“Dune” may not be out for another year, but the action figures from the film are already here for those looking for holiday gifts.
Comic book artist and McFarlane founder Toys Todd McFarlane does not know whether the film’s stars – Timothee Chalamet, Stellan Skarsgard and Javier Bardem – have seen the finished product, but as someone who has made action figures for decades , he is accustomed to that. And every action figure is different; sometimes it detects a bar code scan of the actor, and other times, it has to rely on studio scans. As for “Dune,” he had to use the last one.
McFarlane chats with Variety about the creative process and the time it takes to build film link action figures.
Where does the creative process begin when making a Timothee Chalamet action figure?
There are two ways in which I approach a project: that ‘s where I continue my career as an artist and say, “Hey, let’ s create interesting things, and let ‘s do as horrible as possible, and we will let that go. . Then there’s the other side where I don’t have to create or create anything, as with “Dune.”
I don’t need to create it because it’s already built. Someone has already thought of everything, and our job is to be as accurate as possible. That is what we have to do.
You have to draw this as much as possible because they have the credentials for it. The first question with “Dune” was “What do you see and do you have computer files so we don’t have to design?”
That way, with these files, we get a result as close as possible to the contents of a small version of what you see in the movie.
You are referring to accuracy. How does that work when you create a Timothee Chalamet action figure or a Javier Bardem man? I guess they don’t sit down and you make legs of them.
There are two ways. Sometimes the studio does face scans, and other times, we’ve gone to the set. You would be surprised how quickly these scans can be done. It’s not terrible at all. It takes about eight minutes and we can move people in very quickly. Think of it as pictures, except that we do it with a device that is similar to reading bar code at the grocery store, but only instantly creates a front-end of their face.
When I get a chance at that, I get them to give me four or five laughs and feedback. The downside is that when the studio provides these scans they sometimes don’t get the feel.
For “Dune,” the film studio scans were cleaned and sculpted over and around the image scanned by our design team who are primarily involved in digital photography.
The body and resources are created from drawings, re-provided by the studio, and once approved, we make a rapid prototype, print a model and tossed to make the prototypes to create the hand-painted paint masters to produce the final product.
How long does it take to do something like get details about clothes or clothing and weapons?
We usually tell people that it takes 10 months from the time we start when one can buy off the shelf and get to stores.
Making toys is a long process because it is labor intensive. Even if you finish a perfect mold, you need to make sure that the parts can move. In “Dune” when armed, you can place cuts in perfect locations for the action figure to move around. All the parts are assembled and painted, and assembled.
Do you know if Timothee has yet to see the action figure?
I’ve found that all the actors love getting an action figure of their own, but I don’t know if it’s seen or not. I know of actors who get an action figure for the first time that this didn’t happen before they found it cool.