The sculpt appears to resemble Clint more in your pics
@PizzaCake , just the paint job and softness of the sculpt doing it in. At this scale, the hair stranding on the eyebrows and sides should be finer as well as the stubble. The amount of detail in this sculpt is like that of a 6” Hasbro figure instead of 1/4 scale piece. A repaint would really help it out though, for sure.
I might try some touch-ups, I don’t have the confidence for a full repaint, though maybe somewhere down the road I guess I could find a custom artist willing to do it. I don’t know that I’d put the in-hand product at the level of a 6” Hasbro myself haha, but fair enough! Definitely agree some extra work would bring it to another level.
Due to pricing and the real estate they require, I’m not really a big statue collector (the three PF’s in my comparison photo are the only larger format statues I have, in addition to a few NECA 1/4). I really only have an interest in a large format piece if it’s a character I adore, so this one was initially a no-brainer, and I’m likely going to put down the NRD soon on the Prime 1 x Blitzway T-800 for the same reason. Indy would be another, but that recent JND didn’t do it for me.
I find the spectrum of pricing, quality, style, and expectations on the statue side of collecting very interesting and a little confusing tbh; I’m still learning. I do think that Sideshow is in a tough spot with their market positioning. They certainly earn their criticism and - regardless of the universal hobby acceptance of some proto-to-production downgrade - need to be called out for selling preorders with images they know they’ll never be able to remotely replicate, but I’m also not sure that they can ever produce to the level people are hoping at the more inclusive price point they seem to target. That prototype almost looks Prime 1/Blitzway level to me (as far as paint detail, the sculpt style being larger than life is obviously more of an inherent Sideshow thing), but a Prime 1 or Blitzway statue would cost double for the same scale. And the clothes on this are solid, so you’re really talking double for the 1/4 head with better paint/less idealized sculpt. Getting up into the 1/3 scale and JND products, looking at another 1-2 grand.
Meanwhile, at the “cheap” end, Gentle Giant is selling this goofy 1/7 statue for $300:
Mezco is doing this 1/6 Conan statue at $380:
Perhaps it’s the 10-20% caricature remarks or the repeat practice of overpromising on prototype that has rubbed collectors the wrong way when it comes to Sideshow, but is there an example of a company producing paint apps at the level of the Sideshow prototype at 1/4 scale and a $600-700 price point?
