Clothing for Phicen/TBLeague M33 seamless male figure

Hello fellow sixth-scale figure fans! I'm new here, and new to the world of sixth-scale in general, so I could use some advice. I'd be surprised if something similar hasn't been posted here previously but I didn't find anything straight away. I recently purchased a Phicen/TBL M33 seamless male figure and while I'm very happy with the figure itself, I'm a bit perplexed by the options (or lack thereof) for purchasing clothing and accessories for the "big" little guy. I purchased a couple of clothing sets via eBay and Amazon, and unfortunately, neither fit the muscular proportions of the M33. I assume these clothes are intended for other styles of articulated figures and not this particular product. So now I'm rather skeptical of purchasing other clothing from sources like these, without direct confirmation from the seller that said clothing will fit my M33 figure. And it's a bit maddening, because these figures appear to be quite popular. I can't imagine, as long as they've been on market at this point, that we don't have more to work with. I found a couple of individual sellers on Etsy but the selection is slim and it's mostly underwear, leggings, socks and tanks. Does anyone have any experience here they can share? Are there particular brands/sellers/other resources for compatible clothing and accessory items?

Also while I'm at it -- if you will allow me to tuck another question in my post -- what about head sculpts for the M33? As with the clothing, I purchased a couple of heads from eBay and Amazon, and I can't say I'm exactly thrilled with the products I've received so far. I tried a Daniel Craig (as James Bond) one from Amazon and one I found on eBay (neither looked as good or true to life as they did in the product photos IMO). Some of the head sculpts I've seen for sale look impressively accurate and seem to bear an astonishing resemblance to their real-life counterpart. But so far in my experience, in person they just look okay, maybe a bit generic, or just "off". I've got my eye on a Tom Hardy (Venom) head sculpt that looks amazing in the product photos but again -- I'd be super disappointed if I got it and it just looked "okay". Asking as a newbie, how common an experience is this? Should I learn to lower my expectations between super-realistic, product photos and, erm, reality? Should I try shopping elsewhere for "serious" mod collecting? Should I just stick with the Chris Evans head like seemingly everyone else, LOL?

Cheers, thanks for the advice!

TheArtfulDodger wrote:Hello fellow sixth-scale figure fans! I'm new here, and new to the world of sixth-scale in general, so I could use some advice. I'd be surprised if something similar hasn't been posted here previously but I didn't find anything straight away. I recently purchased a Phicen/TBL M33 seamless male figure and while I'm very happy with the figure itself, I'm a bit perplexed by the options (or lack thereof) for purchasing clothing and accessories for the "big" little guy. I purchased a couple of clothing sets via eBay and Amazon, and unfortunately, neither fit the muscular proportions of the M33. I assume these clothes are intended for other styles of articulated figures and not this particular product. So now I'm rather skeptical of purchasing other clothing from sources like these, without direct confirmation from the seller that said clothing will fit my M33 figure. And it's a bit maddening, because these figures appear to be quite popular. I can't imagine, as long as they've been on market at this point, that we don't have more to work with. I found a couple of individual sellers on Etsy but the selection is slim and it's mostly underwear, leggings, socks and tanks. Does anyone have any experience here they can share? Are there particular brands/sellers/other resources for compatible clothing and accessory items?

Also while I'm at it -- if you will allow me to tuck another question in my post -- what about head sculpts for the M33? As with the clothing, I purchased a couple of heads from eBay and Amazon, and I can't say I'm exactly thrilled with the products I've received so far. I tried a Daniel Craig (as James Bond) one from Amazon and one I found on eBay (neither looked as good or true to life as they did in the product photos IMO). Some of the head sculpts I've seen for sale look impressively accurate and seem to bear an astonishing resemblance to their real-life counterpart. But so far in my experience, in person they just look okay, maybe a bit generic, or just "off". I've got my eye on a Tom Hardy (Venom) head sculpt that looks amazing in the product photos but again -- I'd be super disappointed if I got it and it just looked "okay". Asking as a newbie, how common an experience is this? Should I learn to lower my expectations between super-realistic, product photos and, erm, reality? Should I try shopping elsewhere for "serious" mod collecting? Should I just stick with the Chris Evans head like seemingly everyone else, LOL?

Cheers, thanks for the advice!

Hi TAD, and welcome again,
Seamless bodies do offer their own challenges when it comes to clothing them. We have a whole topic on that very subject, and since M33 is my usual go-to male body, and since others usually beat me to experimenting with the female bodies, the topic ended up with more male and specifically M33 clothing ideas (and head ideas) than others:
https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t1403-clothing-tbleague-phicen-seamless-bodies-updated-part-xxx-december-2022

On the other hand, our more recent general catalog of heads will give you a lot less in that respect (it is mostly female heads), but it might also be helpful:
https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t5547-head-sculpt-general-catalog-contribute-but-check-out-the-rules

Someone was asking me a question along the same lines a while back, and I ended up doing this topic, with a few installments of good or approximate matches, among other examples:
https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t3652-matching-head-sculpts-and-tbleague-skin-tone-updated-4-february-2022?highlight=head+matching

Also, check out the tutorials section for painting heads or coloring bodies, for example:
https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t310-head-conversion-tutorial-updated-with-part-iii-june-2019

https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t260-painting-seamless-bodies-nsfw

https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/t3922-repainting-head-sculpts-to-match-body-updated-with-part-iii

Most of these topics have multiple installments and posts that would be useful, so do browse through them. If you want to do even more browsing, you can browse my threads through the link below, since I've used the M33 more than any other male body, and I always have one or more lying around for testing clothing or armor or comparing articulation.
https://onesixthfigures.forumotion.com/st/u1

I hope this is useful.

Hi there! Welcome to the forum! The links that GubernatorFan has posted are all extremely useful and hopefully will help you find what you need.

Regarding buying 'third party' headsculpts and having them not be as nice as the promo pics....unfortunately that *is* a common experience in this hobby. A lot of times these are knock-off heads that were taken from some official source (like Hot Toys) and then recasted, so the in-hand product doesn't always match up. And even in cases where it's an original product, sometimes they just show an especially nice hand-painted prototype and then the actual end product is more mass produced/ factory painted.  

There are some exceptions, and after a while you get to recognise which companies tend to have better painted heads than others. But in order to have truly beautiful and realistically painted heads (as opposed to the more generic factory painted ones), I've found that you either need to repaint them yourself or get them professionally repainted by a 1/6 scale artist. That being said, the generic looking heads have their uses and some can be made to look more realistic with a little tweaking (like with female heads, you can change the 'make up' to look more subtle with small bit of repainting, or you can remove the synthetic hair and add natural hair fibers, and so on).

I'm not saying this to be discouraging, but just to save you the annoyance and disappointment. The companies that tend to have closer end results to their prototypes are the more well known ones like Hot Toys (and maybe DamToys and Verycool). But a lot of the no-name third parties don't have the same level of quality control, something that is simply good to bear in mind when purchasing. Wherever possible, I always try to look up the headsculpt in question (they do usually come with a product number of some sort) and see if anyone has posted in-hand photos prior to purchasing. Some might not turn out that great after all, so I don't waste my money, but others might be a pleasant surprise and I end up wanting them even more after seeing them in-hand. It really just depends.

Thank you both, GubernatorFan and Skywalkersaga, for your replies -- this is indeed extremely useful! I'm so glad to have found this community and hope to be able to contribute and pay it forward it some way soon. Cheers!

Another thing to bear in mind when buying head sculpts, no matter who makes them, is there is generally anywhere from 5-20% drop off in quality from prototype to production (again, this is dependent on who makes it; Hot Toys, for example, rarely loses more than 5%, but some of the smaller third part companies can lose quite a bit). Just off the top of my head, some of the better companies that don’t lose as much are:
Hot Toys
DiD
DAMToys
Easy&Simple
Very Cool
TBLeague
I8
Kaustic Plastik
Super Duck
Blitzway

I’m sure there’s more, and others can chime in, but that’s just been my experience. That being said, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the original sculpt was all that great to begin with. DiD’s Saving Private Ryan range of figures are a mixed bag (some looked good from the get go, others bore no resemblance whatsoever to the actor).

Thanks, Mark, this is great to know! As I get more familiar with this world, I’ll be sure to refer to the sellers/manufacturers you mentioned. Appreciate you!