Looking forward to your continued thoughts. Will be interested to see how it settles with you and what you think of it.
I think the overall package is great but that the sculpt just looks nothing like him.[...]
agree with SAB.i'm a huge bruce fan and the last few sculpts from EB have been pretty average [...] I've always said as far as likeness goes,this sculpt loses it from the mouth down.you can see bruce from above it,but not enough(for me)to snap this for my collection,even though the set itself is very good.i hope in the end you DO end up keeping this and I look forward to your thoughts further down the line.[...]
Okay, more thoughts a day later, having watched some GoD footage, looked at stills, and had the figure in morning light.
I work in design and I'm a sculptor myself, although it's been a while since I've done any figurative work -- if I get the time this summer I'll hop back on ZBrush and continue with some digital work I've been practicing. So I'm not a master portrait sculptor but I think I can bring an objective eye to this. Like being back in school for critique day.
1. We can all agree the sculpt is not all there, just maybe not to what degree it's lacking.
2. What helps the sculpt: the facial landmarks themselves are all there -- angle of eyebrows, general nasal shape, zygomatic arches, slight lines under the eyes, relatively protruding chin, slight asymmetry.
3. Like others have pointed out in early discussions, I think there's a slight elongation present that can put the lie to it at some angles, and that begins under the zygomatic arches, throwing off the frontal view of the jaw line.
4. The eyes have a very slight upturn at the outer corners that either shouldn't be there or is too pronounced. I think that upturn is what makes them seem too close-set at some viewing angles, although they probably aren't, they just need more horizontal. Whereas the PERS on DX04 rendered the eyes too wide, these are almost a touch (like, sub-millimeter) too narrow.
5. The portrait looks like an average of several screen captures and promotional shots, assembling all of the aforementioned landmarks, but it's too average, in that it misses out on giving us the iconic Bruce our eyes have been trained to see. If you go through footage frame by frame, you'll find the EB75th portrait. But it's a flicker of expression we don't necessarily recognize.
6. Bruce Lee was similar to actors like Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, displaying an extreme plasticity of expression which could render a different likeness from shot to shot, never mind film to film. We all recognize the iconic expressions but there was a huge range there.
7. He was also a combat athlete with the associated weight fluctuations, and his complexion changed from film to film along with how much sun he was getting. This last point can be a big one; I was an amateur fighter and still train, and I'm South Asian, which means my own likeness and hue changes according to weight and season, sometimes dramatically so. I also have certain angles in my face that can literally make me look like a different person in two different photographs. I imagine I would be a challenge to sculpt a homerun with.
Conclusion:
The features are there, the likeness is present, but this isn't the homerun we're after. I prefer it to DX04, which I owned for a long time, but it's a small step rather than a huge leap, and it has its flaws.
I can understand being happy with earlier EB releases if you already own them, but aftermarket costs are generally too high for me to pay for earlier paint apps that will look out of place with my collection. That's a decision everyone makes for themselves, although I'll forever remain on the lookout for an elusive deal, if only for the opportunity to check one out in-hand. This has always been an expensive hobby after all, we pay to play.
As other have mentioned, the portrait benefits from a higher viewing angle, which negates the slight elongation. Slight downward tilt and you see more.
I will be keeping this, being a fan of Bruce Lee and wanting one in my collection. It's a quality figure that's more than just an expensive placeholder; but if someone finally produces an articulated 1/6 figure with a better likeness, I'll upgrade, as is the way of 1/6.
So I burned my morning watching GoD and writing this; I'll take some pictures later this week. I really have to go do some adulting now.
