| APRIL O'NEIL
REPAINT
PROJECT #283 "I'm April O'Neil, with Channel Six News. Perhaps you've seen me?" Preamble: In 1993, 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 bought was a version of the original toy with a new head sculpt, but it was decked out in 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. I also made some changes to April's video camera, which was originally designed to conceal a small firearm (which is kind of ironic, since the TMNT cartoon wasn't even allowed to refer to a guns, let alone use them). To make it more closely match the camera she used in the cartoon, I added a longer lens, a handle on the top, and a little doohickey on the side (I'm not really sure if it's a microphone or a handle grip to manually adjust the focus). 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.) |
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This Page Created 7/1/2001
Last Update: 2/18/2012
©2001 Inspiration Studios
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles® and April O'Neil™
are trademarks of Mirage Studios
I'm serious about the hair dye thing. April's eyebrows are black.
