How did you get it to flake? Or was it just suddenly doing it?
Like Ronny's, the black decal isn't applied correctly on mine in some spots. It never fully settled into the sculpt, it just dried over the sculpt. I never noticed initially as I don't really use that head much. Wasn't until I looked at it under natural light up close that it was very visible, especially when comparing to my closed mouth sculpt which is perfect except for 1 tiny spot. When I touched it, in some spots it literally disintegrated right before my eyes. Cracked and flaked off, and in 2 spots it literally came off in small chunks.
Thanks man. Definitely not accepting the head, I want that replaced. Body is fine apart from 2 spots where the decal did not settle into the wrinkles of the skin. I'm simply going to 'push in' the decal into the grooves, paint where it cracks (if it cracks) and then seal it.
There's bound to be a good chunk that are done well, with no paint lifts, chips etc. Idk how I got two that are defects unless they do them in groups and the same worker did 20 closed & 20 open and that batch of 20 are all levels of faulty. Haha they'll never say the process so idk. Glad you have great pieces tho, the statue is stunning outside of some flaws.
Oh and nope, my whole predator, body and heads are flat looking. Maybe Satin at best looking. Zero gloss or shine whatsoever
Man that sucks to hear bud, you see what I mean though right! About it laying above the sculpt and just disintegrates eventually. It's shocking they released this way.
This is how Prime 1 do all their Preds, including City Hunter and Fugitive.
Mine have a wet look for sure.
The 1/3 will have a higher edition size than this one and you know they're going to be using decals. Predators are notoriously difficult to paint and these pieces are basically paint by numbers for the factory workers. Decals are P1's go around to ensure consistency. It's a good strategy, but needs to be applied with care.Pretty sure the paint jobs on Hot Toys are printed...as in, applied by a machine. It's how they get them all perfect.
Definitely. People would be naive to think that the 1:3 will be different.
Whatever they do, it looks better. The body spots look softer, as if airbrushed. Check out the thigh on Hot Toys' Classic Predator. Look how consistent and tight the spacing is between the spots. Look how many there are.
I had no idea they use decals on the whole statue. Never had a Prime piece before.
I agree with you. The reason I know the paint jobs on Hot Toys are printed is because I remember taking a photo of my Joker figure years ago when I was collecting Hot Toys using a macro lens and in the photo you could actually see the dot matrix print pattern on his make-up. Plus the paint jobs are so consistent...if you line up 10 hot toys next to each other of the same variety, they'll look identical. When chatting to the old PCS owner Jerry, he mentioned the advantage of PVC sculpts is that they all come out identical from the molds so it's possible to apply paint jobs via machines. I don't think these techniques are possible on polystone statues otherwise all manufacturers would do it. Hand painting them wouldn't be an option in today's market. The Cinemaquette was hand-painted and it took a long time for Prime 1 to finish those.
yeah this is my first one as well, although I knew about the decal technique from a friend who has several Prime 1 pieces. It shocked me as well when I first found out lol. To be fair, their decal work is usually pretty good, they just didn't do a great job on the pattern here. It's also a technique Sideshow uses on a few pieces too, just nobody has noticed. I remember seeing some behind the scenes photos of the City Hunter Predator they did and they were using decals on it in some spots.
Decals don’t bother me as long as they are applied correctly.
