Real Hair Vs Sculpted Hair...

Hey Guys,

I wanted to open a discussion on this subject and give some observations on why I choose sculpted over real. I felt this thread could be interesting with Gandalf, Saruman, Gimli, Chewbacca, and a few others possible on the horizon.

When I was a young lad my mother was very into the Franklin Mint Bride Doll collection. These dolls were very similar to PF's in that they were about 18-24 inches tall and had intricate costumes made of various materials. The bodies were most likely a combination of polystone, porcelain, plastic, something hard, I'm not exactly sure. The hair however was real hair, it wasn't sculpted.

When these figures came out of the box they were beautiful. Based on all the PF's I own the costuming could stand in the same league as Sideshow's for craftsmanship. The real hair was also very nicely done. It looked like the ladies had a day at the spa before they shipped.

Now here's where things go downhill...for those that are married...as beautiful as your wife's are...your wife's hair never will never look as good as it did on your wedding day. The amount of work that goes into her hair for that special day will not be needed again...unless of course she dumps your ass and gets married again, but I digress!

Over the years I noticed the hair doing funny things. The hair started to get bigger. I envisioned the dolls coming to life at night, turning the channel to MTV during headbangers ball, to get hair advise. The dolls started to look, and even more so today like they stepped out of an 80's Poison video. Now I live in Massachusetts where it's cold 8 out of 12 months, the humidity is fairly low in comparison to other parts of the country. It appears that humidity, along with factors I just don't understand, have taken a very nice hairstyle (out of the box), and has turned it into a monstrous tangled mess. It just looks very bad. The other thing I noticed was the amount of dust the real hair attracted. The dust really got deep into the roots and was very hard to get out. I also noticed little by little I would find parts of the hair were falling out over time. Now this information is based on seeing 20+, very expensive dolls, from a company like Franklin Mint, over a span of 15-20 years.

I think seeing how nicely Lurtz and Frodo have turned out with sculpted hair, I'm confident that sculpted hair would look great with Gandalf, Gimli, etc. If Chewbacca is done as a PF, it will be very interesting to see the direction they go with him.

Did anyone else's Mom ever collect those figures, and if so, did you have the same observations?

sculpted hair looks better.

A real hair Chewie is a must. :chew

Sculpted hair looks better. While I appreciate the intent behind real hair it never looks right without some serious futzing and then you have tend to it every now and then. Chewbacca on the other hand is for lack of a better term a large rug so he's in a different ballcamp all together. Personally I'd love a real fur Chewie in 1/6 but if it were sculpted I wouldn't really mind too much but for a PF Chewie? I see no reason why you couldn't put a fur suit over him.....

Sculpted hair might not look as realistic but it would make for a better looking figure over the long term as there would be no issues with the hair falling out.
There have been several great customs of Chewbacca done with real hair but customisers have much more time to work on individual pieces than a factory does and when many of Sideshow's production figures arrive with such shoddy paintjobs can we really trust them to handle something like a real hair Chewbacca with all the potential issues that would crop up as a result? I think not.
Maybe the larger scale of the PF line would make it easier to do the fur but given their lack of enthusiasm for making any complicated figures in the SW line like armored characters and the revelation about the materials that Boba Fett is made of I question whether Sideshow will consider doing real hair even on a PF and just give collectors yet more BS as to why they can't make a particular item even though it's very much wanted.
I think the best chance for a decent real hair Chewbacca would be if Cinemaquette got the SW license. It would no doubt be as overpriced as all their other stuff but the the skill in which the rooted hair on their human characters is done suggests that they could do an awesome Chewie.
As for a 1/6 real haired recreation of everyone's favorite Wookiee I'd let Hot Toys have a go,they seem the most likely of the current 1/6 companies to pull it off sucessfully.

Shai Hulud said:

sculpted hair looks better.

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Agreed. :maul

It depends entirely on what kind of figure it is. With most figures, sculpted hair is just fine, whereas with someone like Chewie, real hair is a must!

it depends who's doing the real hair.. most companies that do real hair looks like crap.. but for a custom, I prefer real hair.

Shai Hulud said:

sculpted hair looks better.

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Ditto!

real hair is for dolls. I collect statues.

I like sculpted hair as well. Real hair makes things look shabby sometimes. With sculpted hair, everything remains the way it was meant to be.

I tried to do the real hair thing with my Bruce Lee commission (using rabbit fur) - it was a b*tch and the sculpted hair looked better in the end anyways.

Tin

Human characters, sculpted. Someone like :chew real hair.

snakebeater said:

it depends who's doing the real hair.. most companies that do real hair looks like crap.. but for a custom, I prefer real hair.

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exactly. there's a reason why the high dollar customs all (except very short hair) have real hair. it's because they can take the time to get it right. something a mass production line can't or will never do (SS please prove me wrong w/ Chewie!!). i will always prefer real/synthetic hair over sculpted but only when done right. real hair only makes sense. i mean we buy these figures because we want the illusion of having a tiny version of the character on our shelf. we obsess over accurate clothing, likeness, ect, so why should hair be different. i think most people who say they'd rather have sculpted hair are of that opinion because they've only seen the lousy examples done on mass produced figs. take a look at a well done custom, and then, given the possibilty of a company reproducing that effect, say u'd still rather have sculpted.

Also depends on the style of the hair cut. Some hair cuts just can't be done in miniature.

Prefer sculpted, but depends on the piece. Sideshow is wonderful in that they try to experiment and will come up with the best combo. The 1/4 PF Vampyre was done with some sort of synthetic fiber and so was 1/4 PF Van Helsing, they came out pretty well.

Depends on the style of the hair. I won't accept a sculpted Chewie, but for most figures sculpted is fine. I'd say that a Thor PF could have real hair though, it would be stuck up under his helmet like Elektra and her's works very well.

How's anyone's Anna Valerious or Prophecy Girl Buffy holding up?