It’s hand sculpted out of polymer clay. White Sculpey inside, Super Sculpey on the surface. Painted with acrylics over acrylic gesso. The tiles on the base are unpainted terracotta Sculpey with Super Sculpey grout. I originally intended to dash this off fairly quickly. I just kept going with adding details beyond the original naked panda and it took longer than intended but I really like the way it came out. If the pants were longer I’d have added cargo pockets but the rolled-up legs came out pretty nice. I only made one other toony type figurine before, a bunny I made for my mother’s birthday two years ago. This one came out so much better but I'm still learning and see things I could've done differently. I'm thinking of getting an airbrush, for one thing, to get that nice smooth look with the paint. Updated with some better photos.
Size: 7” Scale: 1:8 (roughly) ~3 heads high and a bit big-heady
The title is inspired by the 80s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series tagline. That sword had power I guess but a pencil can be much more disruptive. I never watched that or She-ra back in the day. But recently I binge watched the rebooted Netflix She-Ra and it’s great. The animation isn’t that good but the characters and stories are so much more interesting than they were in the 80s. Entrapta and Scorpia are awesome. Are they villains really? No, they’re just people and totally understandable. The hero isn’t perfect and neither is anyone in the show. No one knows what they’re doing. Hordak stays mostly in the background as Lord Appears on the Viewscreen A Lot, which is fine. Who needs the boss yelling orders all the time? Instead he just spies on everyone with the creepy baby spy thing. Occasionally the show makes me want to set fire to boats. =^.^=
After watching the Netflix series I tried to watch the original series and totally failed. I just couldn’t sit down and watch it. However, I found some documentaries about the making of the toy line and series and watched them all. The way the toy line and the series came about is totally fascinating to me. The most bonkers thing is that the character Skeletor was inspired by a childhood encounter with the mummified body of Elmer McCurdy in the Long Beach Pier funhouse. The body was thought to be a dummy for years and was discovered to be an actual body during filming of The Six Million Dollar Man at the pier when his arm broke off. The police ran down his origin and found out he was a train robber who had been killed and embalmed in 1911.
Having studied the history of animation somewhat I was aware that the show made extensive use of rotoscoping, as did other Filmation shows, but I didn’t realize they hired bodybuilders to run around for the repetitive rotoscoped scenes. No one told them that tossing a sword from one hand to another doesn’t make sense either. Filmation was so infamous for cheaping on the animation as much as possible and to me it makes these shows unwatchable to me. So does the crappy writing. (I still love the Filmation Star Trek animated show though.) There’s so much more about it and its history that’s weird or random and I’d highly recommend watching The Toys That Made Us episode and the She-Ra reboot too.
Pretty boring to me. The animation isn't horrible but there are so many tropes there that bug me. I think the hero being baffled by a glitchy hologram and attacked by giant spider robot things is more interesting somehow (She-Ra reboot). Having watched the documentaries the original concept of He-Man being a violent wandering muscle dude in the minicomics makes more sense. The Filmation He-Man/Prince Adam seems like forcing the secret identity on a character where it doesn't make any sense. Setting up dorky kids to identify with hapless Prince Adam who is secretly this macho dude? Why not Adam who inherited this power (of being a dude of course) and showing it off? That brings a lot of potential for exploiting character weaknesses instead of putting them off by separating the two halves of the character. If it's secret, looking at things realistically, the secret is going to come out eventually so why not be honest about the prince being the hero? Also heavy sword, instant competence, dorky sidekick, and so many other tired tropes. If they were being mocked or averted that would be different but I don't think they are in this.
The one Filmation product I love despite the horrid animation is the animated Star Trek. They had great writers and so many interesting things that expanded on the show and did things they couldn't have in live action in prime time. Giant Spock. Hot burd dudes. Good stuff.
Pretty boring to me. The animation isn't horrible but there are so many tropes there that bug me. I
Remember he is practically a Child and has no experience actually fighting. he is lucky that as He-man He wasn't killed when he first attacked skeletore. but your right it was all done as a lark they creators never expected the Cartoon to go any ware. but for the reboots they had stories from the Creator of Conan the Barbarian to work from...Sort of before all other cartoons like it befor there where unrelatable super hero's you grew up in the 80's right?
Remember he is practically a Child and has no experience actually fighting. he is lucky that as He-m
The original Frazetta/Howard inspiration is what makes the most sense to me. That's how the toys started. But then the people at Filmation took that and I guess did what they could do with it while staying within BS&P guidelines. I mean, this big dude with a sword can't stick anybody with it. He just... throws people around? So much on television in the 80s was terminally dumb. Star Trek and Star Wars were fun and relatable though. I used to read a lot of SF & some fantasy but most TV shows, especially animated ones, were horribly dumb with bad writing that was dumbed down even further to please crazy people. I remember J. Michael Straczynski talking about how stupid the process was and probably still is. Now you have endless reboots from fans of the old shows. Some are great, like MLP:FiM, and others really good like this She-Ra. I mean, a reboot that was like the original would turn me right off. Then there are some that were really good but bungled by networks like the 2003 Astro Boy. And that He-Man I guess. I'd love to see more original stuff, especially furry stuff, but reboots can be good. Watching documentaries and reading about the history of these things gives some insight into how crazy and random things were to begin with. It's amazing any of these originals got fandoms behind them. I guess people were really desperate for anything. Now they're grown up and making reboots and incredibly detailed collector toys and stuff like that.
With heroes, they tried to do the relatability thing in stupid ways. Sidekicks. Dumb. But X-Men and similar stuff were more interesting. Then I discovered early furry comics and that shit was done. Who would identify with some stupid blonde-haired teenaged idiot human when there are comics about smarmy-ass cats and shit? Seriously.
The original Frazetta/Howard inspiration is what makes the most sense to me. That's how the toys sta
you know astro boy is older then Jetsons right?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astro_Boy Jetsons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jetsons there was the same type of goofy cartoons to sell space toys to get a generation interested in space travel with Heman they where just trying to get the jocks interested in space because they would have the body types to become long duration pilots....they where really thinking about long space voyages back then and getting Kids used to the Idea of ET's I wondered why but I only saw a Tinfoil hat/Science Fiction community until a few years ago when the Canadian Minister of Defence spilled the Beans about ET's and they had been communicating with them since the 1940s. and people started wanting to see original material about the moon landings and NASA said the reused the Magnetic tapes Offaly convenient right and now they are trying real hard to debunk anyone that sees a UFO..... there are only unrelatable cartoons and Frightening horrible Aliens today.... NISW
you know astro boy is older then Jetsons right?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astro_Boy Jetsons http
