Thursday 21 October 2010

Will Rich be back Friday???

...No I'm here Thursday.

Hey guys, so I’m back from my extended holiday to New York and knowing how my Fridays usually end up, thought I’d update a day early.

The All-Father!
First up, I’d like to mention the Odin special. Having looked through a vast number of Odin’s appearances, from Kirby to Coipel, I can officially say that the All-father has had more costumes than any other character. Clearly a design choice by Kirby, Odin literally changes his outfit every single appearance. At first, I thought that there would be elements that remain the same (after all I seem to remember Odin looking a certain way) but when comparing images I found that the entire costume changes; he has a cape (with or without collar) as often as not, he goes from horned helmets to large ornamental hats, his look frequently goes from Cosmic to Viking, chainmail to modular armour… the list goes on.

What this means is that we’ve not fully picked the costume for Odin yet but essentially want to have him with the eyepatch, horned helmet and a cloak/cape. The image below is one of the images that stands out but I’m not sure we’ll be matching this exactly.



Anyway, while the sculptor and I work through these issues, I am happy to confirm that we’re aiming for an April-May 2011 release to coincide with the Thor film. I’m also aiming to have Odin no bigger/more expensive than the mid-special price point – £15.99. (He may be £10.99 but no promises) He won’t be as tall as Galactus/Watcher etc… The reason for this is very simple: in the comics Odin is generally drawn quite big and bulky but not super-sized, in fact he’s listed as 6’ 9”.

The Mutt
Right enough Odin-speak, let’s move on to Lockjaw.
The debate kicked up by the suggestion that he may come with another figure has been really interesting and has certainly provided food for thought. At the moment we’re not ruling out producing Lockjaw on his own (if he does indeed get made). The only reason to suggest having another figure was that I thought it would be nice to try and give you guys a little extra. The suggestion that Lockjaw should be accompanied by another character didn’t come from management or marketing, and was simply an idea I had. Looking at the size of Lockjaw, I imagined that he’d be priced between £15.99 and £18.99. If the figure was going to be priced at £18.99, I thought it would be good to give you all an extra – possibly smaller – (in the case of Luna) figure. There should be no suggestions that we are adding Luna or Maximus to make this special more expensive, if anything I imagine other departments at Eaglemoss would prefer not to include an extra figure.

But the debate has been really good and I agree with many of the comments that a solo Lockjaw would be a good special. We’ll just need to get the size/material and costs right at our end and I’ll certainly be listening to all your feedback.

Height: Does it matter?
The last subject I’d like to tackle is the height guide for specials. In the past I have stated that characters should be under 6’ 5” to be a regular and those above are likely to be specials. Now this is a general rule but is by no means binding. Of course, the character’s bulk and additions to costume play a large role in the decision process. If a character existed that was 7’ but had the bulk of Flatman, he could be a regular.

While 6’ 5” generally works, we do need to make the decision on a case-by-case basis, looking at height, bulk, costume details, accessories and pose.

The debate seems to have been opened up again with talk of a Sauron figure. Personally, I think it would just be possible to get the character in the regular running order BUT it would require cheating the scale a little, we simply couldn’t have him standing tall at 7’ and not having a very dynamic pose. We wouldn’t be able to have a lot of wingspan on display. If we did the character as a special, we could have him at full height and with his wings open.

Which would you guys prefer? (Neither is definite at the moment).

Right that leaves me with just a sneak peek to post: check out Ares.


Enjoy!

Tuesday 5 October 2010

Runaway winner...

Hello,

A very quick update today just to officially announce the competition winner's chosen character.

Taking the last spot of this extension is Nico Minoru from the Runaways.



Certainly an interesting choice, I think the figure will look great and we've started a new team.

Right, I'm off to New York tomorrow so no more updates until I'm back.

Take it easy.

Friday 1 October 2010

Competition has ended

Hello and welcome back to another blog update.

First things first, the competition is now closed and the winner has been contacted. I'll update the blog with his choice once I hear back.

The competition was a huge success with more entrants than last time, over 250, and surprisingly more incorrect answers. Only 32% of people that entered got the three correct answers, which were:

Bishop:


Hobgoblin:


Kraven the Hunter:


So thanks to everyone that entered.

On to the next hot topic at the moment – resin in figurines.

I’ve seen some of the debate on this topic and thought it best to explain things from my point of view.

The most important things to note are that we are NOT moving to an all-resin collection and that the quality of resin is not inferior to lead. Resin actually retains more detail than lead in the manufacturing process.
The decision to add resin to the collection is due to two reasons:

1. Cost of manufacturing figurines, and shipping them from the factories, has greatly increased over the last 4 years. In addition to the manufacturing costs, large-lead figurines are a lot more expensive to post to subscribes and deliver to shops. The extra costs involved make it very hard to produce large-sized figurines completely in lead. We have to make a choice of either scrapping large characters altogether, making a compromise or raising the price of mega-specials.

In the case of Sasquatch and Puck, a lead Sasquatch would have been priced at £18.99 on his own. One of the reasons double-packs are a problem for us is that no matter the size of the figurine, there is a large cost involved with having an additional mould (one per character). The additional cost means that we simply couldn’t offer an all-lead Sasquatch and Puck for £18.99.

I personally don’t think that we should scrap large-figurines, and would be against raising the cost of specials above £18.99.

2. The second reason for using resin is that it can add details and features unachievable in lead. One of the properties that resin adds is the ability to produce thinner (but strong) sheets of material for extra features on characters.

I personally apologise to anyone who is disappointed with Sasquatch, I think the figure looks fantastic and don’t think it being produced in resin should put off anyone who likes the sculpt.

On a side note, I’m moving house soon and after lugging over 300 lead figurines around, I’m starting to wish the collection was all resin. ☺

Right, on to a sneak peek. Please welcome the paints of Cannonball and Quasar and an early sculpt for Photon.







I’m off on holiday for two weeks from Monday, so there may be a delay before the next update. I will be heading to the New York comic-con next weekend, Eaglemoss don’t have a stand but if you’re there, I may bump into you.

Take it easy.