Over the years I have learned that the gesture of a toy is a very instrumental part of having a "good" figure in your hands. Even some of the most intensely sculpted figures can lack this very essential aspect. It needs to hit all the marks for me personally or else I wouldn't want to play with it.
In the early stages of fleshing out the Raptinok, I was entertaining the idea of having this figure portray a stance akin to a Raptor. The Raptinok in the beginning had a more fierce and heroic stance (what he is currently sporting now) which I liked better in the end. It is important to see it both ways sometimes. Every one of my figures go through countless stages before I reach the final product. This includes many revisions to design, engineering, scale, you name it. I will make prototypes and let them resonate for a little while to get the general feel for a certain design. At the end of the day, I need to be happy with it before I let it out in the world. As we say in the sheet metal business - "You are only as good as your worst employee". I feel the same way with my toys!
Anyway, enough of my toy making babbling, thought you might like some more behind the scenes stuff.
I work in a similar way. My Explorer figure was mostly done last October, but I just released it last weekend (July). I liked the version I had at D-Con but I didn't LOVE it. It took dozens of color scheme revisions and a whole new head to finally get it to the LOVE stage. I'm just happy I could get there at all. By the way, I LOVE Raptinok. Great work :)
ReplyDeleteThank you David!
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the day is is important that whatever you decide to make also makes you happy. If you do not love the end result yourself, I feel it will show in the overall body of work.