Gimme Five

Hi guys,

I’m sorry this is just a quick update this week but it should prove to be an interesting one.

Below are five more characters that have made it into the extension.

1. Typhoid Mary
2. Triton
3. Batroc
4. Marvel Girl (Rachel Summers)
5. Klaw

That leaves seven more to be confirmed by us at Eaglemoss, then we’ll have the superherofigurineforum.com choose three and I’ll sort out the comp for one collector to choose a character.

And a super-quick figurine preview, below is the near-final paint for Sunfire.



Tune in next week when I promise I'll reveal the final seven, we're still debating one or two in the office.

Hi guys,

Sorry for the lack of an update last week but hopefully I can make up for it today.

First I wanted to answer a few questions from the comment section.

Q): Are we going to get more double packs?
A): Yes, I’m pretty sure that the double packs have been successful enough to warrant more being included in the collection. When and who’s in them I don’t know. We’ve started planning the specials for next year and so far Fin Fang Foom will be first, most likely followed by Cloak and Dagger. After these two I’m unsure if we’ll do Blob or have a double pack next.

Q): Are we going to see team-packs with more than 2 characters in?
A): Not at the moment. While the prospect of getting more characters into the collection is certainly an attractive one, team-packs are not on the agenda at the moment. We have discussed making these but feel that the price for packs of four or more characters would make it difficult for everyone to continue their collections. We wouldn’t want to make this collection too expensive.

Q): Are civilians going to be included in the collection?
A): At this point I have no plans to put civilians in the collection. Certainly if we were extended to 200+ issues then we would consider having them in. The reason that we’ve not had them in so far is that civilian figures can look a little generic or boring. While I personally would rather have Tiger Shark or the Beetle in the collection before Mary Jane and Jarvis, I do see the argument for some characters such as Thunderbolt Ross and J. Jonah Jameson. These civilians have been in hundreds of issues and are actually integral to a lot of Marvel’s storylines. So they’re not in at the moment but don’t be surprised if JJJ or Ross get in if we reach issue 200.

Q): What’s going on with the competition to choose a figurine?
A): I’ve almost finalized the extension list (the ones that have been chosen by Eaglemoss), after this I will speak to the chaps at the superherofigurineforum.com and have them choose three figures. Once all of this has happened, we’ll sort out the competition so that whoever wins can choose a character knowing full-well which ones have already made it in. As for the details of the comp, I’ve not yet decided.

Right so hopefully that has answered some questions and I can now announce that the next two figurines in the extension are:

Destiny (well I did say she was a strong contender last time)
Silver Sable

I’ve chosen Silver Sable as I believe she’ll not only make a great looking figurine but also because she boosts our Spidey allies and females sections of the collection. Although not a ‘classic’ Marvel character in terms of her age (she made her debut in 1985), Silver Sable managed to hold her own title for 35 issues and has appeared throughout Spidey’s history.

And lastly this week, I present our nearly finished sculpt of Gorgon. Hope you enjoy.

And next up is...

A slightly earlier update than usual this week.

First I just want to say that I’m glad the news of the extension has gone down so well, with your support I’d like to think we can go even further but, as they say, only time will tell.

Anyway, I haven’t quite decided on the competition I’ll be running to choose a figure yet but I do promise it will be something that virtually everyone can take part in; definitely no custom sculpt comps.

And while we’re on the subject of the extension I thought I’d announce the next figure that is definitely getting in:

Ares.

Though by no means a new character in the Marvel Universe, Ares hasn’t really had much prominence in the (Marvel) comic world until recently. However, I think that there’s enough history to make a great magazine and an even better figurine.
We’ve not chosen all our characters for the extension yet so don’t think I’m just drip feeding you guys the list. At the moment it’s still all up for debate and believe me we’re still arguing in the office.

I’ve also heard some of the complaints about our regular website (not being updated regularly enough) and I will pass these on to the Internet designers. Unfortunately, I’m not in charge of their updating schedule but I will give them a little nudge.

And here’s this weeks figurine preview: Sunfire.



As you can see we’ve gone for the classic costume, not the modern (very similar to AoA) look. The pose for this figure was chosen to be a little more muted than some of the recent figures. We hoped to get the proud, stubborn and impatient attitude the character has into the pose, while making sure he fit nicely among the other X-Men sculpts.

What do you want first...

Right, this week I have good news and I have bad news.

First up the bad. I’m sorry to say that the Cloak and Dagger Special will be postponed until next year. I’m not sure when next year it will be out but it will definitely be after the Fin Fang Foom Special.

There are a couple of reasons that we’ve had to delay this figure. First is that Marvel have asked us to change the paint scheme of the figurine. We’ve been asked to paint Cloak as he was originally shown in the comics. So rather than being a dark colour with shading, we’ve had to go for the blue and black stripes look.

The second reason is that we’ve had a number of problems with the final production of the figurine. We’ve not been happy with some of the samples we’ve had in, which have had Dagger looking out of place and fragile as well as Cloak’s cloak looking a little disjointed.

Unfortunately the combination of these problems has meant we can’t produce a fully approved figure (that is up to our standards) in time for its release.

So with that aside I have some good news: we have indeed been given the green light for another 20-figure extension. The series will now run to 160!

This time round the extension is going to mostly be chosen be myself and the guys at Eaglemoss, however, I will be looking closely at all the wants lists on here and on the forums. I will also be talking to the chaps on superherofigurine.com and letting people vote on a few figurine choices via that website. I also hope to run a competition to let one collector choose a character and be involved in as much of the creation process as I can.

Obviously we’ve only just got the news of the extension so all of the above will take a little bit of time but I’d like to start the ball rolling (as well as a little controversy) by confirming the first figure chosen for the new extension as:
Radioactive Man.

And while technically not an official figurine update, I thought I’d show off our latest staff member to become a Marvel villain.

Behold Danim Zola (Art Editor).

I'm back!

Hello,

I’m back from my holiday and have finally found the time to update this blog.

I thought I’d start by answering a few questions.

Re-Dos
First up, the idea of re-dos has come up in the comments section. At the moment Eaglemoss will not be doing any remakes of our earlier figures. The reason for this is that it’s a bit of tricky proposition. I personally (and from the look of it a good number of collectors) think that it would be a shame to go back and make new models of characters already made, instead of producing new characters. Also, there’s the problem that remaking characters would isolate collectors who didn’t want another version of the character. If some collectors are happy with a figure, then putting a differently sculpted version in the collection may mean they stop collecting.

As a pure example I look at it like this:
If Issue 140 is a new character, say Tigershark, out of 100 collectors 80 will pick him up.

Vs.

Issue 140 is a re-sculpted version of Dr. Doom. Out of 100 collectors may be only 30 will want him.

And the less people who pick-p a figure the less likely we’ll continue and the less likely that the one character you think is missing will get in.

This is not to say that characters will never be re-done but at this time we definitely have no plans to put in re-sculpts. If the collection continues to be as strong as it is, then maybe when we get to issue 200 we can do a re-sculpt. Personally I love just having a hugely diverse collection.

Special variants such as Archangel, World War Hulk, are a bit of a different beast, and although we have NO plans to make any of these at the moment, they are more likely than re-dos as they offer a little more, in terms of variety.

Multi-packs & Mega Specials
Right next topic is Multi-packs and Mega Specials. I can officially confirm that so far we’ve done three mega specials: Galactus, Sentinel and Watcher. While the Watcher may not have had the Mega Special logo in some areas of our website, it did have Mega Special on the bag it came in and as far as I’m concerned it was designed to be a Mega Special.

Mutli-packs: We’re looking into these but at the moment we do not have plans to produce any.

Here’s a thought for you guys to ponder though: Would you be interested in buying standalone multi-packs (no magazine) that had re-sculpted figures in? Inspired solution or crazy rambling? Let me know what you think.

Other projects
I see that you guys have been thinking of other figurine collections, I’ve got to say some of the choices are genius. My favourite so far has been Capcom, simply because I love Street Fighter.

Anyway, I can’t say what Eaglemoss are working on at the moment for the obvious reasons that not all projects make it through their development and we can’t let the competition know what we’re up to. Needless to say, we’re always looking at new projects/ideas and trying to put out lots of different products for different markets.

Right, that’s my company duty done for the day, now it’s time for a quick figure update; below is the paint master of Ant-Man.



Catch you next week.

Enchanting

A bit of a shorter post this week (and a day early) as I'm actually away to the States for a couple of weeks from tomorrow.

First up I've seen a few comments asking us how we choose characters and how we choose poses. So here's a little insight:

Characters – When we choose which characters are going into the collection we look at a number of factors. We look at the character's popularity (within the collection as well as the comic world), we look at how many appearances and the importance of these appearances they've made and we look at how the character fits into our collection.

There's no strict set of rules except that a character must have enough appearances/back-story to make a good figurine and magazine. In the past we've gone for the A-listers first and then moved down through the ranks, while trying to keep the collection diverse. It's not the Spider-Man collection or the X-Men/FF/Avengers collection, so I'm always keen to have a healthy variety.

Now that we've got through pretty much all the 'big' characters the choice is a lot more subjective and it's very difficult to choose characters for extensions mostly because I can't decide who not to make. In the past few extensions, I've let you guys decide (on here and the forum) and I've let a few members of staff/contributors choose some.

I understand the need to complete teams and that is definitely something I want to do but if we just go for completing teams we've already started then we'll have pretty much an entire extension filled with one branch/area of Marvel comics. I know Alpha Flight/X-Men/Brotherhood are popular but it's great to have at least one character representing each area. I think there's a strong chance this collection will continue past 140 and each extension gives us the chance to fill/complete some teams and start new ones.

Pose – As for the pose, this greatly varies depending on the character. Some have very obvious, classic stances/poses that have to be done and others have great pieces of artwork that we can base a pose on. However, now that we've got down to some lesser-known characters, the costume and pose artwork can be slim. We'll try to order most of the comics a character is in and choose reference from these, we'll then ask our sculptors/artists to come up with poses and lastly we'll get Marvel's approval. We always try to capture a little something of the character in each pose, whether that's very subtle or a little over-the-top depends on the character.

At the start of the collection we went for more stoic, static poses that aimed to show the heroic (or villainous) nature of the character but without turning them in to action figures. As the collection has been extended and evolved over the years we've tended to make the characters more dynamic while keeping the integrity of the early models.

At the end of the day, it's for you guys to decide if we've done this well but we're definitely not slacking off. You wouldn't believe some of the arguments/debates we have in the office over the sculpt details.

Anyway, there's a little look into how we work (which made it a longer post than I had originally planned) and here's the Enchantress.



Enjoy!

Bob, Blob, Glob?

Hello everyone,

Well I'm glad to see that last week's blog update led to a bit more action in the comments section.

From all the comments I can see that there's a certain character that you guys really want for a special. What was his name? Oh that's right – The Glob.

Well fair play he's confirmed, let's have the Glob in the collection.

So that's the chap below confirmed for 2010.



OK, that was a bit cruel.

So the BLOB it is then. I've enjoyed teasing you guys with this one for a while but I think it's only fair to say (bar any catastrophes) that we'll have him in the collection at some point next year.

Right so that's two slots sorted for next year, begin the comments for another. The Glob anyone?

And lastly today, it looks like Annihilus got the most votes so here he is:




We went for the classic Annihilus not the new Annihilation (more insecty) one and made sure to include the cosmic rod on his chestplate.

Have a good weekend.