Arms: STTMP Ilia All else: Flash Gordon Lizard Woman Hair, tail: Scratch built
Design:
Continuing the Star Trek The Motion Picture line for a friend of mine. I had a Lizard Woman (or whatever it's actually named) figure from the 1979 Flash Gordon line and realized that it could pass for M'Ress with some hair and a different tail. M'Ress, for those of you with social lives, was a feline-ish character from the animated Star Trek series made by Filmation.
I asked my friend if he wanted this figure to match the 1:18 2009 ST figures from Playmates. He declined and asked for it to match the Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov I'd made for him in 2012. So, M'Ress is presented in STTMP format, even though the character wasn't in the movie.
Colors & Painting:
Technically, M'Ress should be in the same color as the others, but I couldn't bring myself to paint a fourth-in-a-row figure in the same uniform color. Instead, I opted to match the blue color worn by Scotty/Kirk/McCoy/Decker in the movie. Maybe M'Ress learned a new specialty between the cartoon and the movie? Sure. Even if the character wasn't in the movie. I also thought that had I gone with a vanilla yellow uniform over the reddish fur, it might look like some kind of McDonald's werewolf.
I've gotten pretty good at painting textures and details into fur. However, in keeping with the existing STTMP figures, I opted for simplistic colors.
Sculpting & Modifying:
I had to break open the figure to rotate the arms. I wanted at least part of the figure to have some actual STTMP parts, if only to help it slightly blend with the factory figures. The hair, ears, collar, lower part of face, and the shirt flap are sculpted.
The figure's paint was a pain. I used a spray to seal it instead of using a brush-applied clearcoat. The spray reacted poorly with the blue of the uniform, making it look splotchy and dissolved in some areas, though the fur colors didn't react to the spray at all. I photoshopped the image to intentionally blur out a lot of the discoloration on the blue.
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