Time for a rant.
As a veteran of so much hope for SO many Sideshow Luke or Han releases I bought over the past 5 or so years, anyone who believes the upcoming SSC Luke Jedi headsculpt is going to look in any way decent is deluding themselves - it's no put-down against SSC, it's just the truth. Well, maybe it is a put-down - they didn't do the work years ago (despite constantly jacking the prices) and it shows. DID and lesser 1/6 companies have way-superior sculpt detail and paint.
SSC have missed over and over and if you believe "this one will be different" - like I did so many times (I recall thinking the Luke Hoth was going to be the gamechanger for SSC headsculpts, then thinking SSC might actually match or surpass HT with the Luke X-Wing sculpt
) - I honestly wish you best of luck.All that being said, HT is no picnic either. As I've posted many times - you end up with a choice of either an often superior likeness with SSC heads, but poor sculpt detail, consistently mediocre paint apps (and often a general "this looks creepy/off" vibe as a bonus - alternate Luke Snowpseeder head is a good example) or Ht's stunningly intricate/lifelike sculpt and unbelievably realistic paint apps but with only middling (to in some cases almost poor) likeness. Frankly, to me, HT's SW headsculpts miss that ideal 8.5-9.5 out of 10 mark over and over and over, though they are occasionally capable of a bullseye like Tarkin.
A special WTF callout for hair sculpts: SSC usually has a nice general shape that often nails the subtle look of (for example) Luke's distinctive styles, but the sculpt detail looks like I (with no sculpt talent) sculpted it with a toothpick in about 15 minutes. The sculpt often has a blocky look, big obvious sculpt lines, and has odd unconvincing paint mixtures of green and tan randomly sprayed.
And then there's HT - the fine sculpt detail is superb, but the hair often looks 50% too full , almost taking over the head, and the overall shape is off... and they then get out the metallic paint. Luke farmboy is the "gold standard" - in more ways than one - for HT's crappy, metallic, helmet-hair. Oh, and if they don't want to use the metallic paint, they ONLY use black - Han always has black hair, Leia always has black hair (despite both being brown.) And forget it on grey hair - both Ben and Tarkin had that go awry too.
This really wasn't the 1/6 SW world I thought we'd be in by 2018, but here we are. $220 a figure. Anyway... I ordered this figure after eye-rolling at what I know the SSC headsculpt will turn out to be. Yaaaay.
