Intermediate Custom Tutorial-Viduus
Okey dokey. This tutorial is going to be a complete Start-To-Finish tutorial of this guy right here:
In this tutorial we will cover the basics of full body repaints, eyes, and rehairing as well as the more advanced topics of sculpting furry feet, dyeing hair gradients, and paint blends. Fun stuff yea? AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok the first step in any custom is bait selection....So lets head to my bait bin:
Prepare to meet you maker Petal Blossom! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! But first....a trim:
Now decapitation....my weapon of choice is this Dollar Tree exacto knife, which I keep expecting to snap, but has yet to. Ive had it for about a year too...hmm...
Now we gotta get that tail and roots out. This is where my unnecessarily huge hemostats come in handy.
Alright. Now we are ready to get down to the hard/fun part lol. The real customization process. OK, heres my arsenal of stuff I will be using this time around, plus a few things not pictured. Ive got paintbrushes, make up sponge, water cup, scissors, comb, hemostats, hair, pony, glue, Apoxie Sculpt, pure acetone, my rehairing tool (a LadyDayDreamer tool from like 4 years ago), twist ties, paints and of course Soda.
Ok so, lets get those symbols off shall we? Its usually a good idea to wipe down the rest of the pony with acetone, especially if you are dyeing her. They are usually nasty :p
Nasty. So, since this guy is going to be....a guy, we need to give him adorable furry hooves. This is my first time doing this! I will be using Pop-girl's brilliant method for sculpting them, which requires making a mold. Heres what we will be needing:
The basic idea is to take a wad of sculpey and mold it around the BB's hooves then flatten it out to use to mold the clay on the new boy's hooves. Make sense? Maybe? Well here we go:
Looks good! I didnt flatten it totally, I left a curve so it will fit the pony's foot better. Now we gotta bake this....so Ive got about 15 minutes to kill.....what should I do with all this free time? Hmmmmmm
All good options, but I opted for the Cocoa Pebbles....OHM NOM NOM NOM NOM!!!!!!! Ok, by now the mold should be done....but beware, its hot. Dont pull an AC and grab it straight out of the oven 
Ok, here we go! Ive got my apoxie all mixed up and the now cool mold. I started by making a thick (1/4 inch thick) snake of clay that was just long enough to wrap around the pony's foot.
I smushed it so it curves down to the edge of the ponys foot. Now blend it up so it smoothly transitions into the pony's leg.
Now to apply the mold. I used a rolling motion across the clay to make a continual imprint with the mold....if that makes sense???
Looks good so far. Now just continue around the whole foot:
Awesome! Now just 3 more....
YAY! My first g3 boy! And it was so EASY! Huge kudos to Pop for this amazing method! It rocks! 
Now to attach his horn...
LOL done! ...................what? >.> I can take shortcuts sometimes. Regardless, this stuff takes awhile to set up, so we gotta move on to something else while we wait. To the dye pot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok, now we have to wait for glue/sculpt to dry....so time to get to work on hair dye! Our supplies...of course you can use whatever colour you want....But this is my little setup.
Wea re going to be dying dollyhair's Blizzard a nice shade of blue. Color test:
Perfect! Ok for this design I am making a gradient tail that needs to match two stripes in the mane, so we will be custom dying all the blue hair. First the stripes for the mane:
Looks good. Now the fun part the tail. The design is one that calls for the tail to start out blue, fade to white then back to blue....Heres how were going to to that! First make a tail. The next part is hard to explain but easy to see, so here we go:
Taadaa! ^_^ Looks good! Its important to remember that hair absorbs dye like crazy, so when dipping it in dont dip too much of it in, cuz the dye will bleed up the hair. Makes the gradient part easy, but if youre not careful you may dye more than you wanted to. Ok at this point I set the hair out to dry then went to bed. The next morning the clay is set, glue is dry and the hair is all dry too! Back to work!
Time to paint! This is all the stuff I'll be using. My painting method varies a little from most people in that....well Im lazy. I dont thin my paint very often and I rarely if ever blend colours. Having said that, heres how I get my paint on:
Dip brush in water:
Brush on towel:
Dip in paint:
Then go nuts! The first layer almost always looks like crap. If it looks really thing and watery, dab the brush out more. If its too thick and youre getting brush strokes, then after you get paint on your brush dip just the very tip into the water again. Works for me anyways XD
Ok! A few coats later...and I'm ready to move onto the more interesting parts.
Time for the eyes. Eye painting supplies:
The way I will be painting these eyes requires 3 colours of paint. Usually all the same/similar colour. In this case its 3 shades of bright green. And of course you will need white and black. First lets get the white done. Get a nice blob on white on your brush and dab it in the corner of the eye:
Now spread that out along the rim of the eye:
Now just fill it in. I usually just make sure the corners are nice and the middle can look like poo, its being painted over anyways :P
Ok, after that dry, its time to do the black. Get another blob on your brush, this time dab it in the middle of the upper lid:
Now draw it along the upper lid to each corner of the eye, tapering it as best you can:
I know its hard to see on a black pony LOL I'll get a better example I swear....Ok now draw an arch from the upper lid to the bottom:
Repeat on the other side so it makes a circle...or close to one:
Now fill it in and draw a line from the circle to the outer corner of the eye:
Now I would normall do lashes, but this is a dude and you wouldnt be able to see them anyways!
Next is the iris. The fun colour part of the iris! Whoohoo! Sadly, my camera was not so excited.....It annihilated the shades of green...so I made this awesome photoshop version LOL I can show the first step of painting the base colour with pics, then we gotta switch to my awesome graphics...
Ok for the base colour (green) start at the same place you did for the black and make an arc, following the edge of the black
Now start a arc going across the top:
Complete the circle and fill it in:
Ok, now we go to awesome graphics lol! I will try toexplain as best I can. Ok after you get the base colour down (and its dry) take the darker colour and make stripes radiating out from the center, they dont need to be very thin, its better if they are a little thick. Leave space between them. The next, make the same width stripes between the dark ones using the lightest paint. Now go back over the dark stripes with thin little light stripes and thin dark stripes over the light ones.
OK hopefully I didnt completely lose everyone? I think the pic explains pretty well....
Then of course you paint in the pupil and a white dot for the eye.....uhhh....reflection thing. Just put a white dot. Or a few...I always put three, but thats just my thing.
Ok eyes are done for now. Now we will work on our color gradient. As you may have noticed, I already did some in the eye pictures cuz I was waiting for the eyes to dry....I told you I'm impatient.....and lazy. Its a terrible combination. Regardless....here we go!
This is a pic of all the tools we will need for this step: a pony in need of a gradient, paint in the colour of the desired gradient, and a make-up sponge...I re-use mine lol.....Ok. So I'm cheap, impatient and lazy......Moving on. Squeeze a tiny little blob of paint onto the corner of the sponge. I personally think the thicker end of the sponge is better.
Now just very lightly dab that paint at the bottom of the leg, where the paint gradient will be a solid colour, in this case blue.
Continue dabbing to spread the paint on fairly evenly. Dont worry about it being a nice even colour, we are going to be doing multiple layers. Just keep dabbing until you start to run out of paint, then move up the leg to sort of fade the colours into each other.
This is what one layer looks like. ^ Go all the way around the foot and put down a layer of paint. You may need a nother blob of paint. Wait for it to dry, which wont take any time at all...now get a new blob of paint, and start again.
Heres the second layer. ^ The bottom gets more even and the blending starts to shape up. Looking good so far. Im not going all the way to the bottom of the foot here because his "hoof" will be white.
Ok here we go, Im mostly done with the hooves, there a few spots to go back over with another layer, but overall looks good. I also dabbed a little blue onto the top of his horn. Now it time to paint his hooves white...
I just used a small detail brush to paint on the white, the same one I used for the eyes. Heres a better pic of the gradient finished:
Now we are ready to give him his spots....thats fairly easy so ill skip right over it. It just involved dabbing blobs of paint on to him with various size paint brushes...
Taadaa! Now...I almost forgot his white muzzle.....Once again we need our trusty make-up sponge...
A little whit paint...a little dabbing....a couple pf layers and here we go!
Now we are going to seal the eyes so they look nice and super glossy. Heres my best friend, Triple Thick sealant. Its awesome for giving eyes that deep wet look,( just like that cheap nail polish from Walmart!) and it doesnt yellow. 
Just get a nice size blob on your brush and spread it around so you get a nice thick coat over the whole eye. Now its all shiny! It takes about an hour to dry, so go take a break. It might look a little foggy when its wet but dont worry. See?
It will be clear I promise.
Ok, now that your eyes are dry, thats all for the fun painting part. Now we just need to give him some hair! Heres my tools for the rehairing part:
1. The pony of course...and glue.
2. Soda or beverage of your choice.
3. Hair
4. Hemostats or pliers
5. Rehairing tool. Mine is an old LDD tool
6. Twist ties, I prefere the plastic covered ones.
7. Trusty scissors.
8. A comb....you'll find it helpful I promise.
9. My tail tool...aka bent wire.
Were gonna start with the tail since its already made. Usually this is last, but since we had to dye it, lets go ahead and get it out of the way. Heres my ultra-fancy tail tool. Its basically a long piece of wire bent in half.....yay!
We are going to thread it in through the butt hole, loop end first, up through the neck hole and then pull it open a little bit.
Now take the tail, secured with twist ties, and thread it through the loop, so the loop is about at the middle of the tail...Like so:
Now you just pull! A thick tail may give you some trouble, so I usually use my plier or hemostats to pull on the wire if I cant get it by hand...
Now just figure out which end is the non-twist tied one and pull it out. Taadaa! Youve got tail!
The next part is a little less exciting. I always rehair with the tool because it is SO much easier. Heres the basic jest of it. You take a plug of hair twice the length of what you want the ponys hair to be and loop it over your index finger of your non-dominant (im my case left) hand. Make sure the hair is "folded" in equal halves. Now take the tool and slide the longer bottom prong under the strand of hair, the plus should slide right into the little "mouth" of the tool... Like thus:
Generally you would be holding the tool, but I gotta take pics LOL Now you just switch the plug to the hand holding the tool, Like so:
Holding the tool like that you pick the plug hole you want the hair in and press the longer prong of the tool to it, then you press down and in at the same time and it should slide right in! Now let go of the plug of hair and pull the tool out. It will slide right out and leave the hair snugly in place! It sounds hard until you do it, then it makes more sense lol. Sometimes if you have a weird large plug holes you might have to cram 2 or 3 plugs of hair in there. You can do it all at once or separately, depending on the size of your tools needle and your own confidence that your tools wont break. Ok, moving on. Youve got one plug of hair in!
Now you just need 4927649276026 more! Well....not really. But its a lot and its boring and repetitive, but still faster than the wire method @_@. Ok so far Ive finished the forelock that was made from the dyed blue. Now for the white part of the mane....I want to point out that usually I start at the bottom of the mane and work up to the forelock area....but for whatever reason I started at the top.
Approximately one Movie length of time later (Roadhouse, in case you were wondering....I love me some Swayze!) And we are done with the mane! Thank god right? Its not too fun, but it is kind of therapeutic when you get used to it...
Now we got to attach the head. Normally this would just entail putting the head back on, but I had to slice through the neck on this one, so we gotta glue it. This is also the time to glue the mane in, if you are going to. I usually just dribble glue down the line of plugs on the inside of the head. Tacky Glue is my fave, 'cause its not too thick, but it doesnt just run all over either. Ok Now take your glue of choice and blob it along the neck, be careful not to get to close to the edges or it will just leak all over.
Im using Tacky Glue here, its a good all purpose glue. Honestly I prefer Krazy Glue or Super glue, but Im out and this works pretty good. Now just stick the head on, and Voila!
One total pony! I usually let the head sit for at least half a day before I try to style anything, since I dont want the head popping off. Other than a little wetting of the hair to knock out that flyaway craziness, youre done! Congrats! Heres the finished product after all those hours. From this:
To this!
Not too shabby, huh? Well I hope you learned something! Let me know if theres anything specific you want help with, or anything I need to improve on! Hope this helped at least a little. ^_~