Richard 'Dick' Blinken was a profesional substitute teacher in his home town of Staines, teaching anything from history to PE, economics to woodwoorking. One day he was talking with a friend of his who was heading to Australia to research the biker gang phenomenon and since Dick had some time off with school holidays, wondered if he wanted to come along. Dick agreed and the pair set off to Australia. They toured around, finally joining with a group calling themselves 'The Dreadnoks'; an easy going group that toured the country, doing odd-jobs for what money they could earn. They nicknamed Dick 'Buzzer' for his short haircut, an oddity for the unkempt bikies. After several weeks they came to a station near Alice Springs that seemed to be on fire. There they discovered a small group of armed men engaged in a gun battle with the owner of the farmhouse. The bikies rode in to rescue the farmers as best they could, but as they were poorly armed, several were wounded before the last surviving attackers fled. Buzzer's friend had been severely wounded, and died shortly after. Buzzer recognised the attackers as the GI-Joe group by their distinctive battle cry of 'Yo Joe!' and vowed revenge. The only person in the farmhouse was a strange man who stayed in the shadows, calling himself Zartan. He told Buzzer the Joes were after him, and that he and his friends may all be in danger now. Buzzer didn't care, he wanted to get back at them for what they did. Zartan told him that he was a smart man, that he should not sink to their level - he should fight them with his mind, not his body.
Buzzer talked to the Dreadnoks, and several decided to join him by travelling to America with Zartan to fight not only the Joes, but all injustice. They threw down their weapons and used cunning and guile to best the Joes plans time and time again. Buzzer used all his knowledge from all the subjects he'd taught to build himself a compact wrist computer and command headset (allowing him to control his motor bike remotely), and many other gadgets and tricks that have proven to be the undoing of the Joes more than once. Growing his hair out and adopting a more traditional bikie garb, he and the Dreadnoks move unseen across America, just another gang, but they have a single goal - to stamp out GI-Joe.
Buzzer was a fun character to make - I basically took all the stereotypes I could think of about Australia (even though he's British) and ended up having a Mad Max type character in my head. However he still needed to be Buzzer, so I ran with the idea of instead of being frustrated and angry at society and joining the Dreadnoks, he was fighting injustice to make things right. Taking the idea of 'one man making a stand' I developed the idea of him touring the outback and tagging along with a Biker gang - the Dreadnoks. They were attacked by GI-Joe, and the survivors banded together to fight them, but instead of direct violence, Buzzer convinced them to use their natural talents and smarts in a sort of MacGuyver / Mad Max hybrid.
With this hybrid in mind, I gave him a more classic leather jacket look, drawing not only on real bikers, but on everything from Stone (an Australian biker movie) to The Simpsons (both the Australian episode and the episode where Marge is kidnapped by the bikers). I took this process a step further by deciding to use the big boot and giving his jacket have the classic one sleeve look. He still needed to be recognisable as Buzzer, so without the tan vest he needed the pony-tail. My original version plan had him with a buzz cut (hence the name and bio reference), but this was more fun, so I sculpted one on the Mirage head, as it had a similar facial structure. I modified the explosives on the Beachhead leg into a pack of cigarettes and cut off the grenades, keeping the weaponless theme.
For colours I went with a black jacket, and was considering black pants, but that would have been a bit much so he got jeans, though his boot was done in black and gunmetal. The pants were dry brushed with white to give the denim look, and his hair was painted yellow and given a brown wash. His right arm is not fully painted - the underside is still the classic ARAH skin tone, but to match the tone on the face I painted the top to give him a 'truckers arm' (if he was driving in Australia his right arm would be in the sun). He was missing something and didn't seem complete - I realised he needed glasses! I toyed with regular spectacles, but the mirrorshades worked so much better.
Unfortunately I couldn't get a 1/18th 'last of the V8s' or an Interceptor (or a similar car to paint up) to go with the MAd Max motif, so I picked a good, solid bike - not a chopper, but still appropriate. I wanted it to look normal and inconspicuous, so I didn't mod it at all, even though it is 'smart'.