Members who have their own Figure World questions

Members who have their own figure World: Why did you start creating your own Figure World and how did you start creating it?

I would have to say yes! Bam HQ is where it's at for all my troops! I guess it all stems back to childhood with all the different make figures I had. The idea of creating their own world was definitely added by MiskatonicNicks toyville where you could look in and see what the figures were up too!
My idea sorted evolved into a fully working and going's on at my HQ. Plus as an adult, isn't it the only real way we can 'Play' with our figures?

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@ Chris

Why stop at just one world?
When I'm up and functioning I actually have several!
My imagination tends to run wild and I try to keep up with the ideas as they come.

Figure World(s)?    You shouldn't have asked! But since you did:

My "adult years" toy photography and figure collection started here:


These figures are a 4-inch/10cm anime-style Japanese figure line called Pinky Street. Some online friends had begun taking and posting photos of them back around 2005, and I thought it would be fun to pick up a few and give miniature toy photography a try. In the photo above, the girls are participating in the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run.


Soon they took up surfing, motoring around in a plastic Meyers Manx dune buggy that I'd had since I was a kid (and still have).


They became world travellers. Thailand, above. The La Tomatina tomato fight in Buñol, Spain, below:


But my "Figure World(s)" really began to take shape when the Pinky Street girls got a tank:


And then a U-Boat:


And a beach house:


And a storyline began to emerge:


I figured "a few" Pinky Street figures would be more than enough. As the photos attest, that hobby quickly got out of hand, and I ended up with over a hundred figures, plus houses and cars and tanks and a submarine! I was happy in my little Pinky Street world and had almost zero interest in other toys or figures until I heard about a new line being introduced by Mattel: MONSTER HIGH!


I was intrigued by the concept: the children of famous monsters. Sure, the dolls... definitely dolls... were kind of girly, but they were also amazingly well designed, and featured detailed backstories filled with arcane references to classic horror movies. Whoever was behind this line was a True Fan of the highest order, with a penchant for bad monster puns straight out of the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland. I was only planning to get two, Lagoona (daughter of the Creature from the Black Lagoon) and Draculaura (daughter of Dracula), but they turned out to be spectacularly photogenic, so you can guess how that panned out   :


My interest in creating "dungeon scenes" was inspired by Monster High, and this tendency has influenced, or tainted, almost all of my diorama efforts since.

One day, while rummaging around in storage for interesting photo props, the Monster High (or MH as they are frequently abbreviated) ghouls discovered my old GI Joe Adventure Team helicopter:


And my New Adventure Team began to evolve!

In response to the popularity of Mattel's Monster High line, rival MGAE introduced a monster-inspired spin-off of their Bratz line, the Bratzillaz:

(Best toy line promotional music video ever)


The quality of the Bratzillaz did not match that of Monster High, but the Midnight Beach series of Bratzillaz glows in the dark! Like, seriously glowy, extremely bright. Which makes them awesome!


Of course, some non-Bratzillaz Bratz dolls ended up joining the crew... because that's just the way things happen. The most significant one for the purposes of this already overly long narrative would be Holiday Jade:


It was with Bratz Jade that my current Figure Worlds really began to take shape. The smug expression of the figure inspired a story:

Jade can sometimes be a bit pretentious:


But her friends... for lack of a better word... Sasha and Yasmin flick it right back at her:


(Don't give up! We'll get to the Action Man / GI Joe stuff eventually!)

Most of the Bratz Girlz story is rambling dialogue with some "world building" worked in:


But this is where it gets a bit more complicated. You see, Tales from the Dollie Dungeon is actually a tele-series produced by a film studio:


Maudlynne, seen above, is the director and general show-runner. Maudlynne answers, grudgingly, to the "Suits at Corporate," studio head Nichola "Nikki" Sinclair, aka The Fascist Fashionista, formerly known as Lady Action:

When her uncle, Captain Action, retired from active duty, both as an executive and as an Action Hero, the Fascist Fashionista took over the studio, and Cap turned the World Peacekeeping Mission over to the guys at SCU-HQ.



The SCU-HQ guys, as you may recall (or maybe not, it was quite a while ago) managed to get themselves kidnapped by a couple of quasi-German fiends...


... and a Bratzillaz gal:


At present, General "Ol' Blood 'n' Guts" Patton has been assigned to lead a rescue mission, ably assisted by Bob "Never Give Up" Hope:


In order to give the mission an actual chance of succeeding, a new team member has recently been reassigned from BAM-HQ in the UK to the General's squad:


And that's pretty much where the story stands at the moment. But before we go, I should mention TJ and Sooki, who run a local dive bar, where "secret missions" are coordinated under the strictest security:


Emily works there, too, the Bratz girlz sometimes wander in, and Frank can usually be found passed out in the corner:


Captain Action's old "friendly nemesis," Doctor Evil, or, The Doctors Evil, and Cousin Monday, live in the abandoned power plant on the outskirts of town:


And then we have "that meddling kid," Kenna, who... spoiler alert... will ultimately play a larger role in the narrative:


Desdemona... there, you just learned the Devil Girl's name... and some of her pals live in the neighborhood. We'll see more of them from time to time:

And finally, there's Tærra Symmes, who, if things unfold according to plan, will ultimately tie a number of these disparate threads and characters together:


Wait... we're depending on the crazy-looking chick to make sense out of all of this?

Uhhh... yeah, pretty much.

There you have it, the more or less complete evolution of my Action Figure World(s). See, I told ya you shouldn't have asked!

Arright, Maudlynne, last word:

SCU_HQ wrote:

See, I told ya you shouldn't have asked!

We shouldn't have but I'm glad we did! That's quite an array of characters you have there Dave!

I agree with Steve! Amazing stuff dave, wonderful pics! Looks like there is always something going on at SCU-HQ

I’m very much glad that I asked the questions because your descriptions of each of your different figure worlds were just totally awesome Dave.

Thank you very much for sharing your different figure worlds with us Dave.

Well, when I first started, I was making up the names of nonexistent countries, and whole fictional histories behind them.

I love world building, and I always go over the top.

https://actionmanmobileops.forumotion.co.uk/t7926-actionyankee-s-action-man-universe?highlight=Universe

Oh, wow! Action Yankee, that looks really fascinating! It's gonna take some time to go through that post carefully! I'm glad you put the link here!

Wow, I'm glad you did too, Dave, most impressive and intriguing worlds -- thanks!!!

BTW, I totally love your artwork!

I don't know about anyone else, but MY head is spinning from all the wonderfully detailed imaginative creations shown here!

LeStryge wrote:

I don't know about anyone else, but MY head is spinning from all the wonderfully detailed imaginative creations shown here!

Tell us about your worlds, even if you can't show them right now!

(Your head is spinning because the Action Man forum has been invaded by Bratz and Monster High, in'nit? And you thought Phicens were bad!)

SCU_HQ wrote:

(Your head is spinning because the Action Man forum has been invaded by Bratz and Monster High, in'nit? And you thought Phicens were bad!)

Strange as it may seem to say this, but I actually find it quite a pleasant change!(They are after all, decidedly "toys".)

Of late I have seen a few of those Monster High figures in the charity shops, and seemingly in good condition too.
Thought a few of them might have...."possibilities", but maybe were just a little too stylised to mix well with my MAMs.
You seem to manage this well though. I do love that wonderful tiki beach hut you made! That thing must have been huge!
Did it survive your move?

Having just packed up all my own figures, AND the seemingly endless amount of props, furniture and other accoutrement that go with them, I was quite shocked at the amount of "stuff" I already have.
(Not to mention the space it requires, even when all neatly boxed up!  How the hell did I ever amass so much? 1/6 is certainly a BIG scale! The desks, lab bench, the lounges and associated chairs take up a huge crate just by themselves!

As I am going to a smaller place I think I have to consider very carefully any further purchasing or expansions into new scenarios and play with what I have or can construct in the future.
That's the plan anyway.

LeStryge wrote:

I do love that wonderful tiki beach hut you made! That thing must have been huge!
Did it survive your move?

The tiki hut was definitely the best diorama - model piece I ever constructed. Sadly, it was simply too large to make the move, altho' I did manage to salvage the U-Boat conning tower. I would love to reconstruct the tiki hut, or two tiki huts, one in the original Pinky Street (3-3/4 inch fig) scale, and one in 1/6 scale. But I can no longer simply walk out the back door and collect banana leaves and palm fronds.

I bet you can, though! As you construct your home tiki bar, will you also be working on a duplicate in 1/6 scale?

Laura Neville 4 by Gary Menten, on Flickr


I've always been interested in post-apocalyptic fiction and back in the 80's for a while, I was really concerned about nuclear war and that's when I started arming myself seriously for that possibility, which happily, never happened. Yet apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic remains a popular topic not only in art, in cinema and modeling, but in human fantasy itself and it's tempting to ask ourselves how we would make out in such a world. And in fantasy we can of course give it the characteristics we want it to have, not necessarily the unspeakable horror it would actually look like. We can create empires that never existed, or revive old ones.  The sky's the limit.  

My world is one in which most of the men have died and are outnumbered nine-to-one by women.  Talk about a MALE fantasy.  There are some dark, nasty things about this world however. Large parts of many large countries and continents are lawless and plagued by bandits and warlords.  In some places, civilization is just barely hanging on.  Capital punishment is back i a big way and absent good TV shows to watch, public hangings have become a form of popular entertainment, as they were well into the 19th Century in the UK and US, and still are in places like Iran, Lebanon, and Afghanistan under the Taliban.  Death sports like gladiatorial games, auto dueling and hanging poker and hanging roulette (don't even ask about these last two) are not only legal, but fairly common. In short, the population is far more inured to death and violence than before, but only so much as has already happened in human history.  

But back to all the beautiful women who still put on makeup, shave their legs and underarms, and wear very sexy uniforms if you can even call them that; As Kamiko likes to remind people, that as long as civilization exists, so too will style and fashion. Women will see to it.

ActionYankee wrote:

Well, when I first started, I was making up the names of nonexistent countries, and whole fictional histories behind them.

I love world building, and I always go over the top.

https://actionmanmobileops.forumotion.co.uk/t7926-actionyankee-s-action-man-universe?highlight=Universe

That reminds me very much of the Tintin comics I used to read as a child. My parents are Belgian so I had the whole set. My father even met the author, Hergé. Hergé used to invent not only countries, but also names and languages that were more often than not based on a mixture of Flemish, German and a Brussels dialect he spoke known as Marols. This meant that many of the gags in his books were only understandable to those with some knowledge of these languages. Since I was born in North America, I wasn't among them but my parents explained them to me. For instance the capital of the fiction country of Khemed, which looks a lot like Jordan, is caled "Wadesdah" which phonetically is how Marols speaking and other Bruxellois would say "what is that." Think of the German phrase "Was ist das?" The ruler of Khemed is an emir named Mohammed Ben Kalish Ezab, which might sound a little Arabic until you know that "Kalish Zap" is Bruxellois term for the syrup used to make licorice.

It would probably be simpler for me to have "one" world. I guess you could say I have three.

My 1960's Joes along with their reproductions I base on WWII. Don Levine had a buddy in the
army that let him borrow weapons and equipment to he could copy and downscale them for
the Joe line, which was mostly the Korean War era. However the Korean War used a lot of
surplus gear from WWII. Except the M-60, the BAR was used during WWII.

My second world is the Adventure Team. The technology of that line was 1970's. Although I
do use other items and characters to go with that line, like other figures made during the
same time frame.

Third is the modern figures and gear. The Classic Collection line of Joe, along with the 1/6
Real American Hero line. And other figures made during that time frame. Recently I've been
working on changing my Hall of Fame figures to the CC bodies, which have actual articulation.
The HOF bodies, from my understanding, Hasbro used bodies from a fashion doll line they had.
Other than two clicks of movement in the elbows and knees, they are not better than Ken dolls.

I'm returning from a hiatus of the hobby, after hitting collector burnout. But I'm finally getting
to projects I had planned to do years ago. I need to sort through some boxes to see what I have,
and I hope to get my "worlds" set up and going.

Daryl

TNshooter wrote:

... I need to sort through some boxes to see what I have,
and I hope to get my "worlds" set up and going.

Interesting glimpse in to your three figure worlds, which appear to be based largely on the eras in which the figures were released. Good to hear about the revival of your interest in the action figure hobby.

SCU_HQ wrote:

TNshooter wrote:

... I need to sort through some boxes to see what I have,
and I hope to get my "worlds" set up and going.

Interesting glimpse in to your three figure worlds, which appear to be based largely on the eras in which the figures were released. Good to hear about the revival of your interest in the action figure hobby.

What a great concept! You could do flash backs in stories using your different era figures! clever stuff that!

Daryl thanks for sharing your three different figure worlds with us. I found it really interesting. I really do hope that you get your "worlds" set up and going soon.

It's occurred to me that since writing my original post, there have been some significant changes in my own little world as I've been integrating it with Dal's and doing crossover's and have done back and forths with Dave at SCU HQ and now Spy Training Camp (LondonRoadHog) essentially pretending that at least some of our collections exist in the same time and place, all while ignoring any differences or contradictions between them.  We've actually done a four-way crossover comic with all of us contributing to the images and script and it worked out very well. This was the main reason for the SIMON (SECRET INTELLIGENCE and MILITARY OPERATIONS NETWORK) Treaty which we created, and serves as a framework for our merged universes.  All of our HQ's are a part of of it and SIMON serves as an imaginary worldwide organization tasking out missions to the various HQ's.  

My own little part of the universe is in New Mexico in an America that has been shattered by a second civil war, as well as a nuclear exchange between the US, Russia and China.  Though the Russians and Chinese got the worst of it, America is still badly shattered and the UK now once again leads the English Speaking world as it once did.  Though the US, or more correctly what's left of it remains an independent country like Canada and Australia, it has given up on being a republic and reverted to monarchy, accepting the British Monarch as the nominal head of state, while retaining it's own parliament and prime minister.   Though the cities on the east and west coast...the ones not having been nuked maintain some semblance of order and normality, much of the interior of the country is a mad-maxian wasteland, with spotty government control and virtually all government forces are deployed to protect key sites like oil production facilities and so on.  

More later as I have to run off to work now.

Kimono Troop Command wrote:

 
My own little part of the universe is in New Mexico in an America that has been shattered by a second civil war, as well as a nuclear exchange between the US, Russia and China.  

In other words, your "imaginary" world is actually a near-future documentary!

SCU_HQ wrote:

Kimono Troop Command wrote:

 
My own little part of the universe is in New Mexico in an America that has been shattered by a second civil war, as well as a nuclear exchange between the US, Russia and China.  

In other words, your "imaginary" world is actually a near-future documentary!

it started off that way, but as you know, it's devolved more into a near-future comedy, where Kimono Troop, and essentially absurd all-female formation of assault and covert operations commandos but composed of fairly sane if offbeat characters has its funny moments as they sanely try to confront absurd and insane situations. Their perpetual enemies in Stahltruppe however are far less sane and far more absurd and have their funny moments as they try to deal with the serious.

"The world doesn't cease to be funny when someone dies anymore than it ceases to be serious when someone laughs."

G.B. Shaw.


However consider SCU HQs command staff, starting with General MacCuster and Major Hope. MacCuster is an over-the top caricature of Patton, (but not that over-the-top) while Maj Hope is a perfect representation of the characters Bob Hope played in so many of his movies and comedy skits. MacCuster is funny by virtue of being overly serious and pompous while Hope is funny by way of being goofy. The "straight man" so to speak in the ensemble is Colonel Kelly.

Now look at Dr. Evil (green) and Cousin Dr. Evil (Blue) who also complement each other as a comedic duo of incompetent wanna-be evil geniuses while the straight man in this ensemble is once again a woman, (Cousin Monday).

As a point of note, the exchanges between Kimono Troop and SCU HQ staff or the Dr's Evil have been uproariously funny. Being into kinky things, she actually likes Gen. MacCuster and would like for him to come "discipline" her ladies. And while she cannot admit to actually liking Dr. Green Evil, she finds him funny (and pathetic) and has no real intention of slaughtering him, though again, she must pretend for the sake of honor that she will do this one day.