Making customs ~ advice needed

[whitecandy]

Hello all you super talented customisers, I would like to pick your brains if you don't mind

I am starting to get into making custom figures and started on my first one tonight. I was just wondering (and I am sure the answer will be very simple and I will kick myself) but when you all show pictures of your customs before painting/detailing, they are completely blank with no paint on and are a neutral colour. How do you get rid of the colours/outfits etc that the figures have on them already?

Thanks in advance!

[wenxina]

I'm not a customizer, but from what I've seen, the neutral colored parts of the figures are usually where the customizer has resculpted the figure, using whatever clay/moldable media that customizers use. And perhaps some customizers use a base coat, which I would imagine would be useful, especially if completely changing the color of the piece.
I could be really off, but from the "process" pics I've seen, that's my understanding of the ya know, process.

[Jsebold87]

The neutral look is sculpt, the original paint has not been removed. If you look at different in progress photos, you can see some of the original factory paint still on the figures, so we don't remove it. We paint over everything, so you wouldn't need to remove the original paint.

[mango]

The parts where you see no color is the parts that I've been sculpted on, so there is sculpey on it, which "hide" the color behind. But if we use parts that don't need to be modify, the color will still be there. Hope that helped

[whitecandy]

Great, thanks everyone, this is all very useful. I know what I am meant to be doing to start with now!!