Monkey King and Scripture Pilgrim

[Timotheos]

This is 1) Sun Wukong (Monkey King), 2) the scripture pilgrim, and 3) the Dragon (who takes the shape of a white horse).

I based the Monkey King's appearance off the children's cartoon that plays in China.  I think there is an American series playing on the Sci-Fi channel starring the Monkey King, also.

The original "Journey to the West" is a 16th century Chinese fantasy novel about the adventures that a monk from the Tang court goes on while traveling to India for scriptures with his three bodyguards, Sun Wukong (Monkey King), Zhu Bajie (Pig), and Sha Wujing (Sandy). 

My Monkey King would have been all pure (all natural!) playmobil parts, but my wife (who is Chinese) reviewed it and said he had to have his tiger skin girdle to be remotely recognizable.  So, I cut the girdle from a strip of (synthetic) fur-cloth.


My ambition now is to make Pig and Sandy. 

[Martin Milner]

This is the Monkey King known to UK viewers, from the dubbed TV series.

I don't know how accurate the TV costumes were!

[Timotheos]

I don't know how accurate the TV costumes were!

Here is how he looks in a famous (now considered like a Chinese-equivalent of a Disney classic) Chinese cartoon, though my reference (see next post) came from a picture book made from a different cartoon.

For more fun, check out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSV7041mZCw
Which streams an excerpt of the original Shanghai release. 

[Timotheos]

Here is a picture from the pop-children's cartoon I used for reference.  The color scheme is slightly different from the colors that happened to be in my reference, which was a children's reading book with illustrations shot from the cartoon. 

[Timotheos]

Finally, here is a more artsy Monkey, as he usually appears in Beijing Opera.  I set out wanting to imitate this, but the all yellow costume and the painted face didn't translate so well with my current painting abilities.

[Timotheos]

I don't know how accurate the TV costumes were!

In short, there is no definitive "this is the one-and-only monkey king".  The original 16th century novel contained wood-block illustrations (viewable on English wikipedia under "monkey king" and "zhu bajie") which look nothing like any of the above examples.

So, the question to the judges:
Does my monkey king look passably like the references cited, or is it back to the drawing board for me?