https://www.posetteforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=4165&p=45995#p45995 ----------------------------------- Endosphere Thursday, 25 December 2025, 02:41 AM Re: Notable Posettes Of Yesteryear ----------------------------------- Japanese Manga: Ultraman series by mightylady The Poser 4 era was a golden age of Poser superhero characters from comic books and films. As was the case in the source materials upon which the figures were based, Dork heroes by far outnumbered Posette heroines. Most of the Posettes superheroines were furthermore defined almost entirely by their costumes and props. The overwhelming majority of the figures were default P4NWs in nearly every respect, except for an occasional face morph, and their only distinctions consisted of their various capes, utility belts, and clothing. I mentioned this phenomenon eariler when examining the 'Mara Jade' and 'Female Fighter' Posettes by John Malis, which were both typical representatives of fantasy character Posettes in the P4 era. The previously discussed 'She-Hulk' by Marv, with her heavy and ambitious figure scultping by body morphs, was quite unusual in that respect. Generally speaking, among the more popular and higher-quality P4NW heroine characters of the era were Wonder Woman, Scarlet Witch, Elektra, and Batgirl. Yet few of those were truly Notable P4NWs from a technical perspective, as only Wonder Woman displayed any significant custom geometry in her figure. A Notable exception to those general trends was found amongst the Ultra series of Japanese comic superheroes, made by an artist called mightylady, who was loosely associated with the Yamato-verse. There were many colorful and unique characters in this extensive freebie series, and Posettes greatly outnumbered Dorks. The line also included many interesting creature figures, such as fish-people, snake-people, and kaiju (giant lizard monsters like Godzilla). Though I haven't any familiarity with the larger franchise, apparently [url=https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/Ultraman_(character)]Ultraman has been a popular sci-fi television series in Japan since the mid-1960s, which receives a reboot and update every 20 years or so. Ultraman is a super-powered spaceman on a quest to fight invading alien monstrositites bent on mayhem, and the comic action style of the show inspired similar later franchises like [i]Mighty Morphin Power Rangers[/i]. My cursory research suggested mightylady's Poser figures are relatively faithful depictions of characters from the Ultraman television shows. Yet the fictional franchise seems focused on Ultraman as the protagonist, so apparently the predominance of female Ultra Poser figures reflected the personal interests of mightylady rather than the original source material. The unique style and visual appeal of the mightylady figures is interesting, and the modelling modification work is generally well-done. But as usuable Poser figures of historical significance, the characters are now a muddled bag of mixed quality. Many of the download packages are missing texture maps and prop obj files. Many of the props were also borrowed from other creators, requiring separate dowloads from other sources. Though the mightylady's documentation for the Ultraman figures usually offered websites where those props (more importantly, their obj files and textures) might have been obtained 25 years ago, that info is fairly useless today. Hardly any of the old sources were archived on the Internet Wayback Machine, and thus there seems no way today to fully interact with the many of the Ultraman figures in their original intended states. In the example image below, I selected six figures from the series which are still [i]mostly usable[/i] today, rather than [i]mostly unusuable[/i] due to missing and unobtainable files. [img]https://www.posetteforever.com/files/posted_images/5475/ultraman_series.jpg[/img] In the top left corner of the example is Ultrawoman 4. Dating from around 2005, she seems to have been the last iteration of this particular character made by mightylady. Ultrawoman 4 is actually a P3NW rather than a P4NW, and her documentation is [b]incorrect[/b] on this count-- Maz's OBJaction Mover must be used on the P3NW obj file, not the P4NW obj. Like most of the figures in the series, the head has been replaced by an armored helmet prop which does not offer any means to pose facial expressions. She wears the standard P4 Women's Heeled Boots, and has a few superpower crystal props attached to her midsection (apparently the character uses these to shoot laser beams, like Iron Man). Her bodysuit is simply painted onto her texture map. Though Ultrawoman 4's appearance was of acceptable quality for her own era, as a P3 figure with a low-resolution texture, one would want to do some significant re-texturing to use this figure today. However oddly, and likely reflecting some unconventional uses of these figures by their fans, Ultrawoman 4-- like all the female figures in the Ultra series-- contains a rather ambitious collection of female genitalia morphs attached to her hip, though these are all set to 0 (turned off) by default. :dontknow: The only rare morphs attached to the figure are a back-facing set attached to her chest, abdomen, and hip, which are designed to smooth the spinal crevice in order to better simulate an otherwise unclothed figure wearing a catsuit or armored suit. Though we've only been discussing Posettes here, I've included Ultraman (top middle of the example image) since he's supposed to be the main character of this series. Similar to his female companion, Ultraman is a Poser 3 Man rather than a P4NM, whose head has been replaced by an armored helmet. Though he appears shorter than Ultrawoman here, the reason for this is the high-heeled boots worn by the lady. Perhaps one would want to upscale Ultraman's body, to make him look a bit more formidable in comparison to his companions. On the top right of the example is a figure called 'UW Uniform,' which is apparently intended to depict what Ultrawoman looks like when she's not wearing her superheroine space-armor. This figure was troublesome to load, as it is missing numerous textures and prop obj files; what is shown in my example is probably all of her that is still usable today. UW Uniform is basically a stripped-down version of Yamato's P4NW Nene character, with some body morphs removed; for the example image, I put Yamato's LinLin texture on her, as I don't have files anymore for the Nene character. UW wears a long ponytail hairstyle called CherryPTail, which bears an extensive collection of morphs, but not much in the way of texturing, and thus suffers from a flat and dull appearance. A highlight of the UW figure is the included texture for the P4 Catsuit she wears, which looks quite groovy and futuristic. The figure also wears the P4 Women's Heeled Boots. Her gun holster belt is identical to the one worn by the John Malis 'Mara Jade' figure discussed earlier, which Malis seemed to have modified from Phil Hokusai's 'Lara Croft' figure by adding a solid belt-buckle. On the bottom left of the image is Dynagirl, who is very similar to Ultrawoman: a P3NW with few morphs apart from simulated genitalia on her hip (turned off by default). Of all the characters in mightylady's series, this one seems to have offered the most variations. There was another variant of Dynagirl called 'Sophinia,' which seems to depict four other alternate costume designs in various color schemes. 'Deep One' is shown in the bottom middle of the example, and is a good example of the campy monster figures included in mightylady's Ultraman series. The fish-person (man? woman?) appears to be a custom figure, though it was probably based in some way on the Poser 3 Nude Man. Though the character is relatively simple and seems built with fun rather than realism in mind, it was unique for the P3/P4 era. There seems to be a slight problem with the joint parameters of the figure's right shoulder, which leaves the scaly creature always with a lopsided posture (but maybe that's normal for fish-people?). In general, the Deep One pays homage to an amphibious race of hybrid sea-monsters originally created in the 1920s by horror literature author HP Lovecraft. 'Justion' (pictured in the bottom right corner) is the most technically advanced figure I could find in the Ultraman series, as she is a P4WWG. P4WWGs were a late P4-era hybrid which attempted to reconcile the geometries of the P4NW (Posette) and Evolution Eve figures. As one can see from a close examination of the example image, a P4WWG is not a particularly good choice for a character whose clothing is simulated by painting her body texture map, as the aggressive female genitalia of P4WWG can never be fully 'turned off.' As a character, apparently Justion is a some kind of traitor, a former ally of Dynagirl who joined the forces of the nefarious lizard-monsters. As with other figures in the series, this P4WWG's head has been replaced by an armored helmet prop, which leaves her unable to open her mouth or offer other facial expressions, and she wears the standard P4 heeled boots. Her weapon is some kind of light-staff, which seems to just be a giant cylinder with ambient object lighting applied, and she has some tactical shoulder pad props attached as well. Another interesting character in the Ultraman series by mightylady was a kaiju monster called 'Gigacrescent,' which I used many years ago for [url=https://www.posetteforever.com/album_showpage.php?pic_id=7176]an image here at Posette Forever. Also of minor technical interest was a waifish character called 'Astral,' which made use of an early P3 version of rainbow's anime-style Posette called 'A01.' rainbow was another somewhat well-known Japanese Posette maker of P4 days, also associated with the Yamato sphere of influence through heavily cross-linked websites. Astral included Kozaburo's Kyoko Hair Mk 2, a top-notch hair prop of the P4 era. There may have been other Notable mightylady figures, but due to previously mentioned problems with missing obj files etc I wasn't able to review any others for this article.