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

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.

It's a special time!

Wow, don't the weeks fly by!

I only skim read your comments this week, so sorry no direct answers to any queries.

The problems with the main site and subscriptions/customer services etc etc that some of you are having will have to wait for another update as I still have no informed answers to give you.

All I can say for now is I'm very sorry to all of you who are having any problems with collecting this series. I feel very annoyed and embarassed that all the effort we put in at the creative end is not put in all the way along the line.

In a perfect world I could wave a magic wand and make everything work properly, but alas I am only a small cog in a big cockoo clock - so I have no power or expertise to fix these issues. I have e-mailed someone who may have some answers, but we will have to wait and see.

Anyway enough of that stuff, here's some cool stuff...




I was in shock when I saw this - it is absolutely jaw droppingly amazing!
So much fine detail!

Nuff said.




Terrax is comig along pretty good too...



Seemed most of you like him last week - Deadpool had some good constructive criticism that I also initially had myself - but now it looks a lot more finished - I am really happy with it. We often shy away from action poses as it's safer to go for the simple poses - but in this case I'm glad we went down that route. so I think this is a great success.




Very early Giant-Man.....



Again another 'actiony' pose, but I think the character asks for it. The slow stride forward gives him a real stoic presence that hasn't been done in any of the other GM figurines. The views were mixed on the building rubble, so we removed it for the safer option. Still very early but it definitely has the makings of a CLASSIC Mega special.




Paint ammend to Trapster... (now with 20% more purple!)




I did promise the final coloured Dracula cover this week - well, bit of a problem Disney didn't like the crucifix - so it's gone back to the artists for modification - we're gonna change the cross for a stake instead. I know it's blasphemy, but Disney has the last word. I may show the original crucifix version at some point anyway - at least it will be published online!

Here's Toby Whitings colour guide for WBN - As some of you noted the weight distribution wasn't right, so Toby is having to straighted him up slightly to avoid him falling over (and smashing your collection to pieces!) shouldn't effect his dynamism too much. infact it may give him more height presence when displayed with other figurines.



Bye for now.

November Nights!

Good Evening chaps (and chapettes?) on this chilly November evening,

Sorry no news on the website issues as the person in charge is away.

some recent painted images just in...

LONGSHOT. I'm very pleased with this one - very simple clean paint job.



Trapster. Not so pleased with this one - too pink me think! We will get this amended to a more purple hue. In the ref we have the gun is mainly presented as a gold metal colour so that's correct.



SPECIALS UPDATE

Sneak peak early stage TERRAX...



The confirmed dates for next specials are
MODOK - 17th Nov
N&A – around 12th Jan.

Ideally we’d then put something out end of March but really I have no idea which would be first – Terrax or Mojo. ?



I'll end this weeks blog update with Cam Smith's amazing inking job on the late great Gene Colan - I'll show you the Chris Blythe colur job next week...