Shining Knight
Posted on June 30, 2013
Difficulty: 
As I’ve said elsewhere, I have no problem with Mattel issuing figures with painted-on details. However, there is simply no excuse for a poor head, or worse, a poorly scaled head sculpt. I’m not sure what happened during the creation of Shining Knight’s head, but it looks like somebody left it in the dryer too long.
To rectify this “small” issue, I took inspiration from Bottleimp. I sliced off Sir Justin’s squish-squish face and replaced it with a spare Superman. The necessitated resculpting the helmet and filling some gaps, but it worked overall.
Created Winter 2007
2 Comments »
Easy: A simple parts swap. Little if any paint.
Moderate: New and modified parts.
Skilled: Lots of new and modified parts. “Frankensteining” often involved.
Advanced: All of the above, plus a great deal of original sculpting.
I really like what you’ve done, and have wanted to try it myself for, well, since I first saw this.
I think the problem with the mattel head was that the sculptor worked from a commonly seen piece of art which had the knight and Vigilante standing in front of atom smasher. the shining knight’s head was tilted back. And if i’m right, The sculptor took that to mean he had this tiny, pointy, head-stuck-in-a-pencil-sharpener look.
(i think The same kind of thing inspired the tiny noggin given the kingpin in the toy biz figure back in the 1990s.)
Thanks, Jim. Your theory is as valid as any I’ve heard. Who knows what the employees are given as reference?