GubernatorFan wrote:Interesting journey, Sky. You bring up the other good point of figure compatibility: it is indeed often (perhaps not always) difficult to include more stylized and more realistic figures side by side without making it... distracting, to put it nicely. I was always most taken in by realism (attractive or not, useful or not), so for me the decision always leaned in the direction of the more realistic head sculpts and, consequently, bodies. Now, seamless and realistic are not always the same thing, but seamlessness helps realism in principle, hence the attractiveness of that choice to me.
Yeah, it was a bit of a roundabout way of getting here.
I mean, I already did have an extensive action figure collection, too, but it was mostly smaller 3.75" figures, many of which were also fairly stylised (especially the Clone Wars Collection, which is what I was originally trying to 'mimic' in 1/6 scale). I've always loved realism too, and was obsessed with dollhouse miniatures as a kid. But the issue with deciding which direction to go with the SW figures was less about what I preferred (I enjoy both stylised and realistic figures, depending on the context), and more about what kinds of bodies, heads, and accessories were readily available for customisation, and that ended up being the Hot Toys-style realism.
GubernatorFan wrote:And I share your unease about aspects of the promotion of these seamless bodies and in particular the over-exaggerated features of some (where bigger is not really always better, and I'd say realism flies out of the window). It still puts me off at times, but I'll leave it at that. You seemed to appreciate my attempts at making a Hutt-slayer Leia (until recently, anyway; one more update coming up).
Yeah, it just gets old after a while. When I started looking into the tbleague bodies, I thought it was somewhat ironic that there was all that effort put into making the realistic seamless 'flesh', only for the actual *shape* and anatomy of the body to be so, well,
unrealistic.
As for Leia the Hutt-slayer, I guess that is an exception that I don't mind so much, since a) Leia is a favourite character, and b)
Return of the Jedi was one of my all-time favourite movies as a kid, so it has huge nostalgic value for me, golden bikini and all.
And
Saradactyl -- that's a good point about awkward forearm and wrist placement, which can be distracting. Though maybe I'm thinking of a different issue than what you are actually describing.
If I'm being honest, I still find Tbleague bodies very difficult and even somewhat intimidating to pose. I've been mostly just so focused on finishing my line-up of custom figures to a satisfactory degree that I've not even delved too deeply into posing and photo stories yet.