STORM (OF XMEN)

Storm
Toy Biz, 1996

She controls the weather (thus the name) and was worshiped as an African Goddess until recruited to be part of the new Xmen. Female characters in comic books are drawn to exaggerate certain parts of their anatomy, appreciated by young boys reading said books. It's equal treatment, though, since few of us men are built like Superman or Batman.  She's the only female figure in the recent line of Toy Biz superheros.  There are so many great characters in the Marvel universe, why did they pick lame ones like Rhino or Beast and not give us a Phoenix?

The first thing I decided was to make a few changes on this model to suit my tastes. It's allowed, you know. There's no law that says you can't add or take out or move around a few parts. In this case I felt the base was way too cluttered, distracting from the figure. There was another pipe sticking out of the top of the bunker that blocked your view of Storm, I left it off and filled the hole in with putty and carved it to match the rock surface. There was another big skeleton that went on the side, I just left that in the box. There was also another rat sitting on the pipe, it was the stupidest looking excuse for a rat I've seen, so I left it off.

I also did a little work on Storm. She was supposed to be placed on the back edge of the base, not a good composition, so I moved her up a little.  Both hands originally held a knife, but I cut it off the hand she's using to point. The main problem was her left leg being obviously a lot longer than the right, something I couldn't live with - she'd have a bad limp if built like this in real life.  I trimmed about 1/2" off her thigh, about a 6 inch reduction to scale, sanded the remaining stump to fit the boot, and it looks much better.

The paint job has the problem of working with all that white, it's her traditional outfit. I used a satin clear finish with a slight amber tint to give her the look of wearing died leather boots, belt, and gloves.  This broke up the white somewhat. A drybrush of white over dark grey let the curves on her body show (and she's sure got some). Same with the drapes of her cape and that huge mass of blowing hair. Her skin is chocolate brown over black, with a satin clear coat.  

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