A Brief History of the Power Ranger Legacy in Japan

We posted this on Facebook yesterday but it's just too cool not to blog about.  One of our producers, Mici Falvo, has family in Japan and brought back a "Super Sentai Book" with her that details the full history of the Power Rangers franchise.  Most people know that MMPR was born in Japan and even the current running TV shows still originate in Japan.  What may be news to some is that what we know as the Power Rangers over here is called the "Super Sentai" overseas.  The first series, "Himitsu Sentai Gorenger debuted in Japan in 1975.

A total of 15 additional versions of the series were released before the American "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" was created based on the "Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger"  Japanese series in 1993. Over the years, the franchise evolved into the Rangers our generation grew to love.

- A total of 38 Super Sentai series have been released since 1975.  We are so excited to contribute to the outstanding legacy well established by both the Japanese and American franchises.

FINAL Red Ranger 3D Model Designs!

Today is a good day!  Today, we get to share with you the FINAL designs for the 3D model of the Red Ranger!  If you've been following along, you know that this has not been a simple or fast process.  In the spirit of "do it right or don't do it at all", we have gone over every detail of Red's design with a fine toothed comb in order to build the most badass, mind blowing character design you could ever dream of while still staying true to the original design we all know and love.

What we wanted was to find a balance between the increasingly popular look of plated armor as shown in Iron Man and the Dark Knight movies and the original spandex costume.  The solution we came up with was a leather material mixed with a sort of motor cycle body armor look.  Our graphic artist, Kevin DeLucia spent painstaking days upon days carving out each and every detail, utilizing his incredible talent to add details never before seen on a Power Ranger.  Check out the detail in the armor plating seen below.

 We kept all the same color elements and were sure to keep the original diamond pattern on the front.

 The helmet has the original "eyes" and "teeth" around the visor and we updated the mouth piece to mimic more of a mechanical breathing apparatus as opposed to the literal lips used in the original.

And finally, we added four LED lights to the costume suggesting a high tech mechanical element to the suit and providing some nice aesthetics.  The image below is the final design of the Red Ranger for Mighty Morphin Power Ranger: First Wave.  Enjoy!

Up next: we bring Red to life!  We'll give him a skeleton and teach him how to move!