The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles encounter all sorts of enemies on and under the streets of New York. At least the arch-enemy of the mighty Foot had to be in my collection. Clear the stage for Shredder and the Foot Clan! Maybe a rhinoceros and a warthog will join them?
Foot Soldiers
I managed to paint a couple of kung fu fighting, super secret and silent ninjas over the weekend. Of course they had to be members of the Foot Clan, the arch enemies of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It seems like my TMNT collection is a bit thrown together from all possible incarnations of the TMNT universe. The Turtles were inspired by the color scheme of their early appearance in the comics, while I painted the Foot Soldier in the colors of the legendary animated series from the 90s – purple, black, gray. I didn’t expect to have so much fun painting purple. Right now I feel like painting more of them.
The minis are from Crooked Dice, available as “normal” ninjas with typical ninja heads. But they also have additional heads with very characteristic masks. Just glue the body and special head together…boom, Foot Soldier! Absolutely awesome models, it was almost a nostalgic trip painting them! I’m also very pleased with how the colors turned out. Like I said, I want to paint more of these, but CD only has these three, not wanting to mix them with different styles from other manufacturers. That means there’s a lot of rebuilding work ahead. Anything for the Foot Clan!
More Foot Soldiers!
The Foot Clan gets further support in the form of additional ninjas. I had already painted the three available miniatures from Crooked Dice, but needed more. The Foot Clan almost always appears in larger numbers, three are simply too few. Since there are no more poses available, but I also didn’t want to mix with other manufacturers (there are original Foot Soldier from Heroclix available), I had to rebuild. No sooner said than done. I’m not super skilled with Green Stuff and didn’t trust myself with any dramatic conversions, but for some variance it should be enough. In the pictures below you can see the original Crooked Dice sculpt on the right and my modest conversion on the left. The matrix-like jump in the middle is perhaps a bit silly, but in my memory the ninjas have always jumped down from manholes and elevations.
I am absolutely satisfied with the result. They are simply painted again and fortunately you can’t tell any difference from the first group that was painted almost a year ago. The conversions worked quite well and I got what I wanted. With 6 Foot Soldiers the clan is still not big, but I won’t rebuild more. It’s enough for an ambush and Shredder has a few more allies after all.
…speaking of the Foot Clan. A clan needs a leader, right? That could be a task for the next few days. Wait with excitement to see what happens on the streets of New York these days!
Shredder
After launching Foot Clan last week, it was only a matter of time before the inevitable Shredder showed up on the streets of New York. I haven’t watched any TMNT cartoons since I was a kid, but I remember Shredder very well as always being a serious threat to the Turtles. He had funny scenes and never got what he wanted, but he was never silly and never seemed too weak. As the deadly enemy of the Turtles, there was no question that Shredder meant to be in my collection.
The figure is from Crooked Dice, just like the Ninjas/Foot Soldiers. The model doesn’t have a cape, but in my eyes he really needed one (plus it gives the opportunity to stay closer to the original colors and still have a consistent look with the Ninjas). So I decided to model a cape for him, even though I have no experience in this other than filling in small gaps with GreenStuff once in a while. It took some time for the cape to look more or less the way I wanted it to, but I’m very happy with the result. Of course, you can always tell that the folds don’t look very realistic, but, well, it’s the first try and I learned a lot for next time. I’m absolutely happy with the overall look of the miniature and I think it fits well with the Foot Soldiers.
Raging shredder
As the last new addition to the Foot Clan for the time being, I painted an alternative miniature for Shredder. I didn’t really need it, but I just like the figure and found the idea quite funny that Shredder fights “hard” when he’s in trouble. In fact, until just now I thought that in the 1990 Turtles movie, Shredder really does fight bare-chested at the very end and even gets hurt. Obviously this is not the case:
No matter, I still like the idea. I had painted my Shredder in the colors of the 80s cartoons and have now adopted this. He should look like he just took off his clothes. Deviating, I just gave him a purple belt so that the purple theme of Footclan at least shows up somewhere. Nevertheless, this figure is also loosely usable in other contexts, as a thug of another villain for example.
Karai
Further support for the Foot Clan comes in the form of Karai. Until a few years ago, I didn’t know her as a character at all, since she didn’t appear in the original comics, the ’80s series, or the movies. To my knowledge, she was introduced in a later comic series and then in a later cartoon series. I first encountered her a few years ago when I read the really good comic reboot at IDW, in which she plays a fairly supporting role. I found the idea of using her as a co-star on “7TV” alongside Shredder charming – someone capable he needs alongside him.
The miniature is from Hasslefree and has nothing to do with the franchise in terms of design, it is simply a female ninja. However, I liked the idea that she fits in with the Foot Clan in terms of color, but is still visually independent. I therefore painted her like the rest and made no other adjustments. For me, she works wonderfully that way.
Bebop & Rocksteady
A powerful addition to Shredder and the Foot Clan! With Bebop and Rocksteady, two cult characters from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universe enter the playing field. Having grown up with the 80s/90s cartoons, these two have always been an integral part of the franchise for me. A few years ago, I discovered the original comics for myself and had to realize that Rocksteady and Bebop were actually created for the series in the first place. I haven’t seen the cartoons since I was a kid, so I suspect it’s a nostalgic memory and the series may have aged poorly. Still, I was happy to see them in the so-so Michael Bay reboots. Their qualities (dumb musclemen, a lot of spunk and dumb questions) fit a Bay movie perfectly, so I thought their characters were better suited. By the way, they were supposed to appear in the movie Turtles II – The Secret of the Ooze, but for legal reasons they couldn’t, so they invented Tokka and Rhazar.
In any case, Bebop and Rocksteady had to be in my collection. It made sense to use the Heroclix figures here as well, since they are designed true to the original and fit in perfectly with the rest of the collection. They could be a bit bigger, but I don’t think they were as huge in the cartoon as in other incarnations. Of course, Heroclix figures are not tabletop miniatures and there are inevitably limits to what you can paint, but I’m very happy with the result.
