Introduce yourself and let readers know where they can see your work.
Hi my name is Kevin Delies im a happily married freelance sculptor from Germany. I'm a father of a gorgeous little daughter and soon a boy, whom I hopefully can convince better to like monsters and barbarians!
You can find some of my work on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kevindelies/ and Artstation - https://www.artstation.com/kevindelies
and some of my old JimPansen stuff on facebook - https://www.facebook.com/JimPansenCreations/
I know people often think your name is actually “Jim Pansen”. What’s the story behind that name?
I had to come up with a name for He-Man.org 15 years ago. I choose Jim Pansen because it sounds like Chimpanzee for Germans and Pansen is an evil smelling, dried beef stomach. Who doesn’t want to identify with this? Self-explanatory I picked the same name for marketing my stuff on Facebook.
How long have you been customizing action figures?
I already annihilated my complete vintage MotU and MASK collection back in the early nineties, with my then non-existent custom skills. I see it as a tragic coming of age story.
What got you into Mythic Legions?
My passion and love for pulp fantasy, Lord of the Rings, and sword and sorcery overall, prevented me from resisting these Frazetta-esque dreams, turned into plastic reality.
Yes, Mythic Legions are that good!
I know you did custom work and add-ons before Mythic Legions. Tell us about that.
Back in the heyday of MotU Classics I did a dragon head for Dragonblaster Skeletor for myself. Some collectors asked me to do one for them too. That started it. I even had a table with my MotUC customs at Power-Con in 2016, where I was able to geek-out a bit with Eric Treadaway. Thats also where Israel Ramirez was able to obtain the MotUC Aztec-Warrior I did (shown below). Unfortunatelly i wasn’t able to make it back to the US yet.
Do you have what you would call a signature custom, or any favorite customs you have done?
I recently sculpted a Dragon Armor for William Robert Post, which is something I wanted to have in Action-figure form since playing Skyrim. You can recognize the influence, but I instilled my own style into it. I also still like the scared trooper with kettle hat.
What are your favorite kinds of Mythic Legions customs to do?
Im usually a lazy customizer, cause most of the time I just switch out some parts, add on a new head and thats it. I'm very cautious with things you can’t reverse.
Nevertheless I absolutely love the interchangeability of the figures whereby your able to create your perfect version of a character. It´s a bit like an upgrade in an RPG, where a character will get a new armor part or a better weapon.
In addition to doing actual custom figures, you also do lots of sculpting work for figure add-ons. What is your process for creating new sculptures?
Technical I used to sculpt in Castilene and after that made the molds and casting. What a mess that was. It´s all digital now. I mainly use ZBrush and sometimes for hard surface 3DS Max.
The creative approach varies. With commissioned work you normally will get a design sketch which you then need to translate from 2D into 3D, while considering specific features of the final product.
With personal stuff it´s different. I constantly expose myself to art, mostly through art books, but also movies or other sculptures (including action figures). So my head will either just come up with ideas on its own, or I deliberately combine different things I find cool and while working on it, giving it a loose backstory in my head and let it evolve into something new.
What kinds of tools do you use for your customs work, including paints and brushes?
For painting I use mostly citadel paints and brushes. A little tip for painting the eyes: Use tooth picks! Cut them to the needed diameter and use them to stamp the iris. A Gundam Marker GM01 200 is great for adding the pupils.
What would people be surprised to learn about your customizing or collecting hobby?
I sold a lot of other action figures I once collected. Things on a shelf just start to collect dust after a while. Not gonna happen with my Mythic Legions, because they are in a constant modification process and as a consequence are never getting boring to me. This sets ML apart from other figure-lines.
Final question - who is your favorite non-customized Mythic Legions figure?
Sir Gideon Heavensbrand! He reminds me of German knights. I even took him to Eltz Castle for a picture.
Published on 06.23.20