Asmus Bilbo reveal!

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This turned out to be a PERFECT solution. I chopped out the "metal" portions of the staff and glued together the two "wood" sections and its the absolute perfect length for Bilbo. Five minute mod!
Great to hear! Just ordered one. Were you able to cut it with an exacto knife or what?

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Great to hear! Just ordered one. Were you able to cut it with an exacto knife or what?

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

Used an exacto knife. Rolled it back and forth. But it turns out the "metal" bits and "wood" bits seem to be glued together and not part of a single cast so they pop apart pretty easily.

Also there's a thin metal rod that runs down through the middle of the staff to keep it rigid. I suppose you could pull it out with needle-nosed pliers or nip off the end with wire cutters, but I managed to use the little bit of that internal rod that sticks out to help attach the two "wood" pieces together.
 
Received Bilbo yesterday and I have to agree. I was worried about the helmet hair and it is less noticable in hand. The proportions are good, the big head is much noticable with the pictures too. And besides that the sculpt is damn good, the skin tone is superb, and the outfit and accessories are great.
Bravo Asmus !
:)
 
^ I got mine yesterday, and I agree the head sculpt is great, absolutely fine in-hand and doesn't look over-sized at all - it must be a photo thing! :lol
 
Finally got my invoice for Bilbo so I should be receiving him and Thorin around the same time. Hopefully Asmus has sorted this out for everyone else who was having this issue.
 
The shot you include in your post is what Weta and Jackson considered the different races would look like when put together. It is the beauty shot. In that pic, proportions are what they considered they should be after their research into Tolkien. No lens/perpective distortion because the camera stands far enough from the subjects, lightrays getting onto the film can be approximated as straight and parallel, etc.

I am not an expert on Tolkien, and I don't know whether Weta/Jackson's take on the issue should be considered as accurate or not, and if you ask me, as far as the value of Tolkien's work goes, I don't give a damn about how Hobbits exactly looked like. But it is the "film-accurate" game that we are playing here, and if that is indeed the game, judging from shots like this one, there is only one conclusion I can draw out of it:

Hobbits are scaled-down humans with large feet. Nothing else. Heads are noticeably and proportionally smaller than human/elf heads.
No children with childish head proportions. If children had to be used for fleeting, trick-the-eye kind of shots, those are to be ignored when it comes to 1/6 figures, for those are to be created out of what is seen on screen during beauty shots.
Hence, Asmus' Hobbits' heads thus far are too thick no matter how much we love Asmus, how much we need those figures, how technically excellent they got, how fan-centric Asmus are proving to be, how grateful we all feel for getting these figs after decades of hopeless wait, and in spite of any subjective and emotional criteria. And Mr. Asmus' words about reconsidering proportions for future releases, are but on the right path, which I personally thank.


When people invoke mythical camera effects on pictures that are taken from a fair distance from the subject, I just don't know what they are talking about, and I can't help wondering if they do. There are things like Perspective Distortion, but we all know that only happens when the distance from the cam to the subject is small enough... right? Do you guys know that you can even take measures on pictures of a more-or-less distant subject (not actually distant, but farther away than a given threshold depending of the cam and the subject's size), and as long as you have some reference, you can compute actual measures of the depicted object, accurately?

Photographic data, if properly taken, is empirically reliable, people. It can be used in Law, Science and Engineering. If Asmus' Bilbo's head is measured to be disproportionately long on an adequately taken picture, when I have the figure in hand, I'll get almost same results. No trick, no magic, no wonder, no perceptual effect, no psychology involved. Just (almost) plain old Orthogonal Projection (yeap, even if that movie shot was taken from above head level, it is far enough for lightrays to be considered orthogonal to the projection/camera plane).

RfC
m.

The Asmus hobbits have heads that are almost the size of their bodies. Notice that the original actors heads are in proportion with their bodies (being human and all). The prototype hobbit figures definitely look to have the correct sized heads on the glamour shots but the production versions do so look larger. The size discrepancy is more noticeable when stood next to the human Asmus figures as their heads are almost matching in size.
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I think the scale of the hobbit heads is fine as is and actually wouldn't want them to be scaled down to the size of that pic. The filmmakers used a combination of green screen/scaling down, camera tricks, and the use of short stature film doubles whenever hobbits and "Big People" shared the screen, so the scaling varied from moment to moment and, if anything, the size and scale of the hobbits look a little off/shrunken (like half size adults) to me in that photo (I have the same reaction seeing that moment on film).

The hobbits' heads/faces don't seem nearly as scaled down in this shot, for example.

View attachment 435720
 
Bilbo is a very pleasant figure, one of the best hobbit effort from Asmus. And sculpt, clothing and accessories look good. It gives me a better impression than green eyed Frodo I have :) . So, the best hobbit to me, for now.
It is not perfect, but very nice. Well done Asmus.
 
OMG that's a huge review!
Only nit: I can't almost here the lady! The mike should be placed somewhere where her voiced is picked up with more intensity!
Anyways, thanks for your contribution! That's a whole lot of insight right there. The pipe (detailed??? painted inside???), the backpack (all those different materials..., the paperwork... just awesome Asmus!

Besides the size problem, this head is extremely realistic. I don't mean accurate, but lifelike. This one and Gimli's are works on a different level from that of the previous Hobbits, Boromir, Aragorn, Saruman, the Gandalfs or Legolas. By far more realistic, no longer that stone-like feeling to the skin (Arwen is a step backwards on this respect though). Asmus is now stepping into HT ground. As the reviewer would put it, I'd like them to redo almost all heads thus far...!

In terms of accuracy: as it has been said in the SSC Mythos Obi-Wan thread, even if accuracy is paramount in this game, an inaccurate sculpt can be acceptable if you love the underlying concept and don't actually mind that much about the details. This happens to me with Asmus' entire LOTR line and with this fig in particular: this is an extremely valid Bilbo. It is not Freeman's Bilbo, as HT would certainly make it to be, but it is close to what I could imagine Bilbo would look like, and that's enough for me to bite the bullet. It would be a more satisfying Bilbo if it was an awesomely accurate transfer of Freeman to 1/6, but well... On top of that, and by the looks of it, Asmus might be now beginning to set the goal of total accuracy as the next milestone in their roadmap.

Question to you @ll: what would you guys like to be improved on this fig? (besides the head problem, which Asmus seem to be working on already)

My 2 cents:

- Less skinny look.

- Rubberized legs for hidden knee and articulated ankles.

- Way better looking feet hair.

- Rooted hair.



I would certainly pay more for these features.



RfC
m.
 
Nothing, I'm not interested in changing anything. Buying this figure because I love the way it looks, not what it's attempting to represent, but if that were the case I would still buy it and be happy.

Question to you @ll: what would you guys like to be improved on this fig? (besides the head problem, which Asmus seem to be working on already)

m.
 
Used an exacto knife. Rolled it back and forth. But it turns out the "metal" bits and "wood" bits seem to be glued together and not part of a single cast so they pop apart pretty easily.

Also there's a thin metal rod that runs down through the middle of the staff to keep it rigid. I suppose you could pull it out with needle-nosed pliers or nip off the end with wire cutters, but I managed to use the little bit of that internal rod that sticks out to help attach the two "wood" pieces together.
Thanks for the info. I just got the staff in the mail today and am excited to work on it.
 
:confused:
Anyone else? :)
m.

Nothing to change think YT vid sez it all:clap:clap:clap. I'd welcome "accessory pack" ADDITIONS like a hobbit hole diorama or Bilbo's desk or a BOFA/mithril shirt switchout.
Got a second Bilbo on PO so hopefully can do a Laketown version.

PS Rzeznikk love the framed poster and ur display!:):clap
 
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