Customizer Gallery - Jessica Rotich

I bought two cheap Mego Planet of the Apes figures from Ebay and they languished on my desk at work for quite some time until one day I decided that enough was enough, I had to recreate their costumes to try to make it as film-accurate as possible. Of course as with all passions, you start small and it snowballs. I had taken up sewing as an elective in highschool and understood the basics. I also knit for enjoyment and charity, so what I have learned through the years from piecing parts of sweaters together from knitting has helped train me for my current passion, which is customizing the Planet of the Apes figures. I do not have a fancy sewing machine and it gives me grief most of the time, but it does what I need it to do. The small scale of the Megos presents an additional and welcome challenge in my customizing adventures. Perhaps someday I will step off of the Planet of the Apes and create other customs, but that can only happen when I run out of ape figures to clothe.

My first delve into the customizing world was Zira's outfit. Putting it together was not half as bad as I thought, and I was really pleased with the results.

This outfit was soon followed by Cornelius' outfit

Julius' portrait includes a broom that I sculpted.

Soldier Ape's outfit includes Julius' outfit underneath the fleather vest from some Halloween fabric.

M Soldier Ape: the grey M pattern was painted on with a permanent silver marker.

Escape Zira outfit

Dr. Zaius: The crowning glory of this dupioni silk outfit is the handwork detail of the hieroglyphs.