LENNY ZERO GOES MANGA

I'd been toying with the idea of making a Lenny Zero figure for some time as I have quite a few Dredd related one's and I'm not holding my breath waiting for an action figure.

Much preferring to adapt existing items as (a) I'm lazy and (b) I'm not that good, I decided to base him on an anime plastic figure I had of a character called "Trigun". He was in a great pose but had a huge bright red trenchcoat, which I thought would be a problem. Until I remembered that in an issue of the Megazine there were some pre-production sketches of the character that included one of Zero in a sort of similar coat. Mind made up then.

First thing was to sort out the hair. Trigun has a huge blonde spiky haircut so it was out with the scalpel and off with the top of his head, cutting horizontally just above his eyes. To replace the hair I used Magic Sculpt, which I laid on, built in to a rough hair shape. I then kept picking at it with a cocktail stick, pulling it up in to a slight spiky style.

That done, I had to address the gun. The original was a massive Colt 45, almost as big as his arm, so that had to go. I cut it off just above the pistol grip and stuck on a little spare kit part that looked kind of suitable.

Next it was a deep breath and on to the visor. I rolled out a really small sausage of magic Sculpt and laid it across his eyes. By continually referring to Jock's art I kept adjusting and altering until it looked ok, finishing off with the slot across the front. While doing all of this, the most difficult part was stopping it from looking like Cyclops' visor. On the page they're quite different but at the scale I was working on (Zero's head is only 7mm high) it was kind of hard to distinguish.

Once done, I gave the figure a coat of white primer and ran slap-bang in to a brick wall.

What colour scheme to use? Zero's only ever been in black and white (and quite right too I say).

I guess I could've winged it as no one could tell me I was wrong but decided instead to ask the one guy who'd know for sure.

Jock suggested an average skin tone, dark brown hair, white visor with red slot and a blue trenchcoat. So that's what I did, using Burnt Sienna for the hair to keep it nice and dark and a dark blue for the coat to keep with the gritty feel of the strip.

I also wanted a base for him so knocked this up using 2 sections of foamboard stuck together. A couple of kit parts and a bit of plastic sprue were stuck on to suggest machinery continuing up the wall behind him. The pavement is a piece of wet and dry. I painted it all in dark greys and blacks, picking out the kit parts in gunmetal. I also used some gloss varnish dripped down the wall to suggest dampness.

And that was it about done.

Looking at it finished, I'm quite pleased with it but he hasn't lost his Manga origins - what with the round face and real long arms and legs. I also don't think it's Zero's sort of fashion but I like to think if there were an Anime version of the chap then this wouldn't be too far off?