Season 3, Episode 9: The Wish Original Air Date: 8 December 1998 Wanting to be rid of Xander for good, Cordelia comes to the conclusion that Buffy is the cause of all her problems and makes a wish to the new transfer student, Anya, that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale. Anya, being the evil and powerful vengeance demon Anyanka, grants that that wish and in a heartbeat... the entire world changes... and everything Cordelia knows is completely different. In this alternate reality of 'It's a Wonderful Life gone to Hell': the Master is alive and rules the town after dark from the Bronze; both Xander and Willow are vampires; and Giles with a small group of brave students, called The White Hats, are fighting a losing war of attrition against the vampires on their own. Then in a shocking turn, Cordelia gets killed by the vamps, leaving the alternate reality Giles to figure out on his own what has happened to this world they currently live in, leading to a meeting with the alternate reality Buffy.
I made this 3-part scene quite a few years ago. I got the idea for making this because I had all these "The Wish" figures and I decided to put them together to make a more realistic scene. I think this piece was maybe the first one that I had "true to the show" pieces--not just the action figures. Here is a picture of how I displayed the figures oh so long ago (before I got into custom making).
I made Anya when she gave Cordy the necklace to make her wish come true. I used a regular Anya dress figure. I cut down the dress some to make it shorter. This was hard to do because at that time I didn't know about boiling the figures to make the plastic softer. I had fun sculpting the shirt on Anya. She had these flowers toward the top of her shirt which was a fun challenge to make. I also had fun painting the figure--surprise, surprise! I only painted one coat of white paint for her shirt. I discovered that this had a see-through look to it, which was true to the show. I then painted more white to make it look like her tank top underneath. I also sculpted her hair (and ear with her hair behind it). This was my first attempt at a full head of hair and it didn't turn out too bad. The paint I used discolored on me leaving it look horrible so I think I touched it up some. Here are some of Anya's pictures.
I didn't change Cordy at all. I liked the way she looked and I wasn't good at custom making stuff yet so I didn't want to risk it. I had another figure of her and I tried painting flesh-type dots on her jacket (since in the show her shirt was somewhat see-through-knitted like material) but it didn't look quite right so I left that. I took a picture of the background scene from the show, printed it, and glued that to a display plastic stand. The floor of the stand always bugged me but the brick material was too expensive to buy. I later got a John Lennon figure (see http://buffyactionfigures.blogspot.com/2008/12/james-as-action-figure.html ). I used his wall that was part of his stand, laid it down, and it worked perfectly for the bottom of this display. Here are some before and after photos of that.
(I think this is the picture where Anya's hair looks unpainted--it's not, just bad paint)
My next piece I made was Buffy. I used the Buffy that had the red pants. Again, since I was new to all this I didn't think to mix and match pieces to make the person work better. I used the whole figure to make this Buffy. It was hard. I had to cut away a lot of the hair. I also sculpted the pants (which I'm sorry Buffy, made her butt look HUGE), hair, shoes, and I bulked up her shirt. The shirt turned out horrible I think I re-did it and it still looked awful.
I liked this Buffy figure's face since it looked exactly like how her face was on the show--and I wouldn't have to try to attempt painting it. I did add some scar marks.
I wanted Buffy facing the Master. I didn't alter Willow or Xander at all. I did do a face repaint of the Master since it needed to look more bloody. I had them standing on a box that I spray painted with this stone-look-alike-spray paint. This isn't really true to the scene, but I liked the effect.
The last piece I made because I had an Anyanka figure and I thought an important part of the show was when Giles smashed her necklace. Anyanka had this really gaudy dress on, so I did do a repaint of that to try to give the dress some texture. I made Giles holding the item he uses to smash the necklace. I made all the items on his table, too. I had to really watch the show carefully to catch it all. the hardest piece was making the lamp. The neatest thing (but I'm not sure if you can see it) is the cup with steam coming out of it. I used a little cotton to make the steam effect--it looks quite cool. I did add other bits and bobbles to the desk to make it look crowded. For the table I used one of Anya's magic box stands and I made legs for it. Not the neatest thing--but it worked for my talent at the time.
