GY-GOR: MOTU Redesign Challenge #87

This image was created for the Redesign Challenge #87 "GY-GOR" over on He-man.Org. Originally mentioned in Roger Sweet's book "Mastering The Universe," this was a character that was going to be made as a repaint/tool of a pre-existing gorilla mold from a earlier Mattel line "Big Jim." Alas he was never created before the line ended, but we did get a description of what the character would have looked like in the book by his creator Roger Sweet:
"I changed the ape's body color from black to bright yellow and gave him a dark olive-green face and chest. His face in contorted with white teeth snarling in an open mouth of blood red. I gave him a black body harness. From his shoulders I hung a dark maroon cape."
"When I showed "Gygor" to marketing Mark Ellis said that is ********** great!!!"
"Ted Mayer in my design group created a striking full-color illustration of the beast, with He-Man mounted on his back. Gygor was decked out with a panoply of harnesses and weapons."
This inspired a cool redesign contest to recreate the great ape & the result brought the Org artists together for some really superb entries. So this is my take, complete with bio & a new homemade additive female character for the fans...

GY-GOR single:

Being a HUGE King Kong fan, I couldn't resist drawing a big ape for Masters, so I took the elements from Sweet's description, & then added my own touches pulling from MOTU, Galaxy Fighters, DC, & of course real life... I made him more of a being than a steed... The Bio was developed & changed (originally they were going to live in the icey north) many times before I came up with a story I liked. My brother Randy also suggested his ideas to me, & I took the best of all we thought up & added more before I was thru.

FAW-SIL single:

I knew I wanted to make a cave-girl character for this challenge to add to the Gy-Gor bio. Hammer's 60-70's cave girl films were always a big influence on me... & I thought that type of a character would fit well here... So I came up with a female I was calling Ray-Chill, (in MOTU the simple "dash" names are standard), who was going to have some kind of ice magic. I decided that I would drop the magical ice princess motif & save that name for another character in the future... I took some more cues from the Hammer cave-girl films, & also a MOTU KO line called "The Forgotten Warriors of the Universe"... then after browsing some Fossil watches @ the mall I came up with the more prehistoric flavored name, & switched up my total cave motif to a tribal-girl with a bone warrior element. Incorporated her to fit in w/the new bio, & was inspired by some modern winter wear I saw on an emo-girl @ the DMV for the final touch... lol