Kirkland, Is that clear vinyl or an orange vinyl one?

its the silver version

That is nuts!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That would go great with the Lucky Bag Hedoran! Good stuff.

swoon!

Incredible colors! He really put that base color to work.

Sweet!

Utterly brilliant color scheme. Love the contrasting yellow areas. A beauty!

yikes!

lovely custom but yikes again.

please say you were kidding

A newb risks the ire of the oldbies...

I understand that some feel that hard-to-find, limited edition "holy grails" shouldn't be customized, but given that it's ultimately the owner's choice to do what they will with a piece, and given that the results in this case and many others are spectacular ... what's the big deal? (I'm asking, not arguing. I think.)

I love the Mini Smogun sculpt and would enjoy having the versions that I don't already have, but to my eye, this custom is an aesthetic improvement on or enhancement of the original silver, not some garish bastardization or botched custom attempt. In other words, the sacrifice of an unmodified sliver seems fully justified. Mis dos centavos.

i hope he is kidding!!!! otherwise,,,i may be forced to self-harm!!!!!

great custom job btw,,,,but yikes if a silver was sacrificed!!!!

I don't think anyone is saying that the end result isn't cool.
But I'm sure there are many collectors that would like to have the "rare" figure - painting over one takes it out of circulation and that much harder for a collector to find. I thought the unwritten "rule" was to only paint common figures. It would have been more work, but nearly the same result could have been acheived with a base coat of metal flake.
I remember not long ago it was taboo to even paint the common figures. There was a lot of grief given for painting 'Wings and 'Brains. Have those who are against this just clammed up? Or do they now accept custom jobs on common figures?

Thanks for the great response ... all makes sense to me. Part of my curiosity about how this is viewed generally is because I'm trying to decide what sort of figure I'd like to have customized. Originally, I chose a skull bee that I didn't much care for, but it's grown on me and I've realized that its rarity is something to consider.

More recently I've been considering unpainted versions of Gargamel and other figures. While many of us appreciate "raw" vinyl, I'm thinking that it might be a bit more "fair" to customize an unpainted figure.

I dunno ... trying to figure out the ethics of this so that I can live with having something customized ... and eventually doing it myself.

I prefer it to the plain silver, this is way cooler and more interesting.

i think its a great custom... im just jealous i dont have the silver smogun.

i'd cry bloody murder for someone painting over a silver smogon.... if it wasn't cometdebris

So you're saying I SHOULDN'T go at one with my gold paint pen?

Just got tired of ranting at people who paint over figures.

Its not collecting when you commission someone else to paint a figure.
One can buy up alot of common figures, have them repainted, and have a "bitchen" collection. That's not my idea of collecting.

I just prefer the original design and vision than repainted toys.
Why can't people use blanks for all these custom jobs?

Yeah, if a collector buys a toy, he/she owns it and can theorectically do whatever they want with it. But taken to an extreme, I don't think many would agree with that.

Example, SoandSo has a GID Ghostfighter. He's bored with the look of it and wants a graff artist to mark it up with graffiti ink. Who wouldn't cringe at that?

I would have kept the suspended silver one. I think its really cool.

perhaps it's not your idea of collecting,
but many folks may find this idea more appealing
than shelling out huge sums for a toy
that there are still 25 o 50 (or more) others just like it floating around.
i'd rather have a one-of-a-kind piece from a rad customizer
for half the price, thanks.

Would you mind fixing the tags on the quote so that it doesn't look like that's my opinion.
Not that I completely disagree with liquidsky, nor do I completely agree...
Just to clear up the quote.
thanks!

Where do we differ? Just curious.
Still trying to understand the custom mindset...

Not sure that there's 25-50 silver Smogs just floating around out there...

I don't know - I honestly haven't given this topic too much though, as I don't go after customs.
I see where you're coming from with the collecting mentality - where the search is as important as the figure and that you should like the figure as it was created. But collecting is different things to different people - so saying that collecting customs isn't "real" collecting is I guess where we might differ. It's not what I'm into, but I'm not gonna say it isn't as satisfying to another person as my form of collecting is to me. (I don't know that that's what you were saying either...just kinda typing where the words are taking me right now.) And I'll say there's a world of difference between the customs on this board and the ones over on that other board...

I don't have a problem with customizing common figures. Hell, I don't even really have a personal problem with customizing rare figures as I am usually not after them! But I understand the principle - so in that I am against customizing a rare figure. I'd be pretty burnt up inside if it WAS a figure I wanted.