[PHX Customs]

Day 15 - Behind the Scenes and Bonus Material

A scene that was shot and assembled, but that did not fit anywhere in our story























The Orca packed with Night Force







OB's Initial Concept and Sam's first pass at a box for the Cobra Night Watch








Reference Material for the Sea of Lost Souls




A map that Oreobuilder drew to keep track of the story




Some unused pics and art

[PHX Customs]

Script and photography by Oreobuilder
Story outline: bucky, danofthedead and Oreobuilder
Editing and all art by Doe138



























General Hawk by Oreobuilder
In a few panels of the old Marvel comic issues 13 and 38, Hawk appears in his Original 13 uniform but with a black shirt. Several customizers have made this custom in o-ring form. I drew inspiration from this, but wanted to make a modern version. I re-used the build from PoC Snake Eyes and 30th Stalker. These are excellent updated versions of the Original 13. I gave Hawk a vintage helmet and visor as a nod to the original. All in all, this was a very simple custom.

Head: Renegades Duke
Helmet: Vintage w. cast visor
Torso, arms: 50th Snake Eyes
Hands: Marauder MTK
Legs: 30th Stalker

















Dr Jane Colton by Oreobuilder
I wanted to include GI Jane in PHX Customs’ Resurgence Adventure Team project in Summer 2018. Unfortunately, I could not make it happen in time. However, while writing the script for the Night Force project, the story needed an Adventure Team member to cross over to set things up. A scientist fit the bill perfectly and I started looking through my fodder to see what I could build quickly.

Fortunately, I received my Zombie Lab Kickstarter figures a few weeks before. Keanna’s arms were already white. They required repainting to cover the weathering and some modding to make them fit the Marauder body, but the custom went together quite easily.

Head, torso, legs: Marauder Valkyries
Arms: Zombie Lab Keanna
Coat: RoC Dr Rex













Interrogator by Oreobuilder
We included Interrogator in our Resurgence 3 (2016) project. In our story, he, along with a team of other Cobra agents, was in Brazil to defend a secret Cobra base from GI Joe and the Iron Grenadiers. Bringing him back for our Night Force project was a late decision. He felt like a natural fit for our Cobra Shadow Brigade and I have always used him as the leader of the Crimson Shadow Guard in my Joe-verse. The Shadow Guard is the small unit that occupies the secret police and Intelligence gathering functions within Cobra.

For the custom, I wanted to emphasize his role in the Shadow Guard, so I started with a Crimson Guard torso and arms. I gave him a dark color scheme without going all-black.

Head: DTC Interrogator
Torso, arms, backpack: 25th Crimson Guard
Legs: ROC Destro
Feet: 25th Snake Eyes v3















Night Crawler by Oreobuilder
I made a couple of WORMS customs in 2016 for PHX Customs’ Resurgence 3 project. At the time, I had assembled a 3rd one and started painting it to use as an officer. However, other projects became more important to me and I stored the figure in my WIP bin and forgot about it.

During one of my recent WIP bin cleanups, I decided to repaint and repurpose it for this project even if it did not have a vehicle to drive. Instead, Sam came up with the idea of making him a named character and the leader of a Shadow Brigade garrison on the Island of Lost Souls.

Head: Marvel Chameleon
Torso, arms: Retaliation Ultimate Cobra Commander
Legs: RoC Destro
Webgear: DG Cobra Commander
Helmet: AVAC cast

[PHX Customs]

Script and photography by Oreobuilder
Story outline: bucky, danofthedead and Oreobuilder
Editing and all art by Doe138


































Wet Suit by Oreobuilder
Every summer, my wife and I spend a few days at the family cottage. We bring our hobbies with us. For me, that includes a beat up copy of James Kavanaugh's "new sculpt" reference book. Every time I leaf through it, I find a new figure I want to remake in modern form. Every time. I have looked at this version of Wet Suit many times, but I never really payed any attention to it. This time around, thinking about it from a Night Force perspective, it made sense. This is my diver version of Night Force Wet Suit.

Head, back pack, sled: RoC Wet Suit
Torso, upper arms: 25th Wet Suit
Legs, helmet: 25th Eel
Lower arms: 25th Cobra Flint
Hands: Marauder MTF















Wet Down by Oreobuilder
Every summer, my wife and I spend a few days at the family cottage. We bring our hobbies with us. For me, that includes a beat up copy of James Kavanaugh's "new sculpt" reference book. Every time I leaf through it, I find a new figure I want to remake in modern form. Every time. I have looked at Wet Down many times, but I never really payed any attention to it. This time around, thinking about it from a Night Force perspective, it made sense.

All: 25th Torpedo
Accessories: RoC Deep Six















Shore Viper by Oreobuilder
To man the Shadow Moccasin, I looked at several figures that I could make. Bucky planned on making Copperhead, so I wanted to make some troops. Initially, I was planning to make a couple of customs based on 2001's Sub Viper. I built them and was satisfied with the recipe, but as time went by, I could not find the motivation to paint them. I set them aside for another time and started thinking of an alternate solution.

Fortunately, while rummaging through my fodder bins, a simple solution appeared. I had some leftover RoC Aqua Viper Officers that had donated their helmets to Star Viper customs. I started with that black body, ordered some Lamprey helmets from AVACslab, repainted the red parts to blue and presto - night operations Lampreys.

Head: Retaliation Firefly
Helmet: AVACslab cast
Torso, arms: RoC Aqua Viper
Hands: PoC Shock Trooper
Legs: ROC Snake Eyes









Shadow Moccasin by Oreobuilder
A night operations moccasin has a dual purpose. First, it is well equipped to patrol swamps and rivers at Cobra Island. Second, the dark colors make it an excellent craft for night infiltration missions and raids against ports and other marine facilities. It is heavily armed and can carry a couple of troops.

My custom is mostly a simple black and gray repaint of the Fangboat. I did not like the large Retaliation launcher, so I replace both side guns with the ones from Serpentor's Air Chariot. The colors are partially inspired by the Moccasin's first Sunbow appearance in "the MASS Device" mini-series.

All: Retaliation Fangboat

[PHX Customs]

Script and photography by Oreobuilder
Story outline: bucky, danofthedead and Oreobuilder
Editing and all art by Doe138

































Nunchuk by Danofthedead
I would never have even considered Nunchuck as a possible project, but Sam threw the name out when we were brainstorming on characters for NF. I really grew to like the design as I worked on him… it’s essentially just Quick-Kick’s look with a bit of an update, but I think it works. I think the martial arts characters fit better into COBRA, with their robots and zombies and all their other zeit geist projects, but once I started thinking about Nunchuck and the rest of Joe’s “Ninja Force” as trainers, I really liked the idea. COBRA has ninjas, lots and lots of ninjas. The Joe’s need their martial arts characters to help train the rest of the team on how to hold their own against all those ninjas. That lead to my favorite part of this figure, his training dummy that’s wearing a COBRA face mask.

Spirit Iron-Knife - Head
Storm Shadow - Torso, Arms, Lower Legs
Jungle Viper - Belt
Anthony “Flash” Gambello - Legs



















Stealth Viper by Danofthedead
I think the Stealth Viper really grew out of wanting to use some parts I thought had potential together, and the character formed after I found pieces that were working well together. I’ve always liked OreoBuilder’s updated Resurgence Viper design and wanted to include bits of it here, thinking maybe these guys are Vipers who just upgrade some of their equipment as needed out in the field. I see them as not just infiltrators, but assassins and saboteurs, intended to get behind enemy lines and cause as much chaos as possible to destabilize an area for a larger Shadow Brigade invasion. I wanted the hood, arm and leg wraps, and scarf to give them an Assassin’s Creed vibe, the idea being maybe these toys were designed when Free Running/Parkour was at it’s most popular. I was having fun with their giant guns, and put a silencer on it almost as a joke, sometimes it’s doesn’t really feel like COBRA if there’s not something just a little ridiculous to it. Oh, and I also used my customizing super-secret on the Jungle-Viper knee pads… turn something upside down and it’s almost like a brand new piece. I think Sam had a sketch he did that aligned very much to what I was working on for these guys. The rest of my stuff for this round were mostly updated existing Hasbro ideas, so as an all original endeavor the Stealth Vipers might be my favorite from this batch.

Impact (The Corps!) - Head and Hood
Dusty - Torso, Upper Arms
Jungle Viper - Legs
Anthony “Flash” Gambello - Lower Torso
Quilan Vos - Lower Arms
Sergeant Jyn Erso - Scarf















Midnight Creeper by Danofthedead
Sometime early on, when we were discussing a COBRA version of Night Force, it occurred to me the Strike Team - Urban Division from the repaint years was a great source. I had never liked the final look of a lot of those figures, so I used it as a starting point to “fix” some that I thought had potential. I was not a fan of the camo pattern on the Urban Night Creepers… I think that pattern is actually a naval/sea color scheme so I dropped it. At the same time, I knew we were going to have a lot of all black figures if we didn’t do something to add some diversity to the look of all these night based characters. I tracked down a gray Snake-Eyes that shared the same mold as the 25th Night Creepers to minimize paint rub, and went with a dark brownish gray that I think worked pretty well. He was still just a little too plain when it occurred to me do go with a red visor, which turned out to just be that one little pop of color he needed. Once they were done, I knew I had to figure out how to bring in the Urban Division Storm Shadow design to our project...

Night Creeper - Head, Headwrap, Hands, Armor, Legs
Snake Eyes - Torso, Arms

[PHX Customs]

Script and photography by Oreobuilder
Story outline: bucky, danofthedead and Oreobuilder
Editing and all art by Doe138





































Overwatch by Oreobuilder
Overwatch was a late addition to the Night Force project. As the story was coming together, I wanted to include a sniper on the team. The build is completely based on the second version of Low Light. Since that figure does not look anything like the iconic first version, I renamed him and made him a new character. Low Light's original figure in already clad in Night Force colors, so using the 2001 version changes things up.

The build came together really quickly. When I started painting it, I considered changing the teal to gray, as I was not sure about the color. However, I decided to give it a try and I am glad that I stuck with it. I am really happy with the result.

Head: 25th Clutch
Helmet: ROC Pit Commando
Visor: Lego modified
Torso: DG Snake Eyes
Upper arms: 25th Mutt
Lower arms: 50th Beachhead
Upper legs: Retaliation Firefly
Lower legs: Retaliation GI Joe Trooper















Night Viper by Oreobuilder
Including Night Vipers as an enemy for Night Force in this project was a no-brainer. The only question was what their color scheme would be. I went back and forth between a couple of options. In the end, I really like the idea of blue Night Vipers, so I went with that color scheme. I used POC Cobra Trooper torsos and arms to avoid painting shoulder and elbow joints while also keeping the Cobra logo on the chest.

Torso, arms: POC Cobra Trooper
Everything else: 50th Night Viper

[PHX Customs]

Script and photography by Oreobuilder
Story outline: bucky, danofthedead and Oreobuilder
Editing and all art by Doe138



































Grunt by Oreobuilder
Grunt is my all-time favorite Joe. He is the character for which I have made the most customs (probably over a dozen now). Recently, I updated my OG13 customs and Grunt got a decent upgrade. Since I really like the recipe that I used, I figured I would give it a third (after green and tan) color scheme. I picked classic black with some green and brown highlights. I stayed away from red, which I usually use on my Night Force customs, to keep the original 13 feel.

Head, hands: Marauder MTF
Torso: ROC Snake Eyes
Collar: POC Steel Brigade
Helmet: Vintage Battle Pack
Arms, legs: DG Duke
Harness: 25th Snake Eyes



















Cobra Trooper by Oreobuilder
The original Cobra Night Watch set, released during the DTC years, was an interesting concept to me. I like the idea of a specialized unit within Cobra that oversees security and perimeter defense, especially from dusk to dawn. The concept was revisited during the 25th anniversary line with modified colors and updated figures.

The Trooper's build is a straight forward repaint of the POC Cobra Trooper. Even after all these years, it is still the best recipe that I have seen for this character. I used the 25th Night Watch Trooper's color scheme. I prefer it to the original gray. The black/gray/brown combo are very Cobra-ish as well as night ops.

All: POC Cobra Trooper

















Cobra Officer by Oreobuilder
The original Cobra Night Watch set, released during the DTC years, was an interesting concept to me. I like the idea of a specialized unit within Cobra that oversees security and perimeter defense, especially from dusk to dawn. Unfortunately, the figures in the set were all lacking in certain aspects, mostly the parts choices, but also the weapons and accessories.

The original set's Officer color scheme was pretty good in my opinion. My favorite figure from the set was the red masked Squad Leader. I have been thinking about making a modern version for a while. When putting this project together, this is the first figure that I wanted to include.

Head, helmet, torso, arms: POC Cobra Trooper, lower legs
Upper legs: 50th Flint (pouches and holsters removed)
Pouch, knife holster: Marauder MTF
Harness: 25th Cobra Officer

[PHX Customs]

Script and photography by Oreobuilder
Story outline: bucky, danofthedead and Oreobuilder
Editing and all art by Doe138



































Starduster by Oreobuilder
Starduster was a late addition to the Night Force project. For the story, we wanted a Joe to fight an air battle against Danofthedead's Shadow Vipers. Story-wise, it was a different change of pace to have an air battle featuring jet pack troopers rather than aircraft.

The custom took shape quickly. I picked parts that were already mostly in the proper colors. I simply painted some green accents and a few other details and it was done.

Head, hands: Marauder MTF
Torso: 50th Falcon
Arms: RoC Tunnel Rat
Legs: 50th Flint
Bandolier: PoC Steel Brigade

















Shadow Viper by Danofthedead
If he weren’t already called Shadow Viper, I don’t know if I would have tackled this one. The color scheme is great, but I never quite got how the filecard related to the figure shown. I started to think of them as specialist Astro Vipers design for EXTREMELY high altitude drops, kind of like a mini one man stealth bomber designed to quickly soften a target’s defenses. The Star Wars backpack felt like a solid update to the old flight gear (another patented “just turn it upside down!” fix) and after that a lot of the figure came down to making sure it could squeeze into the snug space between the guns. I considered adding some of Ragin’ Spoon’s Astro Viper gear, but I felt like the base torso really captured the look of the harness as is, and any additional gear wouldn’t fit into the tight space of the flight pack. A simple but solid update of a figure… but not I want an Astro Viper version that matches the parts.

Conrad “Duke” Hauser - Legs
Airraid - Torso, Arms
Firefly - Head
Astro Viper - Helmet
Imperial Death Trooper - Flight Pack

[PHX Customs]

Script and photography by Oreobuilder
Story outline: bucky, danofthedead and Oreobuilder
Editing and all art by Doe138









































Beachhead by Oreobuilder
While looking at my Night Force customs on the shelf, it occurred to me that I did not have a good Night Force version of Beachhead. I had been using the Rise of Cobra figure in that role. As much as I still like it, the parts have become a bit dated and I wanted to give him a modern facelift. I started with a build similar to the 50th version, but swapped the lower legs for ones that have no knee pads. I used the vintage Night Force Tunnel Rat as a color guide.

Head: PoC Steel Brigade
Torso, arms: 50th Snake Eyes
Legs: 50th Hit & Run
Backpack, satchel, Rifle: 25th Beachhead















Cobra Viper by Oreobuilder
I have made a few versions of Cobra Vipers for previous Resurgence projects. This time around, I wanted to change the recipe a bit. We talked about doing an enemy for our GI Joe Night Force squad to fight. We started with the Cobra Night Watch as it seemed like it was a natural fit. As the project evolved, we created the Cobra Shadow Brigade to expand the reach of the Night Watch. That opened up the possibility of doing more troop types. Vipers were the first that I wanted to add.

For inspiration, I turned to a non-official figure. First, a bit of back story, the Tri-State Vipers is a group of Joe fans originally based in NYC. Over the years, the group has grown to include members from several states and even countries. A few years ago, they released an exclusive o-ring Viper figure repainted in mostly black with red highlights. It is a terrific looking figure in my opinion and I thought that it would fit nicely with the darker Cobras in the Night Watch squad.

For the recipe, I used modern Viper parts for the top half, but decided to replicate the lower half recipe with 25th Viper and 25th BATS leg parts. Color-wise, I did not replicate the TS Viper slavishly, I used it as a guide. I also wanted it to fit with my other Shadow Brigade troops. Overall, I am very happy with the result.

Head, torso, arms, backpack: 50th Viper
Upper legs: 25th Viper
Lower legs: 50th BATS

[PHX Customs]

Script and photography by Oreobuilder
Story outline: bucky, danofthedead and Oreobuilder
Editing and all art by Doe138





































Chief Torpedo by Oreobuilder
I enjoy making modern version customs of New Sculpt figures. When I started collecting Joes as an adult, Valor vs Venom was going on full blast. In this way, that era of GI Joe is nostalgic for me. Making customs gives me an opportunity to add these characters to my collection while fixing all the little things that the original figures were known for. Chief Torpedo was a solid figure at the time and his Built to Rule colors make him a natural fit with our Night Force team.

Head: Spytroops Chief Torpedo
Torso, arms: POC Shock Trooper
Legs: 50th Flint
Harness: DG Duke
Backpack, mask: DG Shipwreck
Fins: 50th Eel















Firestorm by Danofthedead
Firestorm was hard to get an idea of how to incorporate to the “Resurgence” storyline. He’s based on Storm Shadow’s Strike Team - Urban Division figure, but we had already established Storm Shadow as a full time good guy in the Resurgence timeline. The colors were perfect for Shadow Brigade, and I was pretty sure Oreo Builder had already done a Night Force Storm Shadow in the first NF project. So I started to think, who is he? Well, he’s in the pack with the Urban Strike Night Creepers (now the Midnight Creepers for Shadow Brigade), so he’s obviously their leader. The ninja timeline is a little murky to me, but I think of the Night Creepers the elite of the “bad guy” split of the Arashikage clan. So maybe he’s another Arashikage Master? I started trying to come up with variations of Hard Master or Soft Master or Blind Master or Silent Master that sounded cool… “Shadow Master” wasn’t bad, but around then I remembered… hey… didn’t Firefly pose as an Arashikage for a while? Firefly’s in the Urban Strike Team already, and I didn’t really feel like doing a straight Firefly repaint… why not merge the two? When Firestorm popped to mind when I tried combining Firefly and Storm Shadow’s names, I was sold… he’d be Firefly in disguise, recruiting more Arashikage to the “dark side” and trying to take Storm Shadow’s slot (and pay grade bump) as COBRA’s resident Ninja Master.

Firefly - Head
Blind Master - Base Figure, Sash
Hard Master - Shuriken

[PHX Customs]

Script and photography by Oreobuilder
Story outline: bucky, danofthedead and Oreobuilder
Editing and all art by Doe138













































Breaker by Oreobuilder
After finishing all my customs for PHX Customs Night Force project (Winter 2019), I started writing the scripts for the pictures. The guys and I had talked about the story in broad terms, but it was time to plan out the storyboards. While I was working on those, I realized that we would need a few background characters to fill out the first couple of days. This custom is a simple LBC. I threw together a bunch of black parts that work together. It was a quick bash, but it helped flesh out the world we were trying to create.

Head: Marauder MTF
Torso, legs: RoC Snake Eyes
Arms: 50th Falcon
Harness: 25th Snake Eyes
Helmet, comm gear: Vintage Accessory Pack
Backpack: 25th Flash















Shimik by Oreobuilder
I made a custom Shimik several years ago, at the beginning of the 25th anniversary. I was just getting into customizing more seriously and the Argen 7 seemed like fun customs to make with the available modern parts at the time (circa 2007).

I recently updated all my original 13 and really like the new parts recipe, so I wanted to update my Argen 7 customs as well. I changed some parts (like the upper legs) to make them different and used the same vintage helmets.

Head: 25th Mutt
Hands: Marauder MTF
Torso, upper arms: 50th Shipwreck
Lower arms: 25th Flint
Lower legs: DG Duke
Upper legs: ROC Neo Viper
Webgear: 25th Rock & Roll
Helmet: Vintage Accessory pack















Stealth BATS by Danofthedead
I was never a fan of the new sculpt era B.A.T.s. They looked too bulky and clunky, but the head designs were interesting. A lot of the figures and concepts from the RESURGENCE NIGHT FORCE projects tend to be translations of older figures into the more modern figure style, so it seemed like a good time to try to salvage what I liked about those transition era B.A.T.s and improve upon them. I’ve found the factory overstock Terminator figures to be a great source of robotic and mechanical “filler” parts, and they certainly came in handy here. Had I been braver, I think repainting the blue tech-lines into classic B.A.T. yellow/orange might have been fun, but as is I think the blue gives them a distinct look. I loved the idea of the digitigrade legs and the more slim build giving them a lot of speed and maneuverability most B.A.T.s lack, so giving them the big B.A.T.V3 sword arms seemed like a natural fit. The Falcon packback is there as a minibooster to help them make extra big leaps. At this point, their giant blaster arm seemed a little at odds with the rest of their design, but “rule of cool” reigned and it stayed just because I thought it looked neat.

Iron Man - Base Figure
Terminator T-800 - Arms, Ankles
COBRA B.A.T. - Forearms
COBRA B.A.T. V4 - Head, Legs
COBRA B.A.T. V3 - Blade Arms
Guavian Enforcer - Blaster Arm
Rocket Storm Falcon - Jump Pack

















Shadow BATS by Danofthedead
The Shadow B.A.T.s, like their Stealth B.A.T. cousins, were an attempt to take what I liked about the “new sculpt era” B.A.T.s and update them to modern figure designs. That ended up being pretty much just their head and torso armor for these guys. The arms and hands were actually a pretty close match the the B.A.T.V4 design, but I felt like they didn’t quite work on the Stealth build, and since I was never fond of the scrawny V3 arms, they ended up on here. Nothing really radical here, just a chance to pull some of the new sculpt visuals into the RESURGENCE “canon”, I see them as pretty standard B.A.T.s that are maybe stripped down a bit and have limited armaments so they can move around without sounding like quarters in a washing machine in a cement mixer.

COBRA Commander - Hands, Torso
Barbecue - Legs
Jungle Viper - Upper Arms
COBRA B.A.T - Elbow
COBRA B.A.T. V3 - Head, Chest Armor
Overkill - Gun Attachment
Night Mission Captain America - Belt