Jagwar

Jagwar mini action figure, with 3 accessories, based on the Archie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adentures/Mighty Mutanimals comic book character of the same name. Sculpted entirely from scratch in four days. He stands 2.7 inches tall and has 28 points of articulation.



More photos/info:

http://kramwartap.fortunecity.com/jagwar.html

I'm surprised that I've never heard of this character.

But I went to the link and compared the model to the scanned pics, and I think as a small, articulated figure it is very solid. The leaf dress is nicely made, and I particularly like the ankle joints giving him more cat like posture, just because that's something you don't see on most figures; its unique.

I think the figure looks great, but I'm not too crazy about the head. It could just be the texture of the paper mache, but I donno. I recall you saying that you knew a way to smooth the paper mache out, if you ever got a chance to I'd really love to see the results.

lookin good. I vaugely remember the mutanimals comic. I remember a couple of the characters (mondo gecko, leatherhead, wingnut), but not this one. the figure is great though. love the accesories.

Thanks for the comments, everyone!

Inferno: Well, if you never read the Archie comics, then it's no surprise you've never heard of him. I can't say he's obscure, 'cuz he did appear in quite a few comics, but he is mostly exclusive to that particular incarnation of the TMNT mythos.

Bank: I agree that the head sculpt could have been better. Part of the problem, from a reference perspective, is that the different comic artists who drew Jagwar had variable interpretations of the character—at times, in the Mighty Mutanimals comics, for example, he looks more like a dog than a cat to me, and the design/layout of his spots fluctuated as well. I was mostly going for the look of the head on the Archie TMNT Adventures #14 comic cover. The main flaw, as I see it, is that I set the eyes too far to the sides, rather than looking straight on, which gives him kind of a goofy look from a frontal view—there’s also a bit of asymmetry here and there. Making the jaw articulated has an effect on the overall aesthetics of the head sculpt as well.

The paper mache has to be smoothed out before I paint, which I did. If you try to do it with the wood burner after you paint it, evil things happen (the heat from the woodburner fouls the paint up something terrible). That's exactly how I screwed up the second set of sticky bombs I made for my Quake Gremlin figure and why I had to make a third set.



Oh, and here's a comparison photo with the prototype of the canceled Playmates Jagwar figure that was originally slated to come out this year (it was intended to build on the back story of Leo’s journey to South America, as presented in the recent TMNT CG movie). The sculpt is good, but it’s not terribly accurate to the source material, largely due to the lack of spots: