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I started collecting action figures when I purchased the First Order Stormtrooper from the Black Series line. It was the time when The Force Awakens was starting to hit theatres in my country. Being a Star Wars fan myself I was swept away by the hype of the movie and buying up stuff that were related to the movie. So, the Black Series line from Hasbro was my first experience of collecting action figures as an adult.
So I first asked George, why do people customise their figures?
As I went along accumulating figures of my favourite characters from the Star Wars movies, I was exposed to this group of customizers who called themselves Oldboy CTTS. I came to know about them through @ starwarstheblackseries on Instagram. They were being featured on that page for their work on the Luke Skywalker headscuplt which was based on the final scenes from The Force Awakens. This group of customizers are based in Bangkok, Thailand. At that time Hasbro has not announced an old Luke figure from The Force Awakens, so this was something interesting that caught my attention. The level of details and paint job on the headscuplt was fantastic. I ordered the headsculpt from them of course and that’s where I got to know the spokesperson from the group, George Wong.
Right now the Oldboy crew is split into two teams. Tattoo team with the shop in downtown Sukhumvit area and the Headsculpt team. Headsculpt team is led by X (painter/sculptor) & Go (caster, fitting) and me as the page admin and promoter.
I think for people who enjoy customs, it adds a layer of enjoyment and value to our collection. Something different is always nice, be it good or bad, we all start somewhere. So, let’s talk about the team behind Oldboy CTTS and how it came into existence?
Actually, X and Go used to be tattoo artists too but somewhere along the road they got into collectibles and mainly 1:6 scale. Fascinated by the detail that these collectibles were able to replicate from real life people and movie characters.
From then they were in love with this craft and the only way to move forward was to sculpt. During that time, they started sculpting one of our earliest projects, Buakaw a famous Mix Martial Arts/Thai Kickboxer. This received quite a lot of attention from the local 1:6 community. This really gave them the confidence to move forward, although they realized one thing is that there’s already a lot of pro customs for 1:6, so they decided to move down to the 1:12 scale…absolutely no local competition back then. Could you tell us a little bit more of how you came to be involved with the team? I came into the picture when I got in touch with them to commission for Hasbro 6” Star Wars repaints. The results left me in awe. After that, I met up with the artists a few more times before proposing that we should go international.
The fascination soon led the two artists to start customising figures heads. Practicing and learning from Youtube tutorials and other sources for headscuplt painting for custom third party heads, Sideshow and even Hasbro 12” vintage.
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