PREORDER NOW! [iminime]/Rainman - Dr. Lecter

[siquisiri]

I brought up the same issue a few weeks ago and was told by a few boardies that pace that denny and his team were working at was fine..i still think cranking them out too fast us a mistake.

 

[Levit05]

don't know what their overhead is but a few runs (4 or 5) a year of 70 figures...isn't alot...so i may understand the inherent NEED to produce more at a faster rate but that would be a totally different subject of automation and the human labor part...i think that is essentially what is slowing down the growth of Iminime...

 

[Wake]

Denny assured me he had a serious meeting with his team. Cracking some skulls. Hopefully this improves future releases.

 

[karamazov80]

Denny assured me he had a serious meeting with his team. Cracking some skulls. Hopefully this improves future releases.

Not trying to be critical, but should he blame his team for something that he himself didn't notice while these were being produced? Where does the buck stop?

 

[robbiethepainter]

Is he the guy for that or is he the manager?

 

[Wake]

Not trying to be critical, but should he blame his team for something that he himself didn't notice while these were being produced? Where does the buck stop?

A CEO's duties are extensive. He must delegate and sometimes relinquish control especially of minutiae. He probably approved the sample paintwork and then the painters did their own thing. He'll probably be more on top of it now.

 

[PopCultKid]

I still stand by the idea that interest lists aren’t the villains here. Essentially they are harmless. They don’t cost us any money and they don’t take any time or resources away from Iminime. If people think that taking on too many characters at once is an issue, they should be more concerned with the projects that are actually currently in motion. That’s what Iminime is spending time on and that’s what they are asking us to put up money for. The interests list themselves are just people showing INTEREST… and posting up videos and rattling off endless movie lines in excitement… and I never partake in that kind of senselessness

Honestly, the direction that Iminime wants to go they need to do 10-12 figs per year aside from doing side jobs for other companies (Rainman does 4-5 per year and is a smaller shop than they are; obviously he is working on a lot of other things too aside from Rainman Artworks figs).
Robbie said in another thread that anything we say is pure speculation because we’re not in their office and we don’t know what goes on behind the scenes…which is 100% true. I can’t comment on any of that but I can say what they are doing wrong from things I see with my own eyes.

It’s extremely obvious that they waste a lot of time on tweaks. We haven’t seen one Iminime reveal that didn’t need improvement. Few needed minor changes but most needed MAJOR work. Denny is BEYOND accommodating and very patient with us and of course he is very appreciated for that. He takes on feedback and does all he can to make the changes that we ask for. But the truth is it’s not our job to help with all of these suggestions for changes. These are things that Iminime should catch on their own.

One of the biggest things slowing them down is having to go back and change so many inaccuracies. And I’m not talking about artistic expression; I’m talking about inaccuracies. I know some disagree but there is a very distinct difference between the two. This has happened on several projects already but I’ll just use The Walking Dead as a perfect example. They revealed a 20+ pic spread each of Rick & Daryl. Rick’s sculpts are staying (whether people like them or not is their own personal preference) but basically EVERYTHING in the spread was inaccurate. The shirt while technically being accurate was not the shirt that he wore for 80% of the entire season, which was the shirt that anyone interested in this was expecting. The jeans appeared way more dark blue than black. The colt which is his most iconic accessory is completely wrong!... and something like that makes you wonder what you can expect from the belt…which wasn’t even shown in the reveal. Then there were other complaints. Of course Denny listens to everyone’s opinions, makes as many of the necessary changes as he could to the best of his ability, and wastes a bunch of time in the whole process….

What it comes down to is all of our suggestions are critical accuracies that Iminime should be able to figure out on their own and they shouldn’t need us to point out. 95% of the changes we ask for or improvements that we suggest should have been in the reveal from day one! Denny is awesome to be willing to do it but we have been helping him greatly with these suggestions and it always REALLY improves the set. Actually if a lot of those improvements weren’t made, many of these sets would have barely sold.

Iminime wants to be in the high end 1/6 figure game then they really need to understand their target market. If you want to service the crowd that will spend $300-$500+ on a figure, then you have to know what that consumer is expecting. We want likeness to be great; eye, hair and skin color to be correct; clothing and accessories to be accurate and everything done at a high quality. That’s what the collector in high end market expects. People who are in the C grade figure market accept something much lesser, but they’re paying $50-$100 per figure. They really have to sharpen up their eye for details and start to get that stuff right without our help. I can see when a reveal is dropped one or two minor tweaks may be pointed out for Denny to consider but nearly every time it’s a matter of at least 40% of the aspects need improvement.

Like mightyq mentioned certain things are getting old. I’ve trusted in Denny for a while AND I STILL DO. But sooner than later Iminime has to get past the growing pains. Guys like mighty, chilipep, Ray and myself (amongst many others) have been supporting Iminime from day 1 and have bought at least 80% of all their releases directly from Iminime (not the secondary market). Denny has always said that they will keep getting better and better and I completely agree that they have. Many don’t but I always understood Iminime’s limitations and accepted that these sets needed extras and upgrades at my cost after I received them. But for me it’s a year and $4000+ later (including POs) now and I’m waiting for these sets to start being more complete and higher quality right out of the box. I’m hoping that things will change when the 3D modeler comes around because that should mean better accessories and higher quality accurate shoes and stuff. I still have faith like I always did in Iminime. I’m just saying that it’s getting to the point that I don’t want to invest any more $$$ in a figure that I already spent so much on.

I don’t want you to get offended Denny or to misunderstand me. I consider you a friend and I hope you feel the same. I’m solely speaking from a consumer’s point of view and as someone who respects and believes in Iminime. Just some of my thoughts as someone who is willing to pay the high price tag for Iminime’s art figures. And sorry for the insane rant but I’ve kept that bottled up for a bit now

 

[mightyq]

Pop cult, loved your points, I think the biggest one was the going back for the tweaks, it's not only time consuming but frustrating for both customizer and collector. Denny is a wonderful guy, and honest, I am going to backtrack a little, maybe his team can handle the workload, so far it looks like they can. It might come down to what wake said, I think he said it? Maybe being more hands on and cracking the wip when need be. I seen that pic of his team, and I understand that they are all probably close friends, I have owned more than one business in my lifetime, and the hardest thing to do is get max results when everybody is your friend. I actualy hired a manager to make choices for me that were to hard to make. Cracking the wip per se. Best move I made, now this is not saying Denny is dragging his feet and not getting max effort. It's just an observation, that I have seen happen first hand in small operations, but then again rainman and Kato get it done. So it's probably not the case. But when simple things like thinning hair and bald spots are missed, something is wrong. Things lime this is not a tweak, it's a total miss.

This really could be the best time for this. Like I said I have both Rick and Daryl on order, and plan on ordering both on wakes list. I would be sick if these didn't meet expectations. And as I told pop c before, Bateman is a grail for me, I want to take it from the box and for once not have to dismantle it, just pose it and display him, have fun. Not pad it, change the shoes, change the shiny hands, etc. We are all now paying good money for these figures, no real complaint with the price jump either, we were told about it and accepted it. But I am
Not buying a brothers production figure for $115, Bateman I am going all out on $500+, $390 each for the twd, I just want them to be the quality I know in my bones iminime can achieve. I would be lying if I said I am not a little worried. But I know, Denny will come through for us.

 

[turbo.VS.ozone]

Isn't Iminime more of a brothers production type of company? I really don't see it as high end 1/6. Some of the loyal fans are asking too much of Denny and Iminime. Are all of their production figures even done in house or is it just the prototype?

Denny is really great with interacting with his customers though, I hope the feedback helps his company futher along.

 

[Wake]

Isn't Iminime more of a brothers production type of company? I really don't see it as high end 1/6. Some of the loyal fans are asking too much of Denny and Iminime. Are all of their production figures even done in house or is it just the prototype?

Denny is really great with interacting with his customers though, I hope the feedback helps his company futher along.

Brothers prod have injection molded plastic/vinyl heads. It's nothing like the more time consuming resin. Iminime doesn't have a factory.

 

[mightyq]

Isn't Iminime more of a brothers production type of company? I really don't see it as high end 1/6. Some of the loyal fans are asking too much of Denny and Iminime. Are all of their production figures even done in house or is it just the prototype?

Denny is really great with interacting with his customers though, I hope the feedback helps his company futher along.

Well turbo I think they are much more than that, I wouldn't be paying these prices if I didn't think so,,, there neo was fantastic, the seven run was very good, a few mis steps but still high end figures, Etc, etc, wouldn't be fair the compare to rainman, as they don't ask rainman prices, and just to note, rainman works with iminime, can't get better than that, but you are entitled to your opinion turbo. Who am I to argue.

 

[turbo.VS.ozone]

The thing is Iminime clearly is a company that feels like it's more interested in the business of 1/6 similar to brothers production or blitzway than it is a high-end custom figure-maker. For starters, and I hate to drop names, but guys like Rainman or Beto's thumbprint is the work, hence art/artist. I think we like to throw these terms around too loosely and that's why things can get diluted a bit. If we're being realistic, Iminime's original intention was probably to use sideshow freaks as a launchpad for their business. I genuinely believe that Denny wants to offer a great product at an excellent price point, and he has kept true to that. The comparisons are not fair though because his priorities are managerial, he's not the artist. It's easy to see that there is a trend of charging on average $500-$600 dollars a figure these days, who wouldn't want a peice of that? However if a business is set up too big for the scrutiny of $500 dollar a figure collectors, you can see why there's going to be issues.

 

[karamazov80]

I think Turbo makes some valid points. Denny does seem interested in relatively high volume releases, has more projects in the works involving more people, and sets out more explicitly to cater to the demands of his customers than seems the case with Beto or Rainman. I'm a big Iminime fan, but it's a different kind of thing than Rainman, and I don't think Denny would deny that. He has said that he wants to really take off, expanding his company, doing licensed work, etc. And you encounter a different set of concerns when you go that route.

 

[PopCultKid]

I've been telling you that for a while. Denny wants to run a mass producing company that does licensed work. There scope and focus is different than Rainman and Beto and always has been. But let's not forget that until they get there and start following the mass produced process, right now these are still hand crafted custom art figures and a lot of love, time and effort goes into these.

There may be things that Iminime does as a company that sometimes frustrates us collectors and in turn we sure as hell frustrate Denny but I hope he knows that he has created a pretty loyal fan base here. We wouldn't go on rants or even waste out time talking about half of this stuff if we didn't have faith in Iminime and want to see them continue to improve and grow.

 

[karamazov80]

Yeah, a genuinely high end, relatively affordable *laughs at the absurdity of this fact* figures of screen icons like Ripley, Lector, Neo, John McClane, Blondie, etc. is really targeting a collecting audience including myself that is chomping at the bit for this kind of stuff. Add in Trevor Grove, Rainman, and some of the other talent he has brought on board and you've got a guy that has taken up as much of my interest on this forum as anyone or anything else over the last few months.

 

[karamazov80]

By the way, why so serious?

 

[PopCultKid]

Nice .

 

[robbiethepainter]

Kara, is that a good representation of the paint color and tone? Looks really good.

 

[PopCultKid]

I was thinking the same. It really does photograph well. In hand in certain lights it looks a bit too tan and in other lights it looks better. Actually it's almost identical to Avengers Thor's complexion

 

[robbiethepainter]

I know my paint jobs color shift a lot from my table, to kitchen, to bathroom, and especially day light.