Barbara
Dominatrix flora that can be encountered in Namco's 1991 Marvel Land Sega Genesis video game (said title is an enhanced port of the 1989 arcade game of the same name and is also known as Talmit's Adventure in Europe). Barbara's moniker is a pun on the thorned rose that her head resembles as well as her weapon of choice, a prickly lash. This femme fatale's attack strategy consists of simply advancing on the protagonist, Prince Talmit (whose name is "Paco" in the original Japanese version), while repeatedly snapping her spiked scourge before her. Barbara's not nearly as fearsome as she looks though--a single hit, either from bouncing on top of her petaled head, or striking her with Talmit's Bunshin Whip (assuming you have said power-up), will instantly destroy her and net the player 300 points.
An animated gif that I made from Barbara's game sprites:
Barbara's "defeated" sprite, after you successfully vanquish her.
Below are a few screenshots depicting Barbaras, from Areas 6 and 7, respectively, in World 1, as well as her listing in the credits, which play after you successfully complete the game.
I began this project by experimenting with the creation of a paper rose, following a three-step pictoral tutorial that I had photographed out of some book/magazine years ago (saving instructional information like that, even if I have no immediate use for it, often pays dividends down the road). I cut out a long strip of white paper, from an envelope, and carefully wrapped/folded it into concentric "petal" tiers around a screwdriver shaft until I had the shape of the flower. Next, I made a simple stick body armature out of newsprint and white glue (no wire was used at all in this project).
Here's the body bulked up with additional paper padding and layers. If you're wondering, the darkened areas are the result of using a wood burner to shape/smooth/dry the form.
Barbara's prickly whip was next, which consists of a hollow cylindrical handle connected to a paper "snake" lash. The undulating business end was then coated with glue and tiny barbs were applied to finish the look. For her head, I already had a blue marble, covered with a coating of papier mache, that I had made months ago and never used, that just happened to be about the right size (again, it pays to hang onto stuff), so, I simply added a few more layers of papier mache, to increase its circumference slightly, then I attached a pair of lips, cut the hollow sphere free from the marble, and then modified it further by excising the mouth opening, adding a hole for the neck post, and cutting off the crown of the head to accommodate the flower structure. Finally, I made and glued twenty-one individual teeth into her gaping maw.
After some test fitting, I decided that my original folded blossom, while it looked nice, just wasn't working out, so I tried to make another . . . several attempts later, I found that, for reasons I can't explain, I just couldn't get any of my new paper roses to come out nearly as good as the first one. Thus, I reluctantly gave up on that approach and made another flower using a different technique, namely gluing rings of concentric individual petals around a cylindrical core shaft, rather than folding up the entire structure from a single, long strip of paper. In retrospect, I should have made the petals more durable by making them 2-or-3 ply thick, instead of just one layer of paper, as the relatively delicate shape of the flower got somewhat distorted during the subsequent painting/handling process.
Pictured are the fully-colored head and lash mounted on the unpainted figure. While the changes aren't too apparent, the body was also reworked fairly extensively at this point. I felt that the right arm was too long, in relation to the left, so I cut it off, excised a section out of the wrist and biceps to make it shorter, and then reassembled and glued it back onto her shoulder again. I also put a veneer on her high heel shoes (to emphasize their shape), added more mass to her frame/musculature, and dressed her up in a 3-ply paper bikini top and bottom.
Finally, here is the finished product. Barbara's top heavy, and balancing on high heels to boot, so she couldn't stand unassisted, as such, for stability purposes, I super-glued her feet onto a stand that I cut out of a sheet of transparent plastic.
Materials:
Newsprint, an unused papier mache sphere from a previous project, white paper from a notebook and envelope,
tissue paper, white glue, acrylic paint, super glue, and transparent plastic (base only).
Dimensions:
6.3 cm (2.5") wide x 5.2 cm (2.0") high.
Time:
Five days: January 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9 in 2015.
REFERENCES:
Double Mole The Parade of Marvel Land characters guide.
Marvel Land Sega Genesis video game.
Wikipedia Marvel Land article.
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This is a nonprofit web site.
Any and all copyrighted imagery, terminology, etc., depicted here belongs to its respective holders/owners, namely Namco.
The repeating background pattern is a floral tile from the game.
The MIDI music playing is the "Amusement Park" theme from Konami's SNES Legend of the Mystical Ninja (a.k.a., Ganbare Goemon: Yukihime Kyuushutsu Emaki) video game. Marvel Land takes place entirely within an amusement park, so, given that setting, said tune is certainly an appropriate choice.
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