printed out an image of her to match paint and hair).
 
This was definitely the hardest brushable custom I’ve made yet.