Customizing has obviously become a large part of the “Legions” brand. The ability to “pop and swap” the figures, or to customize them by adding new paints and parts, has helped to foster an incredibly creative community of figure fans who use the Legions lines as their canvas. What you may find interesting regarding Legions customizing is that the idea of using these figures to create new characters actually started long before the toys were even in the hands of fans.
In this “Customizing Corner” article, which also kind of works as a “Blast from the Past” piece, we wind back the clock to the earliest days of the Mythic Legions line and the early “digibash” customs that were being done. As an added bonus, we will also see how those early Legions customizing ideas were finally realized many years later by one of the premier customizers in our community.
Digibashing Legions
First off, what is a “digibash”? This term is short for “digital kitbash”- basically a Photoshop (or other graphics program) creation that combines different images of figures and parts to create a new idea or “custom”.
In the early days of the line, while the first Kickstarter was running and long before the toys themselves were produced, these digital creations were the only way fans would visualize how they imagined the parts could be combined. While there were a number of early Legions fans posting these digital mockups on the old SourceHorsemen forum, one creator in particular was very active – Eric Poisez.
Eric did not only combine parts from various figures to imagine how the pieces would look together, he also added new color decos, reconfigured some of the parts (just like any customizer would), and he created some truly unique and interesting characters! A number of those characters can be seen in the images on this article.
Zombie Brings the Digibashes to Life
As you look at the digibash examples shown so far, and the ones that will follow throughout this article, you will notice that in addition to those purely digital creations, we are also showcasing photographs of actual Mythic Legions custom figures based on these early fan designs! All of these customs are the work of Eric Borries, more commonly known as Zombie13.
Zombie has been a fan and supporter of Four Horsemen Studios well before the days of Legions. In fact, Zombie used to frequent those old forums and show off custom 7th Kingdom and Gothitropolis figures years before he took to Legions!
As an old forum member, Zombie saw these digibash ideas when they were first posted, and a short time ago he decided to begin creating actual Mythic Legions customs using those designs. Those customs are shown throughout this article. For each digibash presented, one of Zombie’s custom creations stands alongside it.
One thing that is interesting about these designs is the incredible creativity they show, not only in the initial design, but also in how Zombie translated it. Eric Poisez was creating these ideas before any fan knew how the parts would actually work together, so some of his ideas are not simply part swaps. For example, the “Heavy Armor Infantry Captain” below uses different pieces of loin armor under the pauldrons and as a secondary loin piece. Zombie absolutely captured that in his custom, but these are things that obviously require some cutting and gluing of existing parts!
In other cases, like with the Goblin Commander below, the figure design is essentially a straightforward repaint of an existing Legions toy, but Zombie still captures the needs of that custom expertly in his version.
Two of the harder customs to create from Eric’s digibashes were Spineus and Humerus the Raven Slayer. This is because, in each case, these designs made using parts that did not yet exist in the Legions line.
In the case of Spineus, Eric showed the figure with a fully skeletal torso. This does not yet exist as an official part, but the incredible community of 3D sculptors and printers who make amazing add-ons for the Legions line helped Zombie fulfill this requirement. The part show below is a custom skeleton torso that was sculpted by Walter DeMarco (aka MASS Customs) and printed by Len LeGuardia of Wolf King Customs.
For the Raven Slayer, Eric used a digital version of a helmet that came with one of the Gothtropolis Raven figures, but the actual helmet would not fit on the Legions head as shown, so Zombie went to work and sculpted his own! You can see the image below of this helmet as a work in progress, using actual wing helmet attachments along with the piece he sculpted himself to create the final helmet.
Unused Digibash Customs
While Zombie’s work covers an impressive number of the digibash designs that Eric did, there are some that he never got around to doing. Some of these unused digibash ideas are presented below, both as a way to showcase these creations, and as inspiration for other customizers who may want to take a shot at bringing some of these designs to life the way Zombie has done with his digibash customs project.
Published on 05.18.22