Rocky the champ custom toy sculpture

This is a second custom Munny I ever made and published on my blog here http://themodelmaker.net/rocky-munny-kidrobot-contest/. I did it for Kidrobot’s Munny annual competition they organized back in the days they were gaining popularity. I was new to this scene and wanted to sculpt a lot with this one. Original toy’s hand reminded me boxing gloves so I started to think about boxing stars. The first thing on my mind was Rocky Balboa, one of the heroes of my childhood. I watched this movie many times on my old VHS, happy times :) I did some research and found this brilliant caricature painted by Sebastian Kruger. My brain started planning how to approach this project. I immediately saw the Sylwester’s face on the munnys head. I needed to extend it vertically and create huge jaw using munny's ears as a base. It looked like a challenge, so I decided to do it. Here you can see some progress photos. I extended it by adding some plastic pipe I found in my room and lots of Sculpey. I was designing as I go, this was one of my first sculptures, so I had very little experience at that time. You can see my quick sketches with a sharpie on the surface of the toy.

The body is from 7 inches DIY toy, but the head is taken from 4-inch version. I built the ring using pieces of styrene and wooden sticks as lines. The little teddy came with the toy as an accessory so I painted him as his tiny knocked-out opponent. It brought my childhood memories and was so much fun sculpting.

This little guy won second place in “Best movie event reenactment” category at Munny Munth Contest !!! You can check this and other winning entries here https://blog.kidrobot.com/munny-munth-winner-with-paul-budnitz/

The judge in this category was the designer and creator of Munny toy; Paul Budnitz. This was his words describing his decision:

“When I first looked at this toy, I couldn’t figure out where the MUNNY went. But if you look closely (and at the build photos the creator generously gave to us) you will notice that Rocky’s shorts are also MUNNY’s legs. Brilliant! Sly is looking a bit old and depressed, which I also approve of because I imagine this is true to life once his career went downhill after he fought Mr.T. Furthermore, he's just kicked the crap out of a little Teddy Bear who lies dead on the ground. 2nd prize for a well thought out original design, solid craftsmanship, and for killing the teddy bear.”

So all the hard work was worth it. It started my creative few years working on different designs and developing my sculpting skills. I am still growing in this, taking more complex projects and sculptures, I will share later here on Steemit. I hope you like it, feel free to comment and share. It gives lots of positive energy knowing that my work can be seen around the world thanks to this amazing thing like internet and I hope some of you will discover toy customization an try it as another way to unleash your creativity!