| APRIL O'NEIL
REPAINT
PROJECT #283
CLASSIFICATION: REPAINT
MATERIALS USED: ACRYLIC PAINTS
FIRST APPEARANCE: "TURTLE TRACKS" (TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA
TURTLES)
"I thought those tacky jumpsuits went out of fashion
eons ago."
Preamble: In 1992, a few yeas after
the debut of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, Playmates Toys
released the Toon Turtles assortment, which consisted of new figures that
represented characters from the cartoon, and repaints that were more accurate
to their television appearance. What always struck me as odd
was that they never produced a cartoon-accurate April O'Neil. The version
I had was a repaint of the original figure, with fluorescent orange boots
and trim that I've always found extremely bothersome. (They'd also
released a slightly better resculpt with purple trim and a weird hairdo,
but there never was an actual Toon April figure. Here's my
version.)
Construction: It's worth noting here
that April's color model is kind of tricky. The inside of her collar
and the trim around her breast pockets are a darker shade of yellow--which
I hadn't realized at first, since the animators used the same color to create
the suggestion of shadows on the rest of her jumpsuit. Her watch and
belt buckle are the same color. April's hair color tends to fluctuate
a little depending on which hair dye she used that week (and which animation
studio was doing the episode), but it still needed to be lighter than the
hair on the orignal toy. I also repainted her eyes, which originally
had this sort of vacant zombie quality.
Comments: This is actually the second time
I've painted this particular figure. For the
first version (project #168), I'd just painted
over the jumpsuit stripes and painted her hair a much-too-bright shade of
orange. (I have every confidence that this is probably what an official
Toon April figure would have looked like, but this time I was going for as
accurate a look as possible.) |
