Qualtan and Kaiju...
Another influence to the physical details of Forging of a Knight's main hero Qualtan came from a rather unique source...
...our valiant knight usually wears (when its not smashed, melted, punctured, torn, or otherwise being mangled) a special set of golden armor. This wasn't just to offset him as being different from all the silver suited knights in the series. True, I wanted him to stand out but why all gold, and not a mix of different hues?
That answer stems from a certain kaiju (giant monster) TV series from way back in the 70's I used to watch as a kid. The nemesis? The evil Dr. Gori, super scientist alien ape with a pink sense of fashion and a peculiar penchant for making these bizarre hand movements every time he would talk (scary, huh?). He and his ape henchman Karas would try to take over the world to basically remove that nasty human population that was apparently not appreciative of their eden-like planet, ruining it with their pollution. Usually, our mad scientist space ape would create giant monsters from said pollution to run amok per episode (so some heavy eco-savvy concepts here for a weekly giant cyborg-monster bashup).
The hero was this golden hued cyborg that would take human form, and in that guise, work with a pollution fighting team while sneaking off when the monsters showed up to become his more metal sided aspect for the perfunctory wrestling match through miniature city models.
Ah, the fun of these silly series back then - Ultraman, Space Giants, Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot, and this show...how can you not love zippered monster suits, human wrists showing between the monster gloves and the rest of the costumes, and attacking toy tanks, jeeps, and planes pulled along by very visible strings? But that golden colored hero stayed in my mind. Many years ago, I found some of the characters from this series on Ebay and almost forgot I still had these little 3 1/2" guys which I recently found again wrapped up in a box during some basement cleaning. When I created Qualtan, his golden armor stemmed from the image of that golden cyborg.
So does anyone recognize this metal hero...played by Tetsuo Narikawa,or the name of the series based on said character?
...our valiant knight usually wears (when its not smashed, melted, punctured, torn, or otherwise being mangled) a special set of golden armor. This wasn't just to offset him as being different from all the silver suited knights in the series. True, I wanted him to stand out but why all gold, and not a mix of different hues?
That answer stems from a certain kaiju (giant monster) TV series from way back in the 70's I used to watch as a kid. The nemesis? The evil Dr. Gori, super scientist alien ape with a pink sense of fashion and a peculiar penchant for making these bizarre hand movements every time he would talk (scary, huh?). He and his ape henchman Karas would try to take over the world to basically remove that nasty human population that was apparently not appreciative of their eden-like planet, ruining it with their pollution. Usually, our mad scientist space ape would create giant monsters from said pollution to run amok per episode (so some heavy eco-savvy concepts here for a weekly giant cyborg-monster bashup).
The hero was this golden hued cyborg that would take human form, and in that guise, work with a pollution fighting team while sneaking off when the monsters showed up to become his more metal sided aspect for the perfunctory wrestling match through miniature city models.
Ah, the fun of these silly series back then - Ultraman, Space Giants, Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot, and this show...how can you not love zippered monster suits, human wrists showing between the monster gloves and the rest of the costumes, and attacking toy tanks, jeeps, and planes pulled along by very visible strings? But that golden colored hero stayed in my mind. Many years ago, I found some of the characters from this series on Ebay and almost forgot I still had these little 3 1/2" guys which I recently found again wrapped up in a box during some basement cleaning. When I created Qualtan, his golden armor stemmed from the image of that golden cyborg.
So does anyone recognize this metal hero...played by Tetsuo Narikawa,or the name of the series based on said character?
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