#popprocess

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Our videos have come to an end. Womp wooooomp. The next step was fixing that janky beard and it took hours of me scrubbing his face to get rid of the stickers they used (and placed all wonky) on to our model’s face. It simply was not good enough for Billy Russo.

So I painted the beard by hand which TERRIFIED me but I survived. The left side of his mustache bugs me a little, but I’m going to pretend he was snarling because GAWD what a look. Again, I messed up and actually ended up repainting one of his eyes brows too (which I did not mention in my mission debriefing but I bet his new owner can’t tell which one so)

After agonizing over that beard, I actually painted a more billy looking hairline, which is not visible in these photos because damn these pops have big ol noodles and added a lil zipper to his sweater. His hair got a paint job too because some of that also got rubbed off- seriously y’all, if you’re going to do one of these just assume you’re gonna be fixing your own mistakes the whole dang time.

At this point Mrs Adams was exhausted because only Mrs Adams can take this and this and give you.... a Princess.

Step Six: Shave and a Haircut..... two bits.

So that’s it. That was the PopProcess.

Check out the finished product on @something-tofightfor ‘s page as she is the very proud owner of her own Custom Billy Pop.

Thanks for watching!

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haaaaaaaaaaaaaave you met my husband?

I couldn’t let Billy have all the attention, obviously. So when choosing a reference for this VERY IMPORTANT cosmetic detail, I chose the only man I’ll ever truly love. A crazy rebel bastard who, to my knowledge, never blew up a building or robbed a check cashing joint or suffered from a traumatic brain injury. Amnesia au but with sam NO. NO MORE.

Step Feyeve: 👀👀👀👀

I ended up redoing this step like ..... 7 more times because I kept erasing the birthmark. So idk why I’m including this here.

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MY FAVORITE STEP.

Now, no self respecting Marine is going to walk into a fight to the death without a little camo on right? Frank did, but that’s besides the point. Billy needs to slip in and out of industrial style warehouses undetected before blowing them to smithereens in the #hottest slowmo sequence known to man. What was I saying? Oh right. Camo. Billy Russo needs to blend in to all the bright lights and colors of a moving carousel. So OBVIOUSLY he needs a splash a color on his sleeves. Just a splash. He ain’t no painted pony, k?

Step Four: BILLY WHERE’D YOUR ARMS GO I CANT SEE THEM ANYMORE AHHHHH

I used my Tombow dual brush pens. They were a lovely and thoughtful gift to me a few years ago from myself. Because I am lovely and thoughtful. And I have a pen obsession.

I also painted up his shoulders a lil more and added a Velcro patch because the devils in the details. Ask Billy.

PS. This is the best he looked through out the whole process because shortly after this, I screwed up and melted all the paint off one of his sleeves and had to start over 🤦🏽‍♀️ I’m still bitter about it but at least I got this version on video.

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Y’all. We spent too much a totally normal amount of time staring at screen caps of Billy in Curtis’s apartment and Billy in his office at Anvil and Billy digging a bullet out of his arm before drinking whiskey and looking..... 🥴

ANYWHO. We determined that Russo’s tac pants were not simply black canvas catching and dispersing light over them, but infact a very dark grey. It matters, ok? Also shout out to Billy Russo for changing his pants before pulling a bullet out of his arm. What a power move. #fashion

Step Three: Billy “fancy pants” Russo and his fancy pants.

I don’t have much commentary here. This is just as close as I’ll ever come to touching Billy’s butt. So there’s that.

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Disclaimer:

When working with acetone to strip away details—— don’t accidentally strip away something you hadn’t planned to. At some point during step one, I managed to take off a chunk of Billy’s beard, which did not please him. So I put a bag over his head and taped it close to protect the money maker. This did not please him either, but it kept him safe. I hope no one is triggered by trash!Billy.

Step Two: Where do pirates keep their armies? IN THEIR SLEEVIES.

The quarter zip from episode 13 of season one is quote unquote what dreams are made of and tbh, Billy Russo looks stealthy as hell, so I agree. But this ain’t no run of the mill black sweatershirt NO. BILLY RUSSO IS ALL ABOUT FASHION AND FUNCTION. So I painted his sleeves a lighter grey to later be covered in camo.

Tips: very thin layers of paint build up slowly but smoothly. I used a heat tool to set each layer cause I’m impatient.

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No one asked for this, but you should have. So I give it anyways. Here is what I did to take this lil guy from the track all the way up to Brooklyn.

Meet Billy Russo. He’s still in the pre-Billy stage (the saddest stage for sure) but he’s ready for a make over.

I abandoned the watch idea because idk, seemed hard and my desire to experiment was low. Luckily, our base was relatively Billy like to begin with and most of his changes were purely cosmetic. Very on brand for Billy Russo, if I do say so myself.

Step One: strip (Billy’s favorite step)

I didn’t expect to spend so much time rubbing Billy’s chest on a Tuesday afternoon, but 2020 is already so GD weird, why not?