Many of the Ranger fans know Jason David Frank, "Tommy Oliver," has been training to become a MMA cage fighter in the big leagues. Well, tomorrow, Saturday, the 30th, Jason will enter the ring. His documentary, "4 weeks out," will display the hard training Jason has endured to reach his goal of becoming a serious fighter and give the fans a great show.

Yes, I made a movie helmet for Jason's private collection. It was delivered to him at AFO08. Such helmet appears in the video, above, at 00:42:




Good luck in your fight and new career, Jason! Jason's fight will take place on Saturday, January 30th, on HDNET. For more information, check your local listings.

So I'm doing this blog quick and easy. South Florida is at its coldest, and being without gloves is unbearable, but difficult to type with. Yes, I'm wearing my SuperSentai Ranger leather gloves.

Here is my latest Cyber-painting done on Photoshop. The original file is 800 DPI and is made off 2 separate files: The Pink Ranger and the hand holding the gun. Both files were painted, separated, on Adobe Photoshop, and joined together.

Back in June, 2009, Catherine Sutherland, the Mighty Morphin'/Zeo/Turbo Ranger was in need of an 8X10 color photo for her Anime Expo 09 appearance. She supplied a publicity photo of Kat in ninjetti outfit with a blank background, all around. With only weeks to spare, I started airbrushing, on my Imac, 2 cyber-paintings for Catherine and Nakia Burrise, the Yellow Zeo and Turbo Ranger:

Catherine was presented with a variety of options for her to decide which one to get printed. Here is my favorite:

This one was Catherine's choice:

Having a photographed hand and gun pasted on top of the Helmet cyber-painting was something I allowed myself to do as long as I came back to finished it, although the event and photo were already done and over. I've spend this last cold weekend sitting down and painting these subjects, just to have the Key-artwork finished for myself. How do I do it? I didn't get to document all of the process, but I took some screen-grabs as I fleshed-out the gun. Here's how it goes:

So, that's that. The Final Cyber-painting is huge, clean and as sharp as computer graphics can get. They make great Desktop wallpaper:

The following are selected and edited photos from my private archives.

Many of Ranger fans are familiar with its Japanese counterpart, "Super Sentai." Super Sentai, meaning "Super team of 5," has been doing live-action stage shows all over different Japanese venues. These shows take place in a stage with a lot of martial arts, trap doors, stunt men, and pyrotechnics involved.

These are some of the photographs I received long ago and CAN NOT be found anywhere else, since they were taken by private parties and are not publicity shots, nor issued by Toei.


Pics from Zyuranger live stunt show. See close-ups below.


Above: close-ups of the Stunt ZyuPink costume picture above. Stunt Dinobuckler and drilled visor helmet.


Most popular are the costumes and helmets the stunt show uses. These are cast off actual Super Sentai TV helmets, but modified to acomodate the stunt needs. The biggest tell is the helmet's visor. In TV, the visors are vac-formed tinted plexy glass. In the stunt show, the visors are fibberglass, just like the helmet, but with drilled holes. These allow visibility and breathing. A TV helmet's visor would fog with the heavy breathing during a stunt show. That can blind the actor and put him/her in a lot of danger in front of a live audience.



Above left: Zyuranger stunt gloves didn't have cuffs. The diamonds were stitched in the glove's gauntlet. Right: Close-up of Zyured's drilled visor helmet.


Above: DragonRanger helmet has got NO drilled holes in his visor.

Some of these live action shows have appearances from the TV actors themselves. Although they get to do some stunts in the live show, they are not the ones in Sentai costume, but stunt people. In this case, the Dragon Ranger actor does an appearance, but what is that in his hand? It's...it's...it's a TOY ZYUSOUKEN!! Yes, yes, it is.

How different is a toy Zyusouken to a prop one?


Prop one is much bigger.
 


Our heroes in a live appearance/press conference.


Red, Green, and Yellow at their respective press conference/ live appearance. (Green still has the toy Zyusouken).



My own Dragon Ranger autograph. I can't read Japanese, so I don't know if I'm holding it upside down :(

That's that. Soon, I will post "MMPR: The live," featuring a deep and private behind the scenes look of the MMPR live tour.

Many of you have seen pics of my finished Bandora. In natural sunlight, the paint-job can add an extra layer of realism.

Here is a step by step tutorial on how I achieve the finish. 

You will need:
-#320 Wet-sanding sand paper (Found at Home Depot, Auto part stores)

-Small cheap brushes with pointy tips. (found at your local Michael's, Pearls). These have purple handles and come in packages of 3 for, about $1.89.

-Speedball Indian Inks: You will need small bottles of Burnt umber (brownish color), White, black, and Indigo blue.



-Red paint for the mouth(any art supply store)
-Gold markets with fine and regular tips.(Staples, Office depot)
-Silver paint (Any art supply store)
-Rub N Buff Gold metallic wax finish tube (any art supply store)
-Krazy glue(Walmart)
-Epoxy glue(Walmart)

-Tamiya Flesh color Spray can (see info and link below)
-Krylon Satin brown boots spray can (Walmart)
-Red spray-paint (Walmart)
-Rust O Leum white primer (Optional)

The pieces come in their natural white resin. Fresh off the molds, the pieces need a good scrub with an old toothbrush and some dish-soap. Dish-soap works great because it is made to cut through the grease, and the pieces have got some greasy mold released from the molding process:




After the good scrub to all the parts (head, skirt, torso, arms, wand), cut a small piece of 320 yellow sandpaper. Fold it and, lightly, wet-sand the surfaces of all of the parts. Make sure you do this softly and don't sand away any of the details. This is done to microscopically scratch the surface and allow for the paint to really bond with the surface, when applied.




This should be done to all areas that will be painted.



Next, paint the face flesh. For this, I use Tamiya TS-77 Flat Flesh 2. This comes in Spray Can and can be found here, if not at your local hobby/model train shop.




Next, paint the inside of the eye white. Use your Speedball Indian ink and fine tip brush for this.




Next, paint the whole face with Speedball's Burnt umber ink. Make sure it gets into every groove and tight corner of the face, even the eyes.




Then, with some tissue/toilet/napkin paper, wipe the paint away, only leaving some paint into those hard to reach area. This will be called "brush and wipe," and we will be doing that a lot. Make sure the eyes get wiped clean.




This is what the wiped face should look like. You are welcome to dip a clean brush in some alcohol (or cologne) and erase any excess burn umber ink from key areas, such as the arcs around the mouth and eyes. The trick is just to leave a "dirty wash" in certain areas to enhance the flesh tones.




Next, we use the red paint to paint the inside of the mouth, even the teeth.






I fill in the eyes with black ink and wipe the red and black paint off, leaving some black inside the eye, but leaving the centers as oval white blank eyes. Also, make sure you leave some red between the teeth. This takes care of the mascara and gums. If your tissue paper can't reach inside the eyes, wait until the ink dries. Then, with an X-acto knife, scratch the black out from the center of the eyes, leaving a slanted, oval white area in each eye. Just make sure you do it soft enough, so you won't scratch the white away.

As you can see, I don't paint irises in, leaving the eyes blank. I do this because it makes Bandora look more twisted and scary. Instead, I focus on painting eyelashes ONLY on the ear side of each eye. Not all around the eye, but only to the sides. This stretches the eyes, adding more to the Asian ethnicity of the character and makes the face look more evil.

As you can see, I've, also added the eye shadow and eyebrows. This was a mix of the blue ink, some water and a bit of red to achieve a light purplish mix applied with a fine tip brush. Eyebrows were painted in with a black pen.






Next, I use my fine tip brush to color each teeth white. Then, using my red paint, watered down to look pink-ish, I apply the lipstick color to the lips.




Using my fine tip gold market, I color inside the headband. Then, I can start coloring in the black and indigo blue with a brush.




Cleaning the brush, after every use, is necessary. I start adding in the blue to the feathers and the burnt umber to the brown parts of the head. Last is painting in the silver into the entire hair area. Yes, I use silver for this. Not white, silver. Last is the red inside the headband's jewel parts.

And, that does it for the head. If you mess-up, or want to star again, just, lightly re-spray the face with soft mists of flesh paint. You can, also wipe away the ink with cologne.

 Painting the rest is easier:




Prime the arms, skirt and torso parts with Rust O Leum white primer. Wait 24 hours and give it a light wet-sand with more 320 sandpaper. Dry them and spray it all with the Satin brown boots spray paint.

Using your black ink, give all the parts a coat of black, and wipe it all out,  leaving black areas in deep places, such as in the inside of the folds, rim at bottom of skirt, etc..Do this part by part and not at the same time.

Paint the torso armor parts black with your brushes and Speedball's Indian black ink.

 Mask the brown parts and paint the hands with the Tamiya spray-paint. After it cures, give the hands a full coat of burnt umber ink and wipe it out, just like you did with the face. This will bring the vains and details right out. 





Using your Gold markets, color in the gold into the jewelery parts.




Practice the skirt, torso and arms assembly and, using Krazy glue, bond the torso parts shut. Use clips or hold it together until the glue cures. Make sure you DO NOT krazy glue the arms and waist stuck. They need to move




Using your Rub N Buff metallic wax, use your fingertip to, lightly, rub the gold wax all around the shoulder armor details and breast areas. Using your epoxy glue, glue Bandora's head to top of shoulders areas. This should be done carefully, for this is the bonding key piece that will keep the whole figure from opening up and falling apart.

Using your white ink, paint the back feathers of the skirt. Lastly, paint the "U" shaped face part black and give the edges gold accents with the Rub N buff metallic wax. Finally, glue it to face with Krazy glue.




The wand: Prime and paint black with Ink. Leave the ball part unpainted, but primed smooth.
Use red spray paint for a smooth finish. Painting the ball with a brush can leave a sloppy, brush streak finish, so use spray paint, instead. After red paint is dried, repaint the black parts black. Use the indigo blue ink to color in the upside-down cone and add the gold details with the rub N buff wax and gold markets. It's easy, and you can handle this on your own. Make sure it looks like this:






And this is how Bandora should look. Remember that you can re-start at any point, if you mess-up. I mess-up, and I'm the one who made this. Don't rush it.
And, that's that.

A-ha! I finally got to it. Due to UPS messing up my latest resin order, I will be forced to take some time off until they can replace my new resin batch, hence this blog. So, this blog is brought to you by UPS. "What can brown do for you?"

The Monday after Anime Expo09, I made a trip to Sticks and Stones, the FX studio that made the iconic Power Ranger movie armored suits, a trip I've wanted to do since I saw the movie in 1995. 

No, they are not open to the public. They were kind enough to give me a tour of their facilities, and allow me to take pics for you, all, to see. I'm hoping this blog answers some of the questions you have about these movie suits.

So, we all know what the movie suits looked like in the film. This might be news to some of you, but the suits were not really supposed to look like this, from the beginning:

Yep, that's how they were supposed to look like: No visors or mouth-plates. What's the point of secret identity? Notice the belts, too. They were color-coded. It is said, by many sources, the director didn't really know what he was doing. After some rejected test-screenings, the script and costumes were altered. 

Their civilian costumes were not any better. You can't see them, but Steve Cardenas, "Rocky," is wearing cowboy boots.

To my surprised, I got to see the actual hand-made chest coin clay sculpts. These are the sculpts used to make an RTV silicone mold that makes solid resin copies. Usually, after the mold is finished, the clay sculpts are recycled into another sculpt. these clay sculpts didn't just survived the molding process, but stayed in fair condition for the last 16 years. 

The actual hand-made ninjety coin clay sculpts, also over 16 years old.

Top: Ivan's wizard costume was also made by Stick And Stones. 

Fun factoid: In the scene above, they used stunt doubles to climb those rock mountains. It was too risky for the actual actors to climb and fall.

Right: Spare Tiger and tyrano chest coins.

About 8 years ago, I found some recast chest coins. Left coin is a first generation cast. Right coin is a, possible, 2do or third generation recast. Each time something is recast, it shrinks, hence the left coin being bigger than the right one.

Top: Ninjetti coins are smaller than the BanDai toy coins.

Left: I'm shown Steve Cardenas's lifecast. These were made, for each Ranger, to custom-build the helmets to their heads. There were some issues with Karan Ashley's helmet, since Sticks and Stones was not told about her dreadlocks. 

Right: The movie helmets molds resting inside their plaster mother-molds.

Left: Storage with all of the movie costume molds and life-casts. 

Right: Archive photos of the White Ranger's morpher and chest coins.

Top: Jason David Frank's movie boot.

Letf: Planet Hollywood Pink Ranger boot.

Bottom: The Nike brand.

Stick and stones rented the movie suit molds to a company that was to mass-produced the suits for appearances and advertising of the film, worldwide. These tour suits were also wore by the cast at the MMPR movie premier. The makers of the tour suits cut a lot of corners and got away with replacing a lot of the armored parts with flexible foam sheets that came apart, off the base suit, easily. Also, the knee parts were made too high, leaving a gap between the armored knees and the boots. Many of these suits were passed as screen-used and sold at ebay, along with spare parts. These tour suits were also used for the cardboard cut-out Ranger group poster display used at theaters.

Well, that's that. Thanks to Stick and stones for allowing me to blog about my visit, and I hope Disney makes another Ranger movie, just so we can see cool stuff, like this, again. 

I want to start by pointing out that you should subscribe to my blogs, for I will be posing some very interesting stuff in the future. Yes, i'm on Facebook and Twitter, but I only use those sites to promote THIS Myspace profile, and not much for networking.

AAAaaaand, this project was officially completed on August 25th, at 7:56 p.m. I've spent 3 hours editing photos, so I'm gonna let the photos do the talking. This is an 8" tall resin Rita Repulsa/Bandora completely sculpted from scratch. Arms and hip rotate. Took me days to figure out how to paint flesh, but I think I got the hang of it. Some pics of the master sculpt assembled for these pics: