Vilmarh Grahrk (AKA "Villie") is a Devaronian smuggler/gambler/pirate/scoundrel from the Dark Horse Comics series. He has made so many appearances that it was neccessary to publish a story just to organize them all! Yes, Villie is quite a popular character.

Most of his adventures are alongside Jedi Quinlan Vos, whom Villie considers his lukcy charm. When Quinlan lost his memory, it was Villie who helped him get it back. But don't think he is out to help him....nonono, he had placed a bet that the Jedi would die at a certain time, and he meant to collect by insuring his death personally.

Villie has also been known to do the dirty deeds of others, such as when he worked for Darth Sidious and arranged a war involving the Jedi Council and the Ynchorri. Villie has also been known to do some small freelance work, like escorting a princess back to her planet, but these jobs often lead him into more trouble.

Whether he is in the company of Quinlan Vos or betting at the Circus Maximus, you can bet that Villie will be in the thick of things, looking for some way to score a credit or two.

• Labria (head)
  
• Ponda Baba (body)
  
• Flashback Darth Vader (arms)
  
• General Lando Calrissian (legs)
  
• Han Solo (2 guns)

I've wanted to make this custom ever since I first read Villie's first appearance. I started him a few weeks ago, and only just finished him just in time for the DCU 2002!

The hardest part was finding the right parts for this character. The head was an obvious choice, although the horns of Labria needed to be replaced. I ended up sculpting new ones. The rest of the body was pretty easy, but the hardest part was deciding on the arms. I ended up going with the Vader arms because of the articulation. Plus, the pattern on them would give a metallic look if painted properly. I thought about either cutting off the pattern or perhaps filling it in with sculpey, but I wasn't happy with the way the arms looked when I was done. So I decided the heck with it, and just left them alone.

Then came the sculpting! This is easily the most amount of sculpting I've ever done on a custom! I had to work with layers upon layers because Vilie has a bunch of stuff on him. I started with the shirt, and then cured it. Then the neck and shoulders and cured. Then the belt and cured. Then the pouches and cured. Then the dogtags. Then the shoulder pads. Then the second layer of shoulder pads. Then the holsters. WHEW! I wanted to keep the arm articulation, so the top part of the shoulder pads actually still rotates quite a bit on the figure. This was really hard to get right, but I'm very happy with the way it turned out. I've included a pair of Work-In-Progress shots of the finshed sculpt, which I sneak-previewed earlier in the Rebelscum Forums.

Then the painting process began. What was hard for this custom is that no two appearances were the same! Most of the time the stories are drawn by the same artist, but other times it is drawn by someone else. And the colors are just way off. Plus, the art tends to be very dark in these stories, so it is hard to get a decent shot of him. And I had to mix evey single color on him. A long process, but worth it.

I then gave him a pair of modified guns because I wanted them to look a bit different. I also glued small pieces of plastic to his boots for the straps.

To finish it off, I played around with the packaging. I used a POTJ 2nd version card for him, because I wanted to play around with the back by adding other comic-based customs I had created. I made a front version and a back version. I'm also including the poll force file I had made for CollectStarWars.com last year just for fun.