#103 Arrived Saturday afternoon. He's *huge* and wonderful.
The "chunk" over the eye here that looks like damage is actually sculpted detail, and can be seen in the 360 spin on Sideshow's site.
The full set of pics are here.
I'm not the sort to go digging frame by frame and comparing dimensions, but if the PFs are accurate, then it looks like they got it about right (based on the GG PF compared to some of the human PFs). It's just his head and neck ring, where Palpatine is the head and part of his shoulders. If...
The typical trajectory for high end items in my experience goes like this:
1) Item preorders
2) Item releases at MSRP, dealers sell slightly below MSRP. eBay prices tend to agree with dealer prices
3) If the item sells out quickly, skip to step 5)
4) After a while, dealers begin discounting...
Even with the reduced edition size, I see no reason to think this bust will behave differently on the secondary market. That's not a quality issue...it's a fantastic item...it's just the basic economics of an expensive niche piece like this.
Basically, it's reasonable to think that a...
Agreed. I do find that if you light it like he was lit in ROTJ with tight spotlight just on the face, it looks *very* Jedi. If you go for a more even lighting, it looks very ROTS. So it's neat that you can get both looks so easily.
One of the things I'm really impressed by (and which that photo reveals) is all the subtle shading in the skin tone. I had to take a picture that basically eliminated all the texture detail in the hood to show that aspect off, but I think it does come out. There's an almost reddish "blush" there...
Heh. Beaten to posting my own photos.
The Flickr set these are in is here. I'll be putting more photos there as I take them.
Here's one that shows a different lighting choice:
..which is, frankly, the most threatening thing anybody says in the entire saga.
I'm really looking forward to this one. Just can't decide if I'm going to initially display it with Yoda or with the Maul bust and the MR Vader Helmet...
As further evidence that nobody should ever listen to me, Bryan said over at RS that they are calling the "Studio Scale" line "FX Models" in an effort to do just as others in this thread suggested and further differentiate themselves from MR.
That's what did it for me too. I know he said that he doesn't really remember much about the original (since the sculpt was originally just going to be a random background character), but it's more about the fact that they brought him in at all than any "accuracy" he might have contributed...