Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Zarana (Dreadnok)

As a kid, I was never a big fan of the Dreadnoks. In fact, I kind of disliked them. Lately, however, they have held a new appeal for me and I've started to build my own little gang of them. In keeping with the recent trend of "reinventing" classic characters (or at least giving them fancy new outfits), this is my take on Zarana. Part blue jeans and biker leather, part high tech assassin. All around bad-ass hottie.

NOTE: For wildly accurate classic versions of Zarana, Mad Joe and Novascream (along with many, many others) have done some really top notch work. I think at some point, I'll want to try to recreate the masterful jobs they've done with theirs.

Parts: Agent Helix (entire figure), Shotgun (Bench Press).

Supplies: Paintbrushes, Testors paints, Testors Dull-Cote.

Reference: Various... and at the same time, none!

After deciding that I wanted to use the Helix/Dialtone head for Zarana, I spent several hours mixing and matching parts, trying to get the effect I was looking for. Eventually, I realized that I couldn't do any better than unsing the entire Agent Helix figure.

I painted the legs with a light blue to simulate faded jeans. I liked the knee pads and boots, so I left them as they were. Although I was originally looking for an upper body that show
ed more skin, I liked this one for it's utter practicality. I went with a plain grey shirt under what looks like leather body armor. Won't stop a bullet, but it'll give her the edge in any kind of hand-to-hand engagement. The pink hair was a no-brainer. You can only change so much, right? The shotgun was a nod to Zarana's very first comic appearance (she was carrying the same type when she surprised the Cobra hierarchy at Zartan's swamp hideout).

3 comments:

  1. @ Ningun Records:

    Thank you! I had the basic idea in mind for a while, but it took me forever to eventually reject part-swapping and get rolling on it!

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  2. Nice Work Don!

    I'd like to duplicate this, but I'm not sure I want to part with my Helix to do it.

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