Lovely customs! Wow you have some great ideas--love seeing a custom of Tickle! But are they harder to re-hair since the plastic is so hard?

The heads are exactly the same as the normal G4 heads, so rehairing can use any process that you normally would.  The tails are a little trickier, but I do have a tutorial with pictures in the Customs section that shows how to disassemble them and give them new tails.

I've been doing some experimenting dyeing the legs only of the new articulated brushables, trying to dye the joints specifically, but the vinyl gets dyed as well.  The vinyl takes dye quite easily using Rit Dyemore and their instructions about dyeing buttons, Legos, etc. on their website using boiling water.  Within about a half hour, I achieved a very dark color on the vinyl.  However, if you want to do any painting + sealing on top of that, if you just dye and then paint and seal, you will get very very severe dye leech into the paint. 

You can stop the dye leech though -- you just have to do an acetone bath for it.  Take a small dish or container that won't melt when you put acetone into it (so no disposable plastic cups) and put your pony in.  You should see the dye start to wisp off in a kind of scary aura around the pony -- that's the excess dye being pulled out of the vinyl.  Be careful with the amount of time you let it sit in the acetone, as G4's can get kind of melty.  I'd suggest only about a minute or so, then pull the pony out and let it rest.  Repeat until the scary aura is mostly gone.

The only downside is that this will lighten/wash out the color of the dye job, but otherwise there's a chance that the dye can spread to other ponies or things from touching.

Thanks for the comments, guys!  They certainly look like magnets in the front legs, but I was never really able to tell.  If they are, they're very weak ones!

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Hey guys!  I hope everyone is doing well!  I've been working on these guys for a bit, and wanted to share what I've learned.  Be warned, lots of pics ahead!

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I really love the articulated ponies (especially since I'm a sucker for dioramas, and they're so much more expressive with joints).  Here, you can see G1 -> G4 Tickle and Wind Whistler hanging out on a (not quite finished) diorama getting ready for a picnic! 

I've dismantled several different articulated ponies and taken lots of pictures, so the tutorial will be broken down into three major sections: Basic articulation (the non-"action" releases of Coco Pommel, Rainbow Dash, and Twilight Sparkle -- I have taken one of each apart, and they are very similar, so I will be showing only one off), Action ponies (the kicking, etc. releases of Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Applejack -- this tutorial shows Rainbow Dash, but Fluttershy should be the same.  I have not touched Applejack, but I'm sure she's quite different), and Re-tailing (this shows off the modifications I had to make to give them a new tail, as well as showing off how I put in a new tail, though the method is very similar to how I normally give a custom a new tail anyway).  Each section is under a spoiler tag, as there are quite a few pictures!

A couple last notes and warnings: this is definitely more complicated than normal customizing, so if you are new to customizing I would suggest starting with a couple of basic ponies before moving on to this.  The methods to get these guys apart involve very sharp objects, so please be careful and don't hurt yourself!  Lastly, I don't recommend trying to dye these guys -- the head and main leg pieces (as well as the wings if applicable) are all the traditional vinyl, but the body pieces and the joints are hard plastic.  As such, what would work on one would not work on another.  Someone more familiar with dyeing vinyl/hard plastics may have more to say about that than I do, but this guide doesn't cover that.

Basic Articulation


Action Ponies


Re-tailing Articulated Bodies

These are lovely!  As someone who has sewn tiny G4 dresses in the past, I totally understand the trouble you went to!  

Your designs are quite nice, and it seems like you've used felt for quite a few things, which is a great idea because you don't have to worry about finishing edges.  With the organza/tulle material though, do be careful about the edges, as some types can fray over time.   I can't wait to see what else you come up with.

Definitely getting rid of that dress, but I think Maud is super cute!

Aww, thank you guys so much for the nice comments!  I'm really happy with how it's coming together still.  Sumire, that is such a lovely comment!  I love fancy dollhouses and when I was dreaming up ideas I definitely looked at a lot of customized dollhouses for inspiration!