Defenders in Action
Dr. Strange

The Beast, Doctor Strange, and the Scarlet Witch in a basic diorama.

This one was the most fun of the 3. It is also the one that I am the happiest with.
There isn't really a lot of conversion to this kit. Just a lot of addition. The kit started out as the Aurora Cromagnon Man.
I didn't have to change much. Just took a little off the chin and cheelks with the dremel. Got rid of the goatee he had and thinned the face down a little.
After assembling and cleaning the seams, it was time to make the shirt. Used a piece of tissue paper. I just cut the rough shape I needed. Draped it over the figure, then brushed on a bunch of watered down white glue. Worked the wrinkles around until they looked right to me. Folded a piece of tissue and wrapped it around for the belt. Brushed on more watered down glue. Let it dry, then I gave it a couple coats of primer to help stiffen it up even more. Painted the flesh. Did the hair black, and painted the rest blue. Sealed it all after it cured. Went back and painted the eyes, and eyebrows. Added the white to the hair. Painted the belt. Added the symbol to his shirt. After that was cured and sealed, I went in with a dark blue wash to highlight the folds. Did an ever so slight highlighting to the raised areas.

Time to move on to the cape. After kicking around a few ideas, this is what I came up with.
I started with some heavy duty paper towels from work. These are blue and almost cloth-like. I cut the cap to the size and shape I wanted. Then I coated it with some spray on polyeurothane. Did 2 coats to each side. This helped to stiffen it up a little. Not as much as I had wanted though. Now I needed to start to shape the cape. The top that goes around his head was hung off the edge of my painting platform. I used a toothpick under the center of it for support. Then I hit it with a heavy coat of polyeurothane. This caused the piece to sag almost straight down. Repeated this a couple times, until it was fairly stiff and in the shape I wanted to curve around the head. Coated the inside a couple of times.
Now the head area was done, I needed to shape the rest of it. It was kind of tricky with the large size of the cape, and the amound of folds I wanted to have. I ended up hanging the whole thing on a twisted up coat hanger. Took me several attempts to get it right. Then I started coating with the clear poly again. First few coats were tough. I couldn't go too heavy because the weight would cause the cape to sag and fall off the hanger. I think I ended up using about 6 coats of poly, 5 coats of white primer, and 5 coats of clear to get is stiff enough for my satisfaction. Then I painted it red, and clear coated again. Painted the yellow stripe around the inside and outside of the cape. Clear coated again. Washed the yellow with a little black, and drybrushed a faint hint of gold on the high spots. Clear coated again.
Word of advice if you want to try this. Be carefull when putting the first few coats of anything on the paper towel. It has a tendency to want to stick to whatever surface it is sitting on. Since the paper towels aren't very strong, they can be easily ripped when you go to move them or flip them over. The solution I found was to wait about 15-20 minutes for it to set up, then pick it up and move it to another spot in my painting area. It is still wet enough that it won't stick too bad, but set up enough that is won't stick to the new area.

I glued the cape in place using 5 minute 2 part epoxy. Worked great.