| APRIL O'NEIL
(LEGO)
PROJECT #409
CLASSIFICATION: KITBASH
MATERIALS USED: LEGO MINI-FIGURE, HOBBY KNIFE, ENAMEL PAINTS
FIRST APPEARANCE: "TURTLE TRACKS" (TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA
TURTLES)
"Pretty weird lookin' toy, ain't it?
"Yeah, there's no accounting for taste."
Preamble: Right after I finished
my Shredder LEGO figure, I started
pondering the idea of making an April O'Neil figure to go along with it.
By this point, I only had a handful of existing LEGO parts left (I
had only really collected enough pieces to do Shredder and
C-3PO), so I pretty much put the idea
aside for a while. The idea stuck with me, but it wasn't for many years
until I finally got around to finishing the project.
Construction: My original plan was
to start with an extra Star Wars Biker Scout mini-figure, adding
a yellow Padmé Amidala head and hands and a Qui-Gon Jinn hair piece
that I intended to modify. I scored the design of April's outfit
into the plastic in order to bring out some detail and serve as guide lines
when I painted the figure. I wasn't really sure how I was going
to address the notion that April wears a yellow jumpsuit and yet
traditional LEGO mini-figures have yellow skin; I figured I'd just be
absurd and do the whole
thing in yellow and be done with it. There are LEGO mini-figures
with more natural flesh tones, though, like the Marion Ravenwood figure from
the Indiana Jones and the Lost Tomb LEGO set. Her hair was just about
perfect, requiring only a slight modification. She's also got two faces,
a normal one and a second expression of shock and surprise, which fits the
April O'Neil character rather nicely.
Comments: Following the birth of
my baby boy, I've been out of the kitbashing game for almost six months.
This was a relatively simple project, of course, but I figured I'd
better start small and eventually work my way back up. |
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