Creativity > Customs

A Christmas Train Nine Years in the Making!

(1/5) > >>

Snapdragon:
I totally forgot to post this last year, when I actually finally completed it, and told myself around January that I would definitely post it this December! So, without further ado - the G4 Custom Christmas Train!

visitors can't see pics , please register or login
 

And here's more closeups of the individual cars with what their "before" would have looked like, AKA the stock, unpainted trains:

visitors can't see pics , please register or login
 
visitors can't see pics , please register or login
 
visitors can't see pics , please register or login
 
visitors can't see pics , please register or login
 

And I'll put some WIP pics behind a cut, in case you're curious to see some of the painting detail shots!
SpoilerHere's how I rediscovered the train in 2022, with a base coat and not much else! Oh, I did stick on the peppermint wheel for the locomotive, LOL! (It's the same photo mirrored twice, only because the photo wasn't cropping properly.)
visitors can't see pics , please register or login


Here was my attempt to make a blue and silver train... which just looked dirty! So then I tried to put down an orange base to make it gold instead, and it looked like a mac n cheese train! :rofl: But the mac n cheese prevailed, and it came out much nicer!
visitors can't see pics , please register or login


Mac n cheese vindicated!
visitors can't see pics , please register or login


Here's the ice cream train, getting all those little lattice lines straight was tough for sure!
visitors can't see pics , please register or login
 
visitors can't see pics , please register or login


And I guess I didn't get any WIP shots of the locomotive or caboose, because they weren't as paint-heavy! Oops!)

I originally bought this train on clearance at Toys R Us, which should tell you how long ago I originally planned to customize this! :faint: In 2016, I referenced on my blog that I had been trying to work on this train every December 'for three years', which would make my start date around 2013, which makes this train a decade old! But while the train got shelved and put aside for many (many... many...) years, I continued tracking down various little Christmas decor bits, and I even took a photo of the MASSIVE amount of Christmas doodads and gee-gaws I had been collecting for it in the decade intervening!

visitors can't see pics , please register or login
 

The train, like many toys, has a lot of sculpted details in the plastic that don't really show up because they're not painted! So I tried to highlight as many of the fun little sculpt details as I could (and hide the screw holes), while still changing it enough to feel Christmas-y. For example, I changed the ice cream cone train car into a car with wooden lattice and a snowy mountaintop, complete with glitter and snowmen! I had originally planned to use faux-frosting, but I feared it might just look too chunky and thick, and even more like ice cream. Using glitter made it look more gritty, like ice!

I didn't want to do a full repaint with a full white basecoat, since I worried it might turn out chunky, and also because I also wanted to highlight the original sculpting and color scheme. So that meant I had to get a bit creative with how I would turn each train car into more 'festive' colors! It's still very bright and colorful, but I figure that's more like how MLP would do the holidays anyway! I love to see how much the sculpting work of the original pops with just a little bit of paint to highlight it!

Phew! That's a lot of typing, but it was a lot of work!! I originally got the drive to finish it in time for a 'custom winter collab' last year, and I can proudly say that mine was the only train included, LOL! Thanks for reading!

BlackCurtains:
omg this is the cutest thing ever! I absolutely love it :D All the detail is amazing.

pandabear_chan:
You did a phenomenal job on this super cute train and I don't like G4s at all. But the work and detail that went into it is outstanding. You can be very proud on yourself!

lovesbabysquirmy:
how fun!

shockponie:
Wow, this is incredible! What a lovely job.  :biggrin:

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page