LEON THE PROFESSIONAL - Enterbay

[greatlakes6]

This new Leon knock off that's coming out looks nice. Prototype wise it looks better than the Enterbay in every area

Looking forward to seeing that one.

 

[Rogerbee]

I think I've seen pics, price is always the main factor.

 

[Asta]

Redman's Mathilda after a little modification to lengthen her legs:





You can see here, next to the Kumik, that the stock Redman body while being a lot more modern and superior in most respects to the Kumik's Azone Pure Neemo 'S', unfortunately has proportionally shorter legs:







The stumpy legs were making the shorts look too long.


All I did to lengthen them was to pull the ankle pegs out of the boots; fill the boots with white tack, and then press the ankle pegs lightly into it. The last thing to do was to roll her socks down.

The Redman is an improvement over the Kumik in just about everything. The new jacket is a better material; the bodice is better quality; the necklace is better; the body and hands are much better; she has the knit hat and cardigan; and she has more accessories - three handguns, milk carton, switchblade, cigarette, milk glass and of course, the plant.

Kumik's revolver was a really bad recast, but all the Redman weapons are crisp castings that could just as well have come from the original moulds like the ARToys Leon. The Beretta comes with a separate compensator and suppressor which attach perfectly.


At first I thought the Kumik sculpt was still better, so I swapped heads. That wasn't easy since the sculpts are incompatible. I tested them out by securing them with white tack, but they just didn't suit the other figure. So I returned them to stock.

The only downside to the Redman sculpt is that the inside of the hair on both sides isn't painted where it meets the face.



However, with her head turned like that I can't see it in reality as it's in shadow. The camera flash doesn't miss anything though!

 

[Yodasodabo]

Wow she looks great, excellent job on lengthening her legs. Nice to see they got rid of the ugly neck joint from the promo pics for a seamless look around the neck. She was on my radar but figured I don’t have to have her but the temptation is back.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Asta]

Wow she looks great, excellent job on lengthening her legs. Nice to see they got rid of the ugly neck joint from the promo pics for a seamless look around the neck. She was on my radar but figured I don’t have to have her but the temptation is back.

Up until today I was happy enough with the Kumik.

But the more I looked at the Redman the more detail I saw in it, and the worse the Kumik seemed. It's nice to see that Redman can be creative without recasting, with this and their Ellie. The last original sculpt I remember them doing was Josey Wales, and that seems like years ago.

 

[Rogerbee]

Clever mods there! Nicely done!

 

[Stryker2011]

Great job on the modifications, Asta. She looks a lot better.

 

[Asta]

Clever mods there! Nicely done!

Great job on the modifications, Asta. She looks a lot better.

Thanks! I'm loving how she looks on the shelf. She's ousted the older Kumik as I think the Redman is better in every regard.

 

[Asta]

I just received the DJ Custom Leon, and am comparing it to the ARToys version that came out a while ago.

These are some observations upon opening the box.

The DJ comes with two sculpts. The normal one is very similar to ARToys (which might originally have been Enterbay's?), but is slightly smaller. The ARToys was okay, but the DJ is better painted and has a greater resemblance to Jean Reno, especially the eyes the a bags under the eyes. The DJ capture's Reno's sleepy-eyed look with the whites showing at the bottom, like this:

Or this:

Which explains why the ARToys always looks best with the glasses on.

DJ's second head has the blood, bruises and slightly open mouth with the teeth showing. It has the same excellent eyes as the normal sculpt. While the hair sculpture seems to be the same as the former, the front of the face has been re-sculpted to open the mouth, lower the bottom lip and show the teeth. The nose is noticeably bigger, with more likeness to Reno. The ears look a little bigger than the normal sculpt as well.

Seems like the shows and harness are the same as ARToys', but the coat is black as opposed to ARToys' charcoal.

The DJ's legs are floppy, and the white shirty collar is more oversized than ARToys'. I planned to use the black long sleeved top on the DJ anyway. The DJ body is far too short for Reno, measuring only 11.5" to the top of his head, not counting the soles of his shoes. At 1/6 the measurement should be 12.3".

The guns are good. The only review I saw of this (on BBICN) showed the guns with wide gaps at the seams. However, I'm guessing that was a rogue issue as in my set they're perfectly cast. They look as crisp as ARToys, which at the time I thought were sharp enough in detail to have come from the original moulds.

DJ have even improved on that by changing the flat back firearms (Beretta 92FS, S&W 41 and pair of S&W 586s) to a dark gunmetal that creates the sheen of blued steel. ARTOYS only had one S&W 586.

They have also changed the nickel plated firearms from ARToys' generic 'flat' silver to a more lustrous silver-gunmetal that creates the appearance of higher quality and realism. The snubnose revolver, which looks to be the Ruger SP101 is slightly darker than the Beretta 92FS.

The glasse sare identical to ARToys. DJ' hat is a huge improvement. It's smaller, without the bug fold-up brim. Instead the brim is much narrower, and sealed with what seems like a wire inside so that it fits the head perfectly and stays where you put it.

The gun case is a little wider and two-tone, with lighter edging. The lock plate in mine though hasn't been applied level and slopes downwards. No doubt a consequence of the pre-Chinese new year rush! I should be able to carefully prise it off and re-glue it level.

The paper bag and two milk cartons are flat sheets that you have to fold into shape and glue. Which is a bit of a disappointment since Redman's Mathilda came with a proper, pre-assembled card carton.

To sum up, apart from the body, white shirt, and possibly the coat, the DJ is a worthwhile improvement over the ARToys. Plus it adds the black top, extra sculpts and revolver.

That's it for now as I'm going to break him down and see how I can make the best possible use of the parts to make two versions of Leon.

 

[Asta]

Having now broken down the ARToys and looked at the pieces side by side, it's now evident that the DJ overcoat and white shirt are actually better than Artoys'.

The DJ coat is better tailored, with finer lapels, The DJ white shirt is also finer, with a narrower collar band and smaller buttons. It looked a mess on the figure out of the box, but will in reality sit neater at the collar than ARToys'.

One thing that may be useful from ARToys is the trousers as they're longer, and will suit the taller body I'm using - after all, there's only so much sock you can feasibly show. :

 

[Yodasodabo]

So both of the unlicensed Leon’s are out? Could definitely use some parts to upgrade my modded enterbay. Especially the gun case and if the white shirt is better


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Asta]

So both of the unlicensed Leon’s are out? Could definitely use some parts to upgrade my modded enterbay. Especially the gun case and if the white shirt is better

Your mileage may vary with the shirt. Apart from having discernibly smaller buttons, the improvement with the collar is small, yet compared to my ARToys version (which I glued closed to try and make it better) it's enough to make me use it in place of the ARToys.

Some ARToys may have had better shirts than mine, so I can only judge by what I have in hand.

I've started putting the DJ onto the taller body, which is one those hybrid neckless versions that have sculpted muscle arms. While taller it's actually narrower across the shoulders than the 'narrow shoulder' knockoff body that DJ used. So I think it suits Jean Reno better.

The following photos were taken using the flash.

The regular DJ sculpt:

The 'battle damaged' DJ sculpt:

And showing the fit of the hat:

 

[Asta]

When I saw the first in-hand photos on BBICN I thought this might have been an almost complete waste of money, since I already had the ARToys version.

How wrong could I be!

The DJ Customs is generally far better. I love the sculpt and paintwork.

The following photos are of the DJ Custom Leon on a no-name taller, neckless, muscle-armed body; the trousers are ARToys', but only because they're longer; and both hands are from some other no-name figure because DJ didn't provide a left pistol grip hand. So I selected a matching pair, which are a little smaller, and more in scale than DJ's.

You'll have to excuse the flash photography.

With Redman's Mathilda:

 

[Rogerbee]

That does actually look rather good.

 

[Asta]

The box is pretty good too!

 

[Asta]

On the left the DJ figure as described above.

On the right the ARToys on a Sideshow Luke Snowspeeder body with the ankle ball joints resting on the shoes. I'll put some stuffing inside the socks around the ball joints to fill out the gap. He has the DJ bloody sculpt; overcoat; hat; shirt and trousers.

While the DJ shirt has a better collar and smaller buttons, once it was on the figure it looked as baggy as it'd initially done on the DJ out of the box . So I simply pulled it tight to his neck and bunched the excess material at the back, concealed by his coat collar.

He could well be showing too much sock, but it's hard to judge.

Since taking the photos I pulled thetrousers lower.

EDIT:

New and improved, with less sock!

 

[Rogerbee]

Looking good, would you say he was scale height for Jean Reno, he is well over 6'.

 

[Asta]

Looking good, would you say he was scale height for Jean Reno, he is well over 6'.

They should be 12.3" plus shoe soles. I managed to get them to 12" plus shoe soles.

The one in the black top could be heightened by pulling his ankles out of his shoes as I did to the other one.

The Redman Mathilda is pretty much in scale with them as they are now, so there is that.

 

[Rogerbee]

The original Enterbay one would likely have shipped with an RM-4 body. I was able to make a scale height Christopher Lee with one and he was 6' 5" in his prime.

 

[Asta]

The original Enterbay one would likely have shipped with an RM-4 body. I was able to make a scale height Christopher Lee with one and he was 6' 5" in his prime.

I like to make every figure the correct character or actor height if I can (sometimes a character's height differs from the actor, as with Stallone's Dredd).

The simplest method is extending or reducing the legs. Adding a bit of height is straightforward if they're wearing long boots as you can fill them with material to raise the ankles. Reducing a little can be as simple as removing the ankle pegs.

If the difference I need is more extreme then I'll choose a new type of body. But there's often a limit, governed by the length of the trousers, which isn't an issue if the character has tall boots.

The other limitation is the relative height of any associated character. I already made Redman's Mathilda a bit taller to improve the proportional length of her legs. If the Leons get any taller, then Mathilda will look too short.

I think I've reached a happy medium. It's often the case that these unlicensed companies will put a lot of effort into tailoring and such, but they scale it all to a standard, cheap body that they generally use for every figure regardless of height.

A big culprit for this was Redman when they made the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Just like Iminime/Cult King they used the same cheap body for each character, even though Clint Eastwood was about 6" taller than Eli Wallach, which is, of course, an inch at our scale. My solution for the trio was to put Clint on a tall Coo, which worked perfectly; packed Lee's boots to lengthen his legs a little; and left Eli on the stock body.

I hadn't planned to use the neckless muscle body for the DJ Customs Leon, but it was the only body I had that was taller. It worked out pretty well because it was actually narrower across the shoulders than the body he came on, and the muscles aren't extreme yet give a bit of definition through the black top.

This was the body I used:

I orignally bought it for the CGL Joker Nurse 2.0, but his dress would've been too tight on it.