Custom Micronauts Huntarr

The Micronauts will forever be a massive influence on my creative endeavors (ha!), sneaking into the DNA of just about every project that comes out of this house.

The custom version of the living bio-weapon known as Huntarr (from the original Micronauts comic) shown above was sculpted back in 2000 and tinkered with for a few years after that, eventually landing in the original Microshow booklet we did in 2004.

I was, and still am, crazy about this character. Huntarr was sort of boring in some ways, looking like a lumpy orange alien with gray boots (why he needed those boots is anybody's guess) and no real distinctive details. He could shift his shape to deal with different situations and for some reason just seemed awesome to me. Later in the story, Huntarr transformed into a very Alien inspired form, which I tried to capture by having a removable outer head that could plop onto the first form's noggin.

The actual 3 3/4" custom is sculpted with Oatey Plumbers Compound over a twist tie armature that was wrapped in layers of electrical tape. The eyes are melted "stained glass" plastic pellets and the paint is Tamiya and auto finish.

I played with this figure for years, eventually snapping most of the wires inside due to excessively rough play. Huntarr saw some serious action and has lived to tell about it, now resting with the rest of the Microshow cast, exchanging tales of being abused by some giant bearded geek.

The cruddy drawing was done today, and is a little extra dedication to one of my favorite Micronauts characters of all time.

Lost Projects: Bendirions Part II

While going through the stacks of sketches I gathered up some more concepts for the Bendirions range. Notice the Repoclaimer Pilot design that was a possible bendy candidate. That guy was a ringer!

Thanks for the feedback on the last post! These old scribbles have been gathering dust for a number of years and it's been fun digging them out to share with you.

More concepts are on deck for tomorrow!

Lost Projects: Bendirions

This is a strange one, but I promised you some stuff from the vault...

For a number of years I concentrated on trying to make a bendy line, called Bendirions, that were much in the same vein as the beloved original bendy Outer Space Men. The approach was to design the body types in a way that took full advantage of the inner wire articulation, so most of the characters needed to be a bit lanky. To add some variation to the skinny crew, a couple of beefy characters were generated. These stocky aliens would have been shot in a very squishy PVC, to take a beating like the Mordles used to in Rocks & Bugs & Things.

I imagined that these guys could grapple and twist up together, even spiraling into bigger beings. Different sizes would represent the various species and some of the Bendirions would even sport slide on armor.

I still kind of wish that we could make at least one of these oddballs come to life. It would be fun to introduce a few Bendirions into the current Glyos ranks and see what kind of weirdness might occur. Bendy inner phantoms inside of a clear Armodoc would be something.

Bendirions. More than just a cruddy name!