| see the pic above? after the
original sculpture for "marv with coat" disappeared, we decided to go for a bit
simpler design and cast the figurines ourselves, and that's what we came up with. spiffy,
huh? and that was quite some time before mcfarlane toys came up with its beautiful
action-figure. hours and hours of sculpting
went into it, about four-hundred pounds of casting resin were purchased together with
several dozens pounds of mold-rubber, an airbrush-compressor for coloring, boxes and
polystyrene shells (i already had ninety gathering dust in my garage, but the size and
shape were for the previous figurine and wouldn't fit this at all) for packaging. a whole
room got rearranged in order to allow for all the operations needed to produce eighty
finished figurines. quite a big bundle went into all that, never to be seen again...
production started but, after a dozen pieces, problems raised
their ugly head once again, this time under the shape of "personal differences".
without going into too much detail, all of a sudden production stopped causing relations
between the sculptor/caster and me (the "wallet-end" of the deal) to crash down
because of the financial implications and the fact that, after more than two years working
on this, i would have had to throw the towel and admit defeat with one of the heaviest
weight in the industry after pursuing him to obtain permission to use one of his
creations. i still consider that a terrible blow to my reputation, but i undertook another project which allowed me to hand out a fat contribution to
the cbldf anyway.
that dozen pieces also hit the market and ended up in
collections in no time at all: you sure can see why...
luckily, i managed to keep one for myself this time, but it ain't going anywhere: although
it's the reminder of something that's gone horribly wrong, it's also the memento of
something that could have been a crowning accomplishment for ultimate art but ended
up in shaping my future in a different way, turning my interest into original art dealing.
hopefully, it won't land me another financial disaster like this venture did... |
