The next stumbling block came when I tried to do the actual gun rack that would hold his armament up.  I wanted it to look like the one in the film, which was made of steel.  So I initially tried sheetmetal.  Didn't work.  Sheetmetal was way too thin and would fall over at a slight heartbeat.  I went back to the legal folders to see if there was a way to make the cardboard sturdy enough to carry the guns.  Failed horribly.

I finally gave up on cardboard after constructing a pretty good rack then have it fall over when I put several diecast guns on.  Diecast is very heavy so I had to find a way to make something sturdy enough to have the guns stay in place without it falling over on its own weight.  I finally decided on sculpting the rack, then gluing the base to the case.  Doesn't look too bad huh?

Of course, once I completed the case, I rewatched the film again for the 30th time to see if there was anything I missed.  Obviously I did.  Leon's case had a secret compartment where he stores a lot of his files, pictures, etc.  There's a scene in the movie when he first takes Matilda in, then in the middle of the night, decides that she's too much of a liability and decides to whack her.  Well, he goes into his case and pulls out a silencer - in his secret compartment!  I went back to the drawing board a fourth time and reconstructed his case again to include the secret compartment.  The secret compartment is pretty sizeable so I had to find stuff to fill it with.

As you can already see from the pictures above, I went all out with Leon.  There are more guns, accessories, items and details on Leon than on any figure I've made to date.  I printed out photos for his "hit" in the first scene of the film, cash for the job, pictures of Matilda, a passport with Jean Reno's picture, file folders for brochures on the hotel he is about to hit, credit cards and even hotel room keys.  Hey, I got a little overexcited about doing a first "joint project" with another customizer okay?

Once I got the actual figure from Alex ("wow" was all I really went for the first few days), another dilemma hit me.  His weapons vest.  In researching and looking at Leon's vest from the movie, I realized one thing - the BBI Lucifer figure was tailored from Leon's character.  Everything from the left holster to the flash bangs, vest and everything was identical to the vest used in the film.  Obviously, Lucifer had a black vest and Leon had a brownish red vest.  I kept Alex's original shirt, pants and shoes, but I swapped out the coat with Lucifer's jacket.  I began to "reverse engineer" Lucifer's weapons vest to see how it was constructed, then hand sew my own.  I am very happy with the results of the vest. On the right side of his vest, I gave him a small pocket knife, two clips for the pistol and several bullets.  On the left side, I equipped him with a small rope for strangulation, a bottle of poison, a pen, a glass cutter, and several more bullets.  Overall, I'm very happy with the figure.  Alex, thank you.  Let's do this again some time.