FIG PHOTO: “Street Fighter Red Tape: Ryu”

 

This was ALWAYS the plan.

Literally, as soon as I learned about the Jada Toys Street Fighter line, I knew I was going to collect the characters that appeared in a 2013-14 sketch comedy series and try to somehow use them to re-create those sketches.

It’s taken me until now to start pulling it off.

Street Fighter Red Tape was part of the Pete Holmes Show, a short-lived late night sketch show from over a decade ago. It was about the office drone tasked with managing the logistics and talent management of the Street Fighter 2 tournament.

It followed Ex-Men, a similar series of sketches about Professor Xavier firing all the X-Men for sucking, but I can’t do that one ‘cause it uses the ‘Fox movie looks for the most part and I don’t have or want those toys.

The Plan went through a number of iterations. I thought about doing my standard photo editing job on screengrabs of the sketches, but screengrabs from a low budget 2014 TV show off Youtube was… deeply unsatisfying.

Things really started to click last November when I got the Anime Heroes Genji from Chainsaw Man, who is VERY close to the outfit of the Pete Holmes character, and one of the animated Spideys with a spare Peter Parker head. As close as anyone’s gonna get.

But then I realized I had to do it practical, or as practical as was feasible. To start, I took a screenshot and digitally cleared out the chairs, desk, and people. I brightened and sharpened it a bit to account for the eventual printing, then printed it out in color on cardstock. Then Cathy helped me cut and attach the two pages so I hd one wide aspect ratio background.

For the chairs, I knew I could use an AEW announce chair for “Pete”’s chair, but the other chair was a very specific type. I was trying maybe to source one, and then, on my brithday, Cathy presented me with a perfect replica chair that she’d made:

She would argue that it’s not perfect, but I beg to differ.

The desk is a cardboard box wrapped in cardstock printed to an approximate color-match of the gray of the desk on the show.

The desk top is strewn with some handmade pieces of scale paper, and assorted accessories from the house collection.

I got everything put together over the weekend, and realized I needed the rug. So I took the parts of the rug from screenshots, pieced them together, cleaned them up a bit, and printed those out as well to slide under. Here’s the setup:

For each of these, and I am doing all of them, I’m trying to find a moment from the sketch that I can match, emulate, or homage. Here, “Pete” is reading Ryu a list of alternate Hurricane Kick vocalizing because nobody knows what he’s actually saying or what it means, including Ryu.