Brief update

Hello everyone,

It has been a crazy couple of weeks here at Eaglemoss. First, I want to say congratulations to the DC Super Hero Collection for winning a Diamond Gem award for 'Best Magazine' 2010. That's the second year in a row and our third here at Eaglemoss.

So first preview of the day is an early pic of Odin painted. The All-father is nearly there but we're going to make the blue a little darker, to match Thor's trousers.



The next preview I have for you is early Wizard sculpt. We went for a sort of evil thinking man sculpt – hope you like.



Moving swifly, I have the initial sketch for the Avalanche figurine. For this character we're trying to get a feel of him using his powers.



Sorry if there are loads of questions I should be answering, I will do my best to put a Q&A together for next update. If you have a question please put in the comments. I can't promise I'll answer all but will do my best.

Catch you all later.

All-father!

Hi guys,

Sorry for the wait for an update but hopefully this will be worth it.

First, I have the sculpt images of Odin. The good news is that he looks amazing, the bad news is that you'll have to wait a little while for him to come out. Due to a few problems, the all-father won't be making an appearance until August-September time.




That aside, I thought I'd explain our costume choice. As I may have mentioned in the past, Odin is a complete and utter nightmare for costume choice. If you read through his comic appearances you'll see that literally every issue he changes costume – and I'm not talking about small changes, quite often he'll go from wearing a horned helmet with a viking look to futuristic armour with a giant crown. I guess when you're the lord of Asgard you get a little bored with wearing the same clothes.

Obviously there were some story arcs where he kept the same costume (Simonson's run on Thor) but in the end we chose a costume that was reminiscent of Kirby's style, had aspects of Simonson and had appeared in a number of '90s comics. We were also careful to make sure Odin has his eyepatch and one (yes, I know he had more) of the crows.

Personally, I think this is one of our best specials, the sculptor did a fantastic job.

Moving swiftly on, the next topic is the subsets.

Thank you all so much for the great ideas and support for various types of subsets. All I can say at the moment is that we have no plans to do Marvel subsets but I will pass on all your comments to our marketing department and my boss. Hopefully, if the Blackest Night series does well and we feel confident we're not over saturating the market, we'll try a subset before the series ends (whenever that will be).

I just wanted to add one quick note on the subsets: The main reason we tried a Blackest night collection was to try and tie-in with the hype of the Green Lantern movie and the mega-event that is Blackest Night/Brightest Day. Perhaps an Avengers subset would be good for the movie next year but then we have done most of the Avengers already. I guess only time will tell.

Last thing I'd like to show you is the Shanna She Devil paint.



Have a great weekend.

Whipped into shape???

Hi guys,

I thought I wouldn't be in the office today (and so would have to update yesterday) however, thanks to the 'great' guys at BT (yeah, right) I'm sitting at my desk ploughing through my work.

So anywho, here's this week's slightly quick update.

Dan our designer mentioned we tried a different pose for Captain Marvel, well below is how this turned out. While I don't really agree with Dan about the 'fetish' look, I do think it doesn't work. The pose was too rigid and not natural enough. The legs are also too close together, we considered putting him on a larger base but then the figure had too much dead space in front and behind.

Hopefully you will agree we made the right decision.



Your sneak peeks for this week are Forge and Thunderbird painted.






One final comment from me, thanks for all the debate about subsets. I've only had time to skim read them but some of the suggestions are great. As I mentioned we're not planning to make any for Marvel just yet but you never know. Personally I'd like a 20 issue extension over a subset but that's just me.

Have a great one everybody and enjoy your President's Day holiday on Monday, you lucky Americans.

An update, at last...

Hi everyone,

First update I have for you this week is the current running order for figures #150-180.

150 TRITON
151 ARES
152 DESTINY
153 BALDER
154 WRECKER
155 SONGBIRD
156 TOAD
157 MOONDRAGON
158 SPIRAL
159 SIRYN
160 BLACK HEART
161 PUPPET MASTER
162 KARNAK
163 HYDRO-MAN
164 CAPTAIN MARVEL
165 PHOTON
166 MAGIK
167 BEETLE
168 SHANNA SHE DEVIL
169 FORGE
170 WIZARD
171 ARACHNE
172 LADY SIF
173 TIGERSHARK
174 MOCKINGBIRD
175 THUNDERBIRD
176 DRACULA
177 AVALANCHE
178 DOMINO
179 NICO MINORU
180 J. JONAH JAMESON

There are a couple of figures that I’m running a little behind on so I can’t guarantee this order will stay but I will let you know if anything change.

Next up is a preview of Destiny and Captain Marvel.





Also, just wanted to pick up on some of the comments made about the DC subset. I would like nothing more than for us to do a Marvel subset but the opportunity hasn’t really come about yet. We need to look at licensing issues and choose a subset that is popular. With the upcoming Green Lantern movie and Blackest Night being recognized as one of last year’s greatest comic events, it was decided to test the waters with this subset. I can’t promise we’ll put out a Marvel one, but if the demand is there, we will definitely consider it.

By the way love all the suggestions for different subsets, here’s a random thought: would you guys go for an original X-Men (Jean, Beast, Cyclops, Iceman, Angel) subset? This would have the characters all in their original costumes.

I also love the idea of a Marvel Zombies subset but that’s probably just me and my unhealthy obsession with the walking dead.

And lastly, while I’m here, I’d like to get your opinions on the pose and costume for Lady Sif. What do you reckon? I’ve not commissioned the sculpt yet so any images or ideas you have put them in the comments section. I can’t promise we’ll definitely use them but who knows.

Right that’s it, I’m out of the office next Friday (waiting for BT to sort my home phone line out) so I will do my best to have an update of some sort for Thursday.

Dracula, Blob and Sauron

Hello everyone,

Once again, sorry for the lack of recent updates.

First news I have for you today is about the Blob special. Due to be released on 10th Feb, we’ve now finalised the material to be used for the figurine.

We looked at a number of possibilities including:

• Solid lead, which produced figurines that were too heavy and costly. We also found that our bags that hold the magazines broke easily with these figures in.

• A hollowed-out lead figurine, which was a bit of a disaster with the figurine easily snapping in the middle during safety testing.

• Pure polyresin, which solved all the problems, but mindful of wanting the product to have a little more weight we decided against this.

• A polyresin figure with a lead powder injection/core. This produced a brilliant figure with more detail than the lead could manage and still had a nice weight to it.


As you can guess, we went with the last option and have a mix of material.

This has by no means cheapened the product and in fact the production cost for Blob is the same as all our mega specials. My reason for mentioning this is that I know a few people question the motives for producing these figures and I want to say that as far as I’m concerned, we have not taken this step to make more money but to guarantee the Blob, in all his glory, could be part of this collection. A solid lead Blob, even at a slightly reduced size would not have been feasible.

Right, moving on to some previews, I have some early shots of the Dracula and Sauron sculpts.





With Sauron we’ve gone for a pose from his first ever appearance, while Dracula is in a classic vampire pose.

Hope you like both.

Have a great weekend.

'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

Prowler & Firestar

Hello everyone,

We’re extremely busy here at Eaglemoss, trying to meet all our pre-Christmas and pre-Chinese New Year deadlines, so I’ll have to make this quick.

First up a couple of sneak peeks that I don’t think you’ve seen:

Prowler

Firestar

That should allay fears that we’re gearing up to change the running order.

Also, we should have an update going on the main site very soon showing the figures up to #145. Sorry for the delay,

Quick update on the ebay figures: First, thanks to everyone here and on the forum for pointing them out and not bidding because you thought they were stolen. We’ve contacted the seller and have worked out how he got hold of the figures. To cut a long story short, it’s not the seller’s fault; he picked up the figures from a local charity shop after they were accidentally given away. So no theft involved.

Apologies, but that is your lot this week.

Have a good weekend.