Statue XM-Wonder Woman Rebirth

[VinMan]

Any one know anything about the replacement heads?? I am new to XM and don't know how fast they move etc... Any ideas anyone??

 

[AC_808]

Any one know anything about the replacement heads?? I am new to XM and don't know how fast they move etc... Any ideas anyone??

Well ...would help to know more about the situation. Like ...did you order directly from XM? And did you request a replacement head from them? Or did you order from a 3rd party vendor?

 

[VinMan]

Well ...would help to know more about the situation. Like ...did you order directly from XM? And did you request a replacement head from them? Or did you order from a 3rd party vendor?

Ordered from Spec Fiction. Told them to hold off on shipping until they get the new head....

 

[Grumpy Bear]

Then you should ask Spec Fiction first.

 

[AC_808]

Ordered from Spec Fiction. Told them to hold off on shipping until they get the new head....

Yup, what Grumpy said.

 

[ACalica917]

Actually, you’d be better off messaging XM on how they’re fitting it into their production schedule. They’re fairly responsive. Then just add about a month for it to get to Todd at SpecFic.

 

[dan350zr]

They had to make them from scratch, so I imagine it will be a few more months before we get them, that's why I had SpecFiction ship WW as soon as he got them, I imagine the shipping for just the heads won't cost much so when he gets them he'll just ship them to me

 

[lttgtimaatisgdaicfi]

My XM Wonder Woman (from the 2nd wave of shipment from Spec Fiction) is enroute to me and will be here in the next couple of days. I checked with Spec and they confirmed mine will have the new head.

 

[dan350zr]

Yeah, he should be shipping out the portraits by themselves any day now...

 

[lttgtimaatisgdaicfi]

I received my WW statue today. The regular portrait looks fine but the helmeted version looks thin. Was the distortion a problem on both of the heads? I know it was an issue on the regular head and that was fixed but this helmeted version looks squished width-wise.

 

[VinMan]

Agreed!! Got mine today and the regular head is great but the battle head looks very squished!!!

 

[desertdragon]

My XM Wonder Woman has finally arrived here, and I had the same impression of the helmeted portrait - it looks like it is distorted, though the replaced unhelmeted portrait looks fantastic, as does the rest of this piece... Even with the portrait issues, IMO XM has created one of the best (and possibly the best) dimensional renderings of Wonder Woman to date... I hope these shots give some inkling of how really exceptional she is...

 

[marvinmyles]

looks fantastic dd real nice pics.Congrats and thanks for sharing.

great pose but interesting that they would do a battle pose with such clean museum pose armor.

 

[lttgtimaatisgdaicfi]

Your pics are nice but not realistic and not what I see when viewing my statue. Her skin tone looks great in your pics but she is in fact quite pale. In reality her fleshtones are too light and weak and my biggest criticism of the piece (other than the squished helmeted head). You can use camera lighting, exposure and other photography tools, not to mention photoshop, to procure beautiful pics but they don't always fairly represent the actual item. We see this all the time, of course, when we order these things through website promotional pics. It's a nice piece, a great sculpt, but her colors are nowhere near as vibrant and saturated as what your pictures depict.

 

[desertdragon]

Your pics are nice but not realistic and not what I see when viewing my statue. Her skin tone looks great in your pics but she is in fact quite pale. In reality her fleshtones are too light and weak and my biggest criticism of the piece (other than the squished helmeted head). You can use camera lighting, exposure and other photography tools, not to mention photoshop, to procure beautiful pics but they don't always fairly represent the actual item. We see this all the time, of course, when we order these things through website promotional pics. It's a nice piece, a great sculpt, but her colors are nowhere near as vibrant and saturated as what your pictures depict.

View attachment 492732

Okay - Let's talk about light first... Light has a color temperature (which is a way to represent the combination of frequencies at which it is emitted) and an intensity, and there is no such thing as a 'real' or 'correct' value for these, although you seem to imply that the light you have chosen for your photo is somehow more 'correct' than mine, but it's just a different color temperature and intensity than the light I used in my photos... The light in your photo looks to be about 6000K (ambient daylight), with an intensity determined entirely by the interaction of sunlight with the room the photo was taken in... Light at this temperature and intensity is going to overpower or 'wash out' the light frequencies that the paint pigments on her are designed to reflect. I would argue that this is the worst way to light any piece of art - this is why art museums have precisely controlled lighting temperature and intensity, so that the colors the artist chose for their work are actually visible. And in the age of cheap LED lighting, it's not difficult at all to create your own controlled lighting for displaying these pieces. Want to see the colors more vibrantly in this piece? Use a lower intensity and warmer light ( as I did) - that's will allow you to appreciate much more the vibrance and color shading that the artists, designers, and craftsmen worked hard to put into this piece. As an analogy, imagine listening to your favorite music through a single plastic speaker with a 2 inch paper cone driver hooked up to a poor quality 5 watt amplifier - can you do that? Sure, but guess what - you will enjoy your music much more with even the most modest modern 5 channel audio system connected to a decent amplifier, and if anything, you are going to be hearing the music much more closely to the way the audio engineer mixed it... Displaying your art with controlled lighting is like listening to your music through a good audio system, providing you much more enjoyment of these pieces, and giving you a viewing experience much closer to the way the artists and designers intended...

And as for photographs somehow showing a manipulated view of what is 'real' - ALL photography is, and always has been about the controlled interaction of light and the photographic medium - in the digital age even more so... Again, you seem to imply that your photo is somehow more 'real' and less manipulated than mine, but in fact your camera makes dozens of decisions and manipulations about how it is going to process the signals from the CCD, including exposure, white balance, color saturation, temperature, hue, dynamic range, etc... there is no 'real' value for any of these, only the decisions of the person who wrote the processing algorithm... And to take a step back, art itself is manipulation - Wonder Woman only exists in the imaginations of the artists who created this piece, and there is no more or less 'real' image of her... To complain that a representation of an artwork is somehow manipulated is missing the point of what art is in the first place...

I can't tell you how to display your pieces - that's entirely up to you... But I would suggest that displaying and photographing them in the best light possible not only honors the work of the artists and craftspeople that created them, but will immeasurably increase your own enjoyment of these beautiful creations.

 

[generalszabo]

That was a long response lol and whilst I agree to some extent, it's also worth noting if she isn't as vibrant in real life, just so people know what they're getting

 

[ScoobyDoo]

The heck did I just read lol. Some people are too picky on how to take pictures and where and how to display these things
Anyway, here?s some of mine, feel free to take a crap on them

 

[lttgtimaatisgdaicfi]

Okay - Let's talk about light first... Light has a color temperature (which is a way to represent the combination of frequencies at which it is emitted) and an intensity, and there is no such thing as a 'real' or 'correct' value for these, although you seem to imply that the light you have chosen for your photo is somehow more 'correct' than mine, but it's just a different color temperature and intensity than the light I used in my photos... The light in your photo looks to be about 6000K (ambient daylight), with an intensity determined entirely by the interaction of sunlight with the room the photo was taken in... Light at this temperature and intensity is going to overpower or 'wash out' the light frequencies that the paint pigments on her are designed to reflect. I would argue that this is the worst way to light any piece of art - this is why art museums have precisely controlled lighting temperature and intensity, so that the colors the artist chose for their work are actually visible. And in the age of cheap LED lighting, it's not difficult at all to create your own controlled lighting for displaying these pieces. Want to see the colors more vibrantly in this piece? Use a lower intensity and warmer light ( as I did) - that's will allow you to appreciate much more the vibrance and color shading that the artists, designers, and craftsmen worked hard to put into this piece. As an analogy, imagine listening to your favorite music through a single plastic speaker with a 2 inch paper cone driver hooked up to a poor quality 5 watt amplifier - can you do that? Sure, but guess what - you will enjoy your music much more with even the most modest modern 5 channel audio system connected to a decent amplifier, and if anything, you are going to be hearing the music much more closely to the way the audio engineer mixed it... Displaying your art with controlled lighting is like listening to your music through a good audio system, providing you much more enjoyment of these pieces, and giving you a viewing experience much closer to the way the artists and designers intended...

And as for photographs somehow showing a manipulated view of what is 'real' - ALL photography is, and always has been about the controlled interaction of light and the photographic medium - in the digital age even more so... Again, you seem to imply that your photo is somehow more 'real' and less manipulated than mine, but in fact your camera makes dozens of decisions and manipulations about how it is going to process the signals from the CCD, including exposure, white balance, color saturation, temperature, hue, dynamic range, etc... there is no 'real' value for any of these, only the decisions of the person who wrote the processing algorithm... And to take a step back, art itself is manipulation - Wonder Woman only exists in the imaginations of the artists who created this piece, and there is no more or less 'real' image of her... To complain that a representation of an artwork is somehow manipulated is missing the point of what art is in the first place...

I can't tell you how to display your pieces - that's entirely up to you... But I would suggest that displaying and photographing them in the best light possible not only honors the work of the artists and craftspeople that created them, but will immeasurably increase your own enjoyment of these beautiful creations.

Fair enough...I guess, no wait...my camera shot the image of the statue real close to how my eyes see the statue regardless of what any of my settings were. And that was what I was after; a true representaion of what my statue looks like to my eyes. I just feel your pics are a bit misleading with your studio designed lighting as I, as I'm sure others are limited to what I can do with my statues. Time, space and cost can prohibit that. I would much rather receive a statue that looks decent in most type of lighting as most of all my collection looks good wherever I view it. I shot this statue in my work office with flourescent light but wouldn't achieve any better results at home with the lighting I have there. The point is, they did a poor job with the pale flesh tones. I couldn't help but think "Kotobukiya Vinyl" when inspecting her flesh tones. It has a real "plastic" and cheap look to it. For almost $500 I would hope not to have to create special lighting for a statue to display properly. My XM Aquaman looked splendid under my kitchen lights and my SS Wonder Woman bust looked boss under my living room lights. I see some of what you say but your pics to me are like those mirrors at the health club that make you look a little better than you really do.

 

[lttgtimaatisgdaicfi]

The heck did I just read lol. Some people are too picky on how to take pictures and where and how to display these things
Anyway, here?s some of mine, feel free to take a crap on them

View attachment 492825
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View attachment 492827
View attachment 492828

I'm not taking a crap on anyones pics. Desert Dragons pics look great. Yours look fine too and what I would expect taking pics of this statue in natural light. She's painted very pale. I think it makes the statue look cheap. I would have wished they would have painted her with darker skin tones. Dirt, blood and mud would be great also but just darkening her flesh would have added so much more. Hell, I dislike the sun so I'm white as a ghost but I'm still a bit darker than she is. And your pics are fine!

 

[Astropin]

2.5 years later update. I just bought one of these 2nd hand and it still had the original (messed up) sculpts. Got it at a good price...well below the original cost.

Emailed XM about the updated head sculpts...they still have them! They charged me a small fee plus shipping (total was $67) to the US. I'm pretty thrilled.