Season 6, Episode 2: Bargaining: Part 2

Original Air Date: 2 October 2001
As a gang of demon bikers attack, the Scooby Gang is chased away from Buffy's grave thinking that the resurrection was a failure. They do not realize that the Slayer is alive... right where they left her. Buffy is awake but disoriented and afraid as she must claw her way out of her own grave. Buffy may be alive again, but the trauma she suffers is far from over.

The idea for this piece came when found a coffin while junk shopping. I couldn't believe how perfect to scale it is to the 6 inch figures. My idea was this. I wanted to create Buffy when her friends bring her back to life. This figure has been made a few times by other customizers, so I had to put a different spin on it. My thought was to make Buffy coming out of the ground and have the coffin busted open and made to look like it is underground.

I was eager to get this project started. I first had to find a box to put the underground pieces in. A regular box would not work because it would warp. I had a few plastic shoe boxes but I wanted something more boxy. I finally found a small plastic crate. I over turned the crate so the bottom would serve as the top. I had to cut off one of the sides and some of the ends so it wasn't so deep. That was not easy to do! The fun part was going through all my scrap junk parts and seeing what I could use for the underground. After finding many scrap bits I screwed them inside the box. There were a lot of gaps in between pieces so I also had some old FEMO clay that I broke into rock-ish chunks, boiled the pieces, then hot glued them throughout the inside of the box. Here are some pictures.

With coffin:

Without coffin and with all the pieces screwed in place.

Here are some pictures of the broken chunks of clay. The coffin is in the pictures as well. I used my heat gun to soften the plastic (it is made from really hard plastic--like CD case plastic). Then I used some clay to sculpt over the top where it said the name of the game that used to be inside the coffin.

Here is a picture of the top of the box. I also had to use the heat gun to soften the plastic enough to cut a hole in the top.

For Buffy, I was originally going to use mostly a Buffy bot body with a OMWF Buffy head. That didn't work since her shoes in the show were high heels. There were two figures I could have used. Princess Cordy, or OMWF Anya. Since the shoes were closed--no toes, I opted to use Anya's legs. These things were dang hard to detach from the skirt. I ended up cutting them out! Since I lost some of the length in the leg, I cut up part of an Angel arm (since you can't really use those arms with him holding the stakes for anything else.) I then attached that to the knee area of a Buffy Bot bottom. I decided to sculpt over the dress to save clay. I also decided to use Gift Dawn torso since her top looked like Buffy's dress (and 1 arm from Gift Dawn with a different Dawn shoulder part) . I used a YW Cordy arm for the other side. And the OMWF Buffy head. Here was my Frankenstein.

I didn't notice that she looked too long in the leg area. I even stood her up against another figure just to check for proportion. See if you can notice something with her length (that is if you didn't notice it from the earlier pictures)....

A good friend who also makes custom figures, Nathalie, pointed out to me that she looks way to long. After really looking at it, she was right. I'm not sure how or why. I sadly had to rip off all the cay (but I did end up using it for scrap dirt chunks in the display). I decided to cut off the Buffy Bot dress, and I cut down some of the legs. Once I got a new dress sculpted it looked much better.

Here are pictures of the underground, painted and the newly sculpted Buffy.

The next thing I did was cover the outside of the crate with foam board. I also covered the front part with foam board because you can see gaps where the pieces didn't fill in. I had a lot of fun painting this part of the set. I mixed sand and tiny chunks of broken clay in with paint. I also mixed in some green spongy plant stuff. I only used this to paint the outside to make it look like the underground. I just used plain paint for the inside of the box. You will see in later pictures the outside of the box. I also had to use the foam board to cover the top. There were ridges in the "top" part of the crate and I didn't want to use pounds and pounds of clay filling in the gaps to make the grass (look back at earlier pictures of the gaps on the top of the crate). So I painfully cut out pieces to fit inside the gaps. Then I covered that all with a lot of Premo sculpy clay. (Thank you Nancy Hagen for all the clay you gave me--was that your way of saying you now want a personalized figure of yourself?!?!) Here are some pictures of the top:

The next step was to sculpt Buffy. She was relatively easy to do. The hair was a little tricky. I tried to make it fan a little forward since she's leaning a bit, but that wasn't working how I wanted it to. I think the hardest part was getting her in the position I wanted, glue some rocks where her feet should go, then get the arms positioned correctly. Luckily (but barely) she could slid in and out of the hole so I could paint her and make any minor changes.

Here is Buffy, nearly sculpted.

For the casket I wanted it to look more authentic. I used a long piece of plastic for the bar for carrying the casket. Then to make the hinges I used 3 Cordelia bags and cut off the shoulder straps. I used the part closest to where it connected to the bag. I also used two double blade axes and used each blade for the spot where the hinge attach. Here is the picture I used to help guide me with making this:

Here are my before and after pics:

I did take a piece of white fabric and glued it into ridges. Then I glued that inside the casket. I cut some of it away to make it look like Buffy ripped it. There is dirt on top of the casket and inside since she had to dig her way out.

I did also have a board I used for the bottom. I glued clay to it and painted it. and it is hot glued to the crate. Here are some pictures with Buffy not yet painted:

Painting Buffy was easy. I tried to give her an expression of worry and shock. I think the figure looks much better in person than in pictures. I just couldn't get a good picture! I had a hell of a time painting what was on her grave stone. My brush wasn't cutting it and I didn't have a paint pen. So I did end up painting with the brush, but it's a sloppy job. You can make out some words, but really, it's an unimportant detail.

Anyway, here are the rest of the pictures! Oh, I did realize that I didn't paint blood on her hands so I did fix that!