Making a custom Marvel Legends Professor Monster

First he destroyed planet spider, then killed Spider-Man’s mentor, unleashed a few dozen giant monsters on Japan and after nearly 50 years he finally gets a Marvel Legends toy. Well sort of, I bought the Toei Japanese Spiderman and thought he can’t be the “Emissary of Evil” without his swarm enemy Professor Monster.

I’ve been a fan of the show since I saw the episodes appear online years ago thanks to Marvel just releasing them for free online. It was like a prototype to the Power Rangers with Spider-Man but a more vengeful version of the with a car, giant space robot and a take no prisoner mentality.

Spiderman aka Supaidāman wouldn’t be the legend he was without Professor Monster. He’s like Rita Repula and Doctor Doom had a baby in a bizarre alternate universe.

The project started off as a rough idea of something I wanted to do. The first challenge was finding a base figure. I wanted to do this on a budget and no get loads of figures just to use a part from one or another. At first I was looking at Doctor Doom figures or Moon Knight mainly due to the capes.

Then a breakthrough when a local shop had the Marvel legends Loki for £6. It had a perfect head and fairly basic body which was well suited for Professor Monster.

I’ve have access to a fairly cheap 3d printer and home made 3d scanner so was happy to dust them off and put them to some use.

I scanned in the Loki head and started using some free cad software called Tinkercad. It’s an online tool which is easy to use. Once I imported the head it was just a matter of making the right shapes work for the armour.

The first step was to make the helmet, it was difficult to find good reference shots online so I took a few screenshots from the episodes and started making some prototypes.

The first prototype was a full helmet that slid on top of his head, the problem was I wanted a hood too so I took the top off the helmet and designed it to clip on.

The chest plate had it’s challenges, I scanned in the main torso next and started modeling armour that could clip over the body. I decided to make it clip on the front and have an open back to save space on the figure, he would have a cape on the back so the armour at the back won’t be seen.

The other parts included a staff, wrist armour, a belt which could hold his Loki daggers and lastly some boots.

I could have sculpted all these parts out of epoxy putty but decided to make it all digitally and 3d print. This was so I could make lots of small iterations and revisions with little effort. I’ve got a bag full of prototype bits which I’ve printed and revised.

It also means I can print off as many as I like and it also makes it easy for me to come back to this project in a few months or years and improve what I’ve done so far

Having a 3d model also lets me scale the pieces so I can make a 1/6 scale version or even a full size cosplay if the need came up in the future which sounds like it could be fun.

I haven’t made tiny clothes like the hooded cape for a figure before so it was a bit of a challenge, the first idea was to use an existing Marvel Legends toy but I wanted to keep the figure on a budget and also couldn’t find one that would fit the helmet.

Then onto fabric I tried using some cheap felt from a hobby store, the problem with that was the thickness and it wasn’t too flexible. The finished version was using a cheap black t-shirt. The clothes are made I three parts, his lower section, his upper cape and a detachable hood. I found it easier making the hood separate as it was less to stitch together and he looks good without it too.

Here is a before, first prototype and final version. Overall I’m pretty happy with how he turned out. This is the first Marvel Legends custom I’ve done and they do have their challenges as the joints are tight so you can’t use thick paint, a thin coat of black primer worked for most of the body. The helmet and armour were just hand painted and although I wish I did a more tidy job of the painting I’m happy with how it turned out. I might print off another set of armour and try and improve the paint in the future.

Posted by Adi Mursec on April 15, 2025