KRANG CLONES PROJECT #488 CLASSIFICATION: DIGITAL REPAINTS BASE FIGURE: KRANG (KITBASH) PROGRAM USED: ADOBE PHOTOSHOP ORIGIN EPISODE: "INVASION OF THE KRANGAZOIDS" "What I need is someone who's clever and sneaky and fiendishly brilliant.  Someone like...me!" Preamble:  In the seventh season of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, there was an episode called "Invasion of the Krangazoids" in which Krang grows tired of the incompetence of his Earthbound allies, so his solution is to create several clones of himself, cohorts who would theoretically be his equals, rather than his inferiors.  These guys were awesome, all strutting around in their custom-colored bubble walkers.  There were never toys made of any of these additional Krangs, but I thought it would be fun to create digital versions of them, using my cartoon-accurate kitbash as the basis.  (I probably could have collected six Krang toys and physically painted them, but they wouldn't have been accurate to the appearance of the clones in the show.  I put a lot of work into my Krang kitbash so it made far more sense to use him.)  While none of the clones were named in the episode, each of them had distinct personality traits that set them apart, so I've given them unofficial names that reflect this. NASTY KRANG FAVORITE COLOR: LAVENDER DOMINANT CHARACTERISTIC: ANGER LIKES: GETTING INTO ARGUMENTS DISLIKES: LOSING AN ARGUMENT "You ain't the master of anything!  We could blast you to pieces with all the firepower in these gizmos!" Description:  Nasty Krang had a sour, angry disposition and a growling voice to match.  Maybe he was just in a bad mood because he had to contend with the fact that he was a carbon copy—there were six other diabolical alien brains who looked just like him, after all.  At least he was reasonably good at taking out his aggression on the Turtles, a source that certainly caused the original Krang plenty of frustration over the years.  It was due in no small part to the nasty Krang's assertive tendencies that the clones eventually rebelled against Krang.  He was the first to initially reject Krang's authority over the clones; it was only through threat of force that the clones were compelled to obey their creator, if only for a short time.  He also argued with Smarty Krang over who should be the supreme ruler, when and if the clones managed to conquer the Earth.  It ultimately became a moot point after Krang, seeking to dispose of the rebellious clones, tricked them into a dimensional portal and trapped them forever. All the bubble walkers were equipped with a considerable array of weaponry, but it was Nasty Krang who used it to its full advantage, even managing to drive three of the Turtles into a full retreat.  (The Turtles even seemed surprised by his armaments, which suggests that either the original Krang's bubble walker isn't equipped with these guns, or he just never had occasion to use them against the Turtles before.)  I added the twin guns to the digital version of this project, but they're a terribly cheatsy addition because they're not actually physically attached to the toy.  The design of the bubble walker doesn't appear to incorporate these guns at all—they just appear out of nowhere.  (I could have built a peg-and-hole assembly for each one, I suppose, but that would have left some ugly peg-holes on my Krang project.) One other cheatsy thing I did here was photograph these guys without the plastic bubble in place, since the curvature of the bubble distorted the shape of their faces in my first batch of photographs.  (I'm not usually this disingenuous when it comes snapping pictures of my projects, I promise.) .   SCAREDY KRANG FAVORITE COLOR: YELLOW DOMINANT CHARACTERISTIC: COWARDICE LIKES: HIDING DISLIKES: CONFRONTATIONS "Oh...what am I doing here?  I sense this is not my natural environment!" Description:  Not every one of Krang's genetic clones received equal attributes during their creation.  Though they were all physically identical and all sounded (mostly) the same, each of them exhibited a distinct personality of his own.  The timid Krang possessed considerably greater trepidation than his brothers, and it came through all too clearly in his voice and his mannerisms.  Maybe he just didn't adapt as well to the existence of an exposed, vulnerable, squishy brain.  In any event, Scaredy Krang pretty much went along with whatever the other clones decided to do, taking solace in the safety of numbers and leaving the creative plans to other, more daring and innovative brain clones.  The poor guy just about had an aneurysm when he noticed that his tentacles were growing into hands, the first sign that the clones were growing into full-sized Krangazoid creatures. To digitally repaint the toy, I had to isolate the elements of the project whose color was changing (most of the bubble walker) from the parts that weren't (Scaredy Krang himself, along with the cables on either side of the walker).  Then I just crank up the hue saturation until I arrive at something that looks good.  It's difficult sometimes to convincingly alter the colors of a photograph to make it look realistic—too much color, or imprecise color matching, or sloppy isolation of the elements that I'm changing, and it's an obvious forgery attempt.  People notice these things right away, even if they can't quite consciously put a finger on what's wrong.  There are computer programs that can do a lot of these things for you, but I've always done it by hand so I have complete control over the final results. VAIN KRANG FAVORITE COLOR: PURPLE DOMINANT CHARACTERISTIC: NARCISSISM LIKES: COSMETIC PRODUCTS DISLIKES: BLEMISHES "I'll say!  It's already smoothing out my beautiful wrinkles!" Description:  Everybody's at least a little concerned with how they look, but Vain Krang took it to a whole new level.  One of his first remarks was to comment on how the alien atmosphere of Earth was already ruining his natural complexion, and he clearly wasn't particularly pleased about this fact.  The original Krang exhibited a streak of vanity from time to time, but this particular clone was a true embodiment of that particular facet of Krang's personality.  It's a small wonder that this guy wasn't more disheartened over not having a robot body to call his own, considering how distraught Krang himself was about it until he finally got Shredder to build him one.  Perhaps Vain Krang secretly knew that he had within him the genetic code to grow a new body of his own, and that he would eventually become physically superior to his original host.  So concerned was he about his appearance, though, that when Krang offered to send the Krang clones back to their homeland of Dimension X, the Vain Krang jumped at the chance to return to a nice, sweltering environment that would surely dry out his lovely complexion once more.  He was the first to jump through the portal—only to discover Krang had tricked them, trapping them inside a dimensional limbo instead. The original Krang toy was partly decorated in blue and purple, ostensibly the traditional colors of the Foot Clan (a motif that Playmates Toys also applied to the vast majority of the bad guys vehicles in the toy line), so this digital project ended up sharing a color with the original, unaltered toy—or, the lower legs of the bubble walker, at any rate. GLOOMY KRANG FAVORITE COLOR: BLUE DOMINANT CHARACTERISTIC: CLINICAL DEPRESSION LIKES: NOTHING DISLIKES: EVERYTHING "This is the dreariest place I've ever seen!" Description:  Gloomy Krang was completely unsatisfied with his lot in life.  Where the other Krang clones seemed to take their unusual predicament in stride and even learn to turn it to their advantage, the gloomy Krang would do nothing of the sort—he found solace in complaining.  No matter where he was or what he was doing, he  always found something to despise about the situation.  His negativity continued to manifest itself, even after he and the other clones were banished to a dimensional limbo by Krang—a place where there was quite literally nothing to complain about! (As an aside, due to union rules about how many voices an actor was allowed to perform during a single recording session, Pat Fraley did not perform the voices of all six Krang clones.  Barry Gordon picked up the role of Vain Krang, which is why he sounds a lot like Donatello, while Cam Clarke performed the Gloomy Krang, sounding suspiciously like Leonardo.  Actually, I think it would have been perfect if Townsend Coleman had voiced one of them, given that he had already served as a replacement voice for Krang a couple of times during the third season.) Gloomy Krang was equipped with a bubble walker that was blue in color, perhaps a fitting choice since, like the Vain Krang, it partly matched the colors used by Playmates Toys for the original mobile life support system accessory.  (It's much more likely that the colors were simply chosen based on each clone's personality trait—the depressed Krang was "blue," the cowardly Krang was "yellow," etc.—but it's still interesting.) Gloomy Krang used a spinning buzzsaw blade to escape from a confrontation with Michaelangelo at one point, so I added the appropriate accessory to the digital version of this project. GOOFY KRANG FAVORITE COLOR: GREEN DOMINANT CHARACTERISTIC: JOVIALITY LIKES: ICE CREAM DISLIKES: BRAIN FREEZE "Hey, you guys!  Cut it out!  That tickles!" Description:  If ignorance is bliss, then this guy was the happiest Krang clone of them all.  This particular clone turned out to be a bit developmentally stunted, with crossed eyes and a tongue that usually hung out of his mouth when he spoke.  Well, there's bound to be a defective one in every batch, right?  It's not his fault he was the proverbial runt of the litter, of course, but I'm sure he was still something of an embarrassment to Krang—traipsing about and singing a merry little melody to himself when he was assigned to collect parts to build a thermal generator.  Goofy Krang was the first of the clones to regenerate his lost limbs, a fortuitous, unexpected side effect to the cloning experiment.  He managed to put this development to good use when he was able to evade capture from the Turtles, who had disabled his bubble walker, by simply hopping out of it and running away—to great comic effect.  Losing his bubble walker didn't matter, of course, since he eventually grew a new body and turned into a wacky, cross-eyed dinosaur-like creature. All of the bubble walkers equipped by the Krang clones had built-in mechanical arms, which were presumably more versatile than carrying things in their slimy little tentacles.  With a little bit of digital manipulation, I added some robotic arms to my version of Goofy Krang, using pieces of the original hand accessories that came with the toy.  (Again, I didn't actually physically attach these parts.  "Invasion of the Krangazoids" was the only episode in which they're ever used, and Krang himself never utilized them, so I saw no reason to permanently alter my actual Krang project. Besides, that's what photo-editing software is for!) SMARTY KRANG FAVORITE COLOR: DARK GREY DOMINANT CHARACTERISTIC: INTELLIGENCE LIKES: STIMULATING CONVERSATIONS DISLIKES: STUPIDITY "For what reason have I suddenly been summoned into existence?" Description:  If these guys really were clones of Krang, then why didn't they all have personalities that were identical to his own?  Perhaps the cloning machine Krang used was only designed to create one subject at a time, and in creating multiple clones, the machine was forced to split up Krang's own primary personality traits amongst them.  Whatever the case might have been, this particular clone received the lion's share of Krang's intelligence, speaking in an aristocratic tone and very clearly the most intellectually superior of the lot.  Upon his creation, the  brainy Krang immediately began coming up with theoretical suppositions to explain his existence, and later correctly postulated the true reason why why the clones were beginning to spontaneously generate limbs and, later, bodies of their own.  The intellectual Krang was haughty and self-impressed, even moreso than his genetic host, and assumed the role of de facto leader of the clones after they rebelled against Krang and attempted to turn Earth into a more habitable volcanic paradise. Smarty Krang's bubble walker is the most similar in appearance to the original Krang—it's just a darker shade of grey, so proper photo manipulation required for this project was comparatively easy. Comments: It's so funny that Krang just happened to have at least seven bubble walkers just laying around the Technodrome, and yet he needed Shredder to build him a body. This Page Created: 9/19/2010 Last Update: 3/2/2012 Page Content ©2012 Inspiration Studios Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles® is a trademark of Nickelodeon Oh, I wouldn't necessarily say tha-a-at!