Sideshow's protos are painted by different hired professional artists, none of which ever flies to control the production process in Asia. While Hot Toys has JC Hong who is co-founder of the company and works on protos AND during production to ensure the quality.
It's great to see you posting something productive.
But just to add on to that. . . on top of Sideshow, ANY company that operates outside of Asia, has massive difficulty controlling production. Yes, it's true that JC Hong oversees HT's production, but Enterbay also does the same thing yet both companies still suffer from complaints about quality, likeness sculpting, etc. Also, many of the "off-brands" DAM, Soldier Story, DID, these companies ARE the actual factory and the products come right off the line. You rarely see differences from initial photos to production with those companies because they are the guys who make the product, that's how they make their living. When they make stuff for Sideshow, or Kaustik or Big Chief, they have other clients or their own stuff that they focus on, and when some guy from the UK or US e-mails them and says "No, no, that's not right, do it like this" and e-mails a Photoshop'd picture, the factory just says "Okay boss, you got it" and then just bins it. They don't care.
There are Chinese factory agents that are supposed to be a liaison between the "manufacturer" and the factory, but those guys work for multiple companies as well, and your stuff will fall through the cracks. So there's really no one who will go to bat for you if you're a foreign company working with a Chinese factory. And it's not like anyone from the US wants to go live in China and oversee production. Even if I got a million dollar salary, would it really be worth living in China for 30 years making a living just working in a Chinese factory?? Hell no, America has it's problems, but I'm not about to go live in China.
There's really no easy solution, no financially viable solution, to solving these quality issues. People always say "Well, Sideshow needs to send someone over there to watch them". I can guarantee they do, but it's not like they go live over there. I'm sure many of the production guys at Sideshow HQ have gone over to China, just to visually see how production works, so they can better understand how to do their job here in the States. But they live in the US, they have families and lives here. It's not realistic to expect them to uproot their lives to go live in China so Nathan Drake's head isn't warped. Look at Hot Toys, everyone admits they're the best, but people still complain about likenesses and QC issues, and they have JC Hong over there watching. There's just no point in paying someone to oversee production if people will still find things to complain about.
HT has a competitive advantage in being located, geographically, next door to the factory, while SSC is on the other side of the world. It's not a level playing field between SSC and HT. They will never be equal.