'Twas the update before Christmas...

Hello everybody,

Just time for one quick update before the Christmas/New Year break.

I have some images of new figures:

First, Spiral Painted:



Second, Songbird painted:




This is now our third 'shouty' character and we wanted to create a different pose to Banshee and Siryn. We decided to go with Songbird just about to bellow – a more subtle use of her powers.

SPECIAL TIME

I can also (re)confirm which specials we're currently working on for next year. I don't have any pictures yet but I can let you know that Odin and Sauron are currently at the sculptors. Not sure the order or onsale date yet but they will be making an appearance in 2011 alongside some others.

After a lot of debate on the Sauron figure, we decided that we just couldn't get him in the collection as a regular issue unless we greatly cheated the scale and wing-size. Hopefully everyone will be happy to know that I'm working with the sculptors to make sure the wings are not sticking out too much (ie the pose isn't too crazy) and that he's a normal special.

Just time to quickly answer one question:

Q. How involved are Marvel in the sculpting process?

A. When choosing characters for extensions we internally finalise the running order and then send to Marvel for confirmation. This allows Marvel to check the characters are not 3rd party characters and that no licensing problems exist. It also gives them the chance to suggest characters that may be about to be relaunched or feature in an upcoming storyline – although this latter point has never actually occured.

In general, Marvel let us include any character we want.

Moving on to individual characters, the next stage Marvel will see are concepts for the figurine's pose and costume. To get these concepts ready, I spend time making a list of all the character's appearances, buying most (if not all) the comics we don't have and then looking through each one for pose images and overall reference. I also use a number of websites for reference.

Often a pose can be found in the comics but if not we can have approved Marvel artists produce sketches for us.

Marvel then check the pose and costume and pass any comments back to us – this can be a change in pose or costume.

From this point all the approved reference goes to our sculptor who begins work. The sculptor will then send work-in-progress pictures to myself, these are also approved by Marvel to make sure we're keeping to the reference and everyone is satisfied with the sculpt.

Once finished, a cast of the sculpt is sent to Marvel for final sculpt approval before the sculpt is painted. First images and then a physical paint sample are supplied to Marvel. At each stage Marvel can ask for changes and often tweak poses/colours.

And lastly, pre-production and production samples are sent to Marvel for comments.

All-in-all Marvel get to see every stage of development and can supply comments/make changes at any point. The number of changes/comments varies from figure to figure.

Right I think that's enough for now.

Everyone have a great Christmas and Happy New Year.

Rich