He-Man

Under-developed He-Man doodles Each He-Man character has some sort of thing about it (feature or shape) that I eventually will have to find and exaggerate / focus on / make a theme.

I was never into action figures as a kid, but I recall seeing (expensive) He-Man and Star Wars figs on the toy shelves, perhaps secretly wanting one. It's kind of silly how so many of the He-Man figs were just repaints of the same muscleman sculpt. I think the most fun/striking ones are Skeletor, yellow skin Evil-Lyn (not a fan of the pale skin version), and the best henchmen are Spikor, Trapjaw and Spout Snout. His main henchmen are pretty boring I think (Merman, Beastman, Triclops?), and so are most of the good guys. Roboto would be fun with a different head I guess. It would be cool if he was delivered in pieces and had to be screwed together. Zodak has a fun Kamen Rider helmet, but then the chest piece ruins everything.

The new "classic" display figs (4H) has a nice Webstor and Cobra Kahn, and even the regular palace guards are sort of nice, matching Man at arms. Shadow Weaver is striking character but the figure was not made widely available. Skeletor is showing a bit too much of his neck, but I've seen fixes to that.

I'm not really a fan of the 200x stuff which was occasionally quite... malt-cross style as I call it, and a tad too... McFarlane.

I think I actually prefer the smaller legs of the old figures. It brings focus on the more characteristic upper part of the figure, and it agrees with my small-leg fetish.

10 comments:

Jeselvis said...

nicely done - -i like the idea of expanding the singular characters into a "race" concept.

Mossman makes me think of grassman from Bo-Starr which brings unbridled fits of laughter. ;)

Keep goin with this analysis, man!

Arne said...

I'm not sure if the lore allows me to speciate the characters. I think Stinkor is the result of a creature being mutated. On the other hand, there are some established species like the Trollans (Orko, Shadow Weaver). It's possibly that Skeletor at some point makes armies based on his minions, using some fancy magic/device.

Unknown said...

Malt-cross style! That's the perfect term for that look.

I was a big He-Man kid. Still have some of my old He-Man toys. I loved how creative they got with using the same sculpts for everything.

Anyway, I like your ideas, especially the one about Skeletor making armies based off his minions.

Arne said...

A few years ago (2007) I did some redesigns of the more obscure Visionaries toy line (but was never very pleased with the result), and also started looking into how articulation is done. Such a hard problem to solve, given hard plastic and molding face restrictions.

I saw that the diaper crotch has been innovated a bit in the recent MotUC line, using soft rubber for better articulation.

Arne said...

I also have some Major Matt Mason doodles which needs cleaning up. There are some notable designs in that toyline, like the moon suit (I think micro men had a similar pop over bulky suit with a window on the front), and then there's the Power Limbs (which might have inspired the Power Loader in Aliens). And look at the Uni-Tred & Space Bubble, looks like high quality stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ComzuZfkWDY

Arne said...

Read more about the moon suit:
http://www.wildtoys.com/MoonSuit/index.asp
The Space Power Suit has some fun potential too.

The outer space men would be interesting to draw. 4H has made new versions of them it seems.

Aha! The Microman suit I mentioned previously is called Microman Hoodman.
http://www.microforever.com/1978policekeeperhoodman.htm

Shame the MicroSister series wasn't that well realized, and that the UNI series didn't develop.

Arne said...

The MoTUC figures are actually only about 20 bucks, pretty nice for figures of that quality. I think i'll get one... Oh, wait, scalpers bought the entire stock and are selling them for 60 bucks ._.

Durgal said...

You've got a great art style! I was looking at your old metroid GF project from 5 years ago - are you still working on that?

Durgal said...

You've got a great art style! I was looking at your old metroid GF project from 5 years ago - are you still working on that?

Arne said...

DurgalX2> A little, in my head.Other people have made 8px Metroid games in the same sorta style now though.