Monday, 12 December 2011

'Twas The Blog Before Christmas...


Ho! Ho! Ho! A Merry Marvel Christmas to one and all!

This will be the last blog update before the new year. I've Been extremely busy in the run up to the 'Holiday season' - those lovely people in production have kindly only cut 10 days(!!!!) from the schedule to 'help us' over the new year. God bless 'em!

So I've been cranking out the magazines and figurines and unfortunately the blog has been the victim (although I haven't really had much to preview - as we're commissioning the final 10 figurines pretty much in one big batch, so won't be getting any new sculpt images until the new year).

Here's the 1st Terrax paint (we feel the blues and reds aren't sinister enough, so have sent back to the painters for a darker hue)...











Vance Astro (pretty much finished)...




Final covers for 168-172...







Eagle-eyed viewers may notice that I've dropped the issue number lozenge from #169 as it was really starting to get in the way of the beautiful artwork - so the issue number will now go with the price gumpf.


Upcoming figurine commissions:

Thanks to the forum, who ran a poll for the Wiccan/Asgardian dilemma
and I think most will be happy with the result:
Asguardian 32% [ 29 ]
Wiccan 68% [ 61 ]

I think it best if he doesn't have a stick/wand/cane as he pretty much dropped it when he became Wiccan.
The only thing left is to decide on an actual pose - I think something with him casting a hex would suit.






My memory isn't what it was, but I remember some debate about what costume/pose for Mirage - and as I remember the majority wanted the new New Mutants costume holding a bow and arrow (this image seems to fit the purpose)...




Stingray:
He's usually seen artfully swimming, diving or flying in all manner of physical contortions - not good for a lead figurine - so these 2 images I found trawling cyberspace seemed to fit what we need for our figurine.




Oh, and one final great bit of news for you - we've hastily got a special slot just before Christmas for one very special Marvel fan favourite.....





Because YOU DEMANDED IT...






He's gonna be delivered on Christmas morning to every subscriber who's been a good little collector.

Friday, 25 November 2011

I've seen the future...

...and it's Spider-man 2099!

Here are some preliminary sketches done by sculptor Dene Mason (yesterday and today!), so we are still working through them to achieve the best result - we want him to be different to the existing Spidey figurines we've done - with more action and spideryness! which is difficult when he has to be attached to a base and not to spread out or crouching!!! but, I have faith in Dene.

Again these are just ideas from which to bounce off and see what works and what doesn't..










Giant-Man
head changes: Much more handsome and slicker antennae:





Firelord
cover sketches from Andie Tong:
Can you guess which one we went for?








The de-volution of a cover:
Here's a little look at the stages of the Dracula cover.

We always wanted to use Gene Colan, so we searched through the reference at our disposal and found two sketches we thought could work...





I then made a mock up of the cover combining the two sketches which we could present to the inker Cam Smith - he did an amazing re-creation from Gene's sketch.



We then sent to Chris Blythe for an amazing colour job. we were happy.
Disney were not. They didn't like the Cross!





...so we went all the way back to the ink stage and gave him a stake instead - not as strong as the cross but still pretty good.




Final colour version coming any day now.


Question time:

We are 'thinking' of our next commission 'Wiccan', as he's quite detailed I was thinking about a nice simple standing pose with cane.
I'm not well versed in the fella, so I wanted ask would anyone be against him in this costume and pose? (maybe have his arm up a bit in a fist?)





All the best. Dan

Friday, 18 November 2011

The Towers That Be...

Good news, I've pestered the online people and they have finally fixed the debit card problem. (although, not heard directly about the complaints/customer services side of things, but I would imagine they are sorting that out too. ?)

In regards to the UK and overseas subscription services - This is run by outsourced companies, and I have no idea how any of the problems mentioned can be sorted - Needs more investigation...

Please keep us informed of any problems and at least we know about them, and may be able to help in future.

Re: paint jobs and breakages - again this is another frustrating part of the job for us and you guys! We preview the nice shiny masters and production samples - then they go off the China and come back less than perfect - Obviously there will be degradation from the master sculpts as they go through the production process - But I agree sometimes the paint jobs are not up to scratch. This is extremely hard to control, and something we can only work on to improve. (Question: Would you be as critical of the paint jobs if you hadn't seen the paint masters on this blog?)

Anyway here are some works in progress...

Giant-Man stage 2:



We agree with some of your comments that the antennae need improving, and we feel the face could be improved (less angry, more handsome) - horns and face like this...



These changes are in the process. Apart from that I'm really happy with the rest of him.


Vance Astro Early stage:




Shaman:



Work still needed on both these sculpts, but good starts.




Andie Tong's pose sketches for Wolfsbane and Firelord:





Rahne's stance may need taming and Firelord's flames may need calming down, but I'm excited about these two.

Interested to hear all your comments on the above.



Tales From The Vaults: Another random image from the Eaglemoss archives...

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Have a Marvelous weekend.