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NECA's Director of Product Development Randy Falk is a "Lord of the Rings" fan, so it takes little prompting to get him to discuss his company'sassorted "LOTR" collectibles. Speaking by telephone, he says, "We're going to continue with our large format 'Epic Scale' (renderings). You know, the quarter-scale figures with the voice (recordings). Gandalf, which people have seen, is coming out this summer. It should be out in July.
"Legolas, Orlando Bloom, his face was tough to capture. I'm not one hundred percent satisfied with either version of Orlando Bloom that we've done, either as Legolas or as Will Turner (from "Pirates of the Caribbean"). I think they're definitely good, but his face is tough because he has very soft facial features. There are not a lot of defining facial characteristics in his face. I think the Aragorn face came out very well, and is probably the best 3-D representation of Viggo Mortensen that, personally, I have seen.
"With characters like Gandalf or Saruman, the older a person gets, like Ian McKellen and Christopher Lee, or some of the older actors we've done, like Darren McGavin from 'Christmas Story,' the older your face gets, the more character it has. You have a lot more defining characteristics, whether it's wrinkles or texture on the face, which a lot of the females would not have. That makes it easier to capture, because there's more there. Doing the Ian McKellen figure was definitely a pleasure for us because we love the movies and we love the character of Gandalf. His face has so much character and so much expression in it. It was certainly one that was easier than somebody forty years younger.
"Another thing that I don't think a lot of people realize is that when you're working on a sculpt of a male actor, they tend to not be as critical or as vain about how it looks. They want it to look like them, and if it does, they're happy. A lot of the female talent sometimes doesn't see toys or action figures as a company like ours. We present (likenesses)in the most realistic fashion possible. They see it more as a fashion doll, or a Barbie-type of product. They want everything very, very soft and a few steps back from reality. That's a struggle for us, because we want it to look as realistic as possible, and we know that's what the fan base expects from us, but ultimately we also have to obtain the talent approval. We sometimes have to walk a fine line between what we want and what they want."
McKellen gave the Epic Scale Gandalf his blessing quite willingly. Falk says, "He was very happy with the sculpt. Basically, I think his only comment was, 'When do I get samples?' That's definitely nice! I think it's probably the largest Gandalf that's been done, and it also has the sound chip, which is a cool thing."
Gandalf won't be the last Epic Scale project to come out of NECA's workshop. As Falk put it, "The one everyone's waiting for, myself included, is the Balrog. It's still very much in development. The price and the size are the two biggest factors that have delayed it as long as it's been, but we are making another trip over to our offices in Hong Kong, and we will be there... to work further on finalizing details to hopefully have the Balrog out for this holiday. I am hoping and praying that by (the San Diego) Comic Con, I will have a definitive answer on when it will be available, where it will be available, and what the final retail price will be."
Asked to explain if technical glitches have been holding up progress, Falk says, "Getting it to look the way it does hasn't been the problem. Getting it manufactured for a price so people are able to buy one has been the biggest problem. The copies that we've had made and the first-shots and the recasts that we've done over there have all looked great. We've experimented with some different mediums, different plastics and vinyls for the wings and the tail and so forth so we can allow for some poseability in the wings. You can have them totally flared out with the three-and-a-half-foot wingspan or curled up, and the same thing with the tail, being able to pose that as well."
He adds that the size of the Epic Scale Balrog will force NECA into, "packing the wings off the body. The customer would assemble the wings so the box isn't the size of a refrigerator when you buy it. It's all those kinds of things (which are complicating the project). It's tough to realize, sometimes, when you just buy something off the shelf, how much goes into it. Things like box size or how many you can actually fit on a container when you ship the goods from China to the US are a factor. The box alone for the Balrog in one of its earlier incarnations could have added as much as eight dollars to the cost. That's a big number. So, we're trying to give people the best value and the best representation of Balrog without compromising anything as far as the sculpt, the detail, the paint applications, the articulation, and any electronics we want to put in it. I think at this point sound is not going to happen, but I think we can still get in the lights, which we want to do for the head, for the eyes and mouth and the flames which rundown the back of its head into the spine, for those to illuminate. It's been a long haul. It's a beautiful sculpture. We had an unpainted copy on display at San Diego last summer (see above). People were taking pictures with it. The wings aside, it's like a toddler. The thing is that big. It's really impressive. It's probably the definitive 'Lord of the Rings' figure because it's the one that hasn't been done. To me, that's probably the ultimate scene in 'The Fellowship of the Ring,' when all Hell's breaking loose in the Mines of Moria. The archers, the Cave Troll, and everything that's going on just keep building and building, and then all of a sudden, that thing walks out. It's like, 'Holy ----, what else could they possibly throw at you?'" Coming up: Falk discusses technical aspects of the Balrog, as well as his plans for an Epic Scale version of a Ringwraith!
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