1:1 IRON SPIDER-MAN bust (customize)

[Verified]

Yup..
He's recasting...

 

[Kratos]

Thats awesome I want it

 

[Adoptedscot]

Hi guys

While I appreciate as always any thread that even mentions re-casting is a touchy subject with most of us, but please refrain from insults/name calling or any kind of personal attacks.

If this thread is to remain, please use it positively and do not resort to nastiness as there is no place for it here.
Keep it civil.

Many thanks all
Shell
x

 

[gambit]

I don't get the point why he is guilty

I would understand if he was doing the exactly the same bust or statue but he is coming up with something totally different. There is no Iron Man spider bust out there by SS or any other company in this regard

having said this, I believe he made a mistake with using the same sculpt of SS bust. He should have come up with a new sculpt. But then again, I don't think it is difficult to sculpt a bust for someone, who obviously has more resources than most of us have.

I would say, not correct may be but not a big deal also

 

[creature4000]

No different than the repainted SS statues in my book.

 

[lcummins]

No different than the repainted SS statues in my book.

Big difference! The repainted statues are original Sideshow products that someone decided to repaint, but the original statue was still purchased. These recasts are made from one existing Sideshow product and then reproduced to make many more.

 

[nash]

Big difference! The repainted statues are original Sideshow products that someone decided to repaint, but the original statue was still purchased. These recasts are made from one existing Sideshow product and then reproduced to make many more.

reproduced but it is no longer a reproduction of an original sideshow product. this is the same as modifying the sculpt on a 1/6th figure and then recasting it to sell. yet no one jumped on the person who did that around here.

 

[lcummins]

reproduced but it is no longer a reproduction of an original sideshow product. this is the same as modifying the sculpt on a 1/6th figure and then recasting it to sell. yet no one jumped on the person who did that around here.

It is the same and shouldn't be tolerated either; especially if profit is sought after, however, usually the sculpt is as a "replacement" for the original head, so the figure was still purchased from Sideshow.

The argument will continue down to sculptors doing "unlicensed" sculpts and selling those, which technically, is wrong as well, but if no profit is sought and only a few are made, it becomes a grey area. The board argues this back and forth every time something like this turns up. We all have that "line" where some things are "ok" and some aren't... we aren't perfect, but some things are "more wrong" than others in most everyone's eyes.

 

[nash]

It is the same and shouldn't be tolerated either; especially if profit is sought after, however, usually the sculpt is as a "replacement" for the original head, so the figure was still purchased from Sideshow.

The argument will continue down to sculptors doing "unlicensed" sculpts and selling those, which technically, is wrong as well, but if no profit is sought and only a few are made, it becomes a grey area. The board argues this back and forth every time something like this turns up. We all have that "line" where some things are "ok" and some aren't... we aren't perfect, but some things are "more wrong" than others in most everyone's eyes.

That's true. However in this case, the whole bust has been altered. there is no evidence of the original 1:1 spidey to be seen besides the overall outline and shape of the bust. This is not a small job as slightly modifying the forehead, chin, cheeks, and eyes of a 1/6th head.

If someone can call modifying a 1/6th portrait as artistic interpretation, then i dont see how this is any different.

Another question....where is the line drawn at making profit? $30 per 1/6th head and pumping out a hundred of them is a fair amount of cash, from modifying a single figure's 1/6th portrait. Yet one person receives praise for their work and clearly another person receives the opposite.

 

[lcummins]

...Another question....where is the line drawn at making profit? $30 per 1/6th head and pumping out a hundred of them is a fair amount of cash, from modifying a single figure's 1/6th portrait. Yet one person receives praise for their work and clearly another person receives the opposite.

Again, they are both technically wrong, but I personally think the real difference between the two is that in the case of the head re-sculpt, most of the purchasers had already purchased the figure from Sideshow and the re-sculpt was purchased to modify that figure. In the case of the ISM bust, only one purchase was made from Sideshow...

 

[Verified]

This dude recasted 30 pieces of the original bust and called it his own run.
With his own COA!!
How you guys are justifying his actions is ridiculous.
Customising the ORIGINAL is fine.
Creating your own ORIGINAL sculpt is fine too.
Recasting what's supposed to be a limited bust to customise is criminal.

 

[ghettoenhanced]

 

[Domer]

Recasting what's supposed to be a limited bust to customise is criminal.

A criminal, you are right!

 

[Ratven]

This dude recasted 30 pieces of the original bust and called it his own run.
With his own COA!!
How you guys are justifying his actions is ridiculous.
Customising the ORIGINAL is fine.
Creating your own ORIGINAL sculpt is fine too.
Recasting what's supposed to be a limited bust to customise is criminal.

I guess I'm not as morally correct as the majority of fine upstanding citizens around here, but I'm struggling to understand the dilemma here, so I'd like to try to lay it out.

The problem with re-casters - re-casting is a problem because re-casters take pieces that we have all paid a premium for due to their rarity, exclusivity, and quality, they take these pieces, and make a mold/re-cast them in unlimited quantities, with lower standards of quality, and then proceed to sell them on the black market/ebay/etc. What does this do for the collector? Well, it dilutes the image and demand of the originals unfairly. How does it do this? Well, one of the things that adds value to our pieces is that they are limited in quantity, as supply of the good decreases for a given demand, than the price/value increases. If the edition size was doubled, tripled, x10, then the supply would far exceed the demand, and the price/value would drop. And this is what re-casters are essentially doing, artificially increasing edition sizes, and lowering the overall value of the piece. Add to that shoddy quality on re-casts, fear of possibly purchasing a recast on the secondary market, etc. that serves to further lower perception of the original piece and thus lower its value.

This is bad, no collector wants this, because we all want to keep the integrity of our original pieces.

What Yexel did, was purchase a Spider-Man piece from Sideshow, customized it into an Iron-Spider Man piece by changing everything about the piece, the entire sculpt has been reworked from the head to the chest - the only remaining feature is the base and the general silhouette; he then saw that there's a demand for this piece he created and had it reproduced/recast. He reproduced his own original piece, painted it, has made custom packaging for it, added tentacles to the bust, etc. Someone above suggested that he recast the Spider-Man from SS, and proceeded to customize it 30 times. This WOULD be a problem in my eyes for a few reasons - #1. It's a stupid business move, to have to customize 30 copies once each, when you can customize a bust once, and just make 30 copies of it. #2. And more importantly for the re-casting argument - if he did it the first way, then he has a cast of the original SS Spider-Man, which he could in the future use to make more regular Spider-Man busts, and sell on ebay, thus leading to the problem I laid out earlier. However, I don't think he's doing it this way, because like I said it would be time consuming and silly.

It is now an entirely new piece, that has been "massed produced", just like every other statue making company does it, they make a master, and then cast whatever the edition run is. His COA states that his run of custom made Iron-SpiderMan busts are limited to 30 copies. Again, I fail to see what the problem is by him certifying in writing that he's only made 30 of these. These pieces are not SS Spider-Man, he's not trying to pass them off as SS Spider-Man, and at no point ever I think will they be mistaken for SS Spider-Man, cause someone to not buy an SS Spider-Man, or any other such thing. In fact if anything he's increased the value of the original, because he destroyed one in the making of this, so there's only 249 left.

So then what is the problem? The only problem left that I can see is licensing. He didn't spend money like the big companies to pay for Marvel licensing, and isn't authorized to sell anything to do with Marvel. This is true, but if this is the case, then most sculptors who make commissions, and even more so a few very well regarded sculptors at Statue Forum who do commissions, then recast the originals and sell them as blanks, are in the wrong as well. But like I said, they keep on doing it (and I don't judge, I have no problem at all with it actually) and mostly everyone seems ok with it. I think people are vilifying Yexel because the "re-caster" title has been thrown out, and it's a whole bandwagon of torches and pitchforks rolling on by.

I think I've hit most of the points, my argument (in my opinion) falls flat if he did indeed recast the original Spider-Man bust, and at some point sells that claiming its an original SS piece. However, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that might be the case.

 

[The Mike]

This is a serious Grey area because in reality if you look at the red/blue he had to cast it, then clean it up to remove the weblines and make the eyeholes more like ISM and less like the standard so there was some serious work done to customize.....he is not selling it as the red/blue....its really a tough call because I understand the argument about sculptor's rights and it being a licensed piece being turned into an unlicensed piece, etc. Hmmm.....it'd be hard to turn down one still if offered....

 

[Ratven]

This is a serious Grey area because in reality if you look at the red/blue he had to cast it, then clean it up to remove the weblines and make the eyeholes more like ISM and less like the standard so there was some serious work done to customize.....he is not selling it as the red/blue....its really a tough call because I understand the argument about sculptor's rights and it being a licensed piece being turned into an unlicensed piece, etc. Hmmm.....it'd be hard to turn down one still if offered....

Oh man, you totally wrote in 3 seconds what it took me 30 minutes to explain above...

 

[The Mike]

, as soon as I posted mine I saw yours pop up...excellent explanation

 

[Bodie The Cursed]

I guess you guys made some good points.. However, with this ability, you can't tell me some recasts are not being made too..

 

[quadcent]

yeah, as far as i'm concerned i'm fine with the iron spidey, it's totally different in every way to the original bust, of course other than the actual size.
but i agree also, that with this equipment that is available to him, there's no way to say that there isn't any other casting going on. i mean you don't just get this kind of equipment to do one little custom spidey, or the odd other custom job. it just don't add up to me.

 

[azurepred]

i agree for the most part about the IM spidey bust........i still plan on trying to get one regardless, but i dont support buying other recasted pieces of the originals. this piece is not a recast of the original spidey cause the original was completely customized into something else........but anyways i think Ratven put it best. i still want one of these!