I received my Emperor yesterday. Out of the box, I have very mixed feelings, liking a lot of things, but also disliking a lot.
I was never a big fan of the expression, and unfortunately it's not much different in hand than in photos. I removed all the stitches of the hood immediately. Draping it more over the head does improve the likeness and expression IMO, especially from a 3/4 view.
The texture of the robe is quite nice, but it's a bit too shiny overall. A clear improvement over the thick Sideshow version though.
The hands that are included are well sculpted and painted, but there are simply not enough. We get plenty of right hands, but what about a relaxed left hand? We only get the lightning hand and gesturing with the pinky extended.
I probably missed it being mentioned before, but my biggest issue is actually that the cane is quite a bit too long. Palps should almost have an outstretched arm when standing straight and holding the cane. In my shot below, he's already leaning a bit to his left, has the arm angled quite a bit, the hand turned upwards, and still, the cane is angled a bit to the front. I hope extending his overall height will help a bit, but I will probably have to shave off a couple of mm at the bottom.
Overall I do like him, but I mostly see a lot of potential. Some of the modifications I'm already thinking about are: repaint the eyes, customize a new relaxed left hand (resculpt and repaint one from my fodder box), extend height, shorten cane.
Anyway, here's a shot with some quick futzing, trying to replicate the reference image. As mentioned, the stitches in the hood have already been removed, the rest is stock.
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