Stargate Action Figures - Jack

[eregyrn]

*cries* Don't you just hate it when you compose a really long, complicated LJ entry... and then by mistake you hit the close button of the window and all that work goes *poof*?

Probably better for all of you, though, as now this will be much better organized.

First up, the images (they're thumbnails, click on them for a larger image):



















Go here:

http://shop.store.yahoo.com/timespacetoys/stargatesg1.html

This has the figures available for pre-order, supposedly shipping in June 2006. Various sites that I found are confusing on the issue of when these Series 1 figures will be released -- Forbidden Planet UK said as early as Feb. 2006 (wouldn't it be just like the UK to get them before the US?), another place said late July, still another said "3rd quarter 2006"... so, your guess is as good as mine.

This link has the best selection of pics, including the Serpent Guard (who appears to be a First Prime) with his helmet off. I'll link to a helmet-on shot in a moment. Also -- contrary to the pic on this site (you can click on the tiny thumbnail to see a larger version of the group shot), the Stargate is going to be in-scale with the figures. (But will it light up? That's the real question!) It would seem that, to get the Gate, you have to buy each of the figs in the series, as they each come with a piece of it. Huh.

Further: all the shots I have been able to find use the Daniel figure *prototype* that we saw earlier in Gateworld. So what does that mean? Are these Jack figures prototypes as well? Or what?

http://www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=4_614_1598

(You can see the Serpent Guard with his helment on, here.)



Critiques:

As with the Daniel figure... hmm. Maybe I'll wait to see them in person, but I'd still go with the description, "not the worst likeness in an action figure I've ever seen... also not the best".

The General Jack figure confuses me... because basically, all it is, is "Jack without a hat". But he's wearing the BDU jacket, and therefore, he is wearing no rank insignia to show that he's a general. If you're going to make a Gen. Jack figure, you should either have put him in the fatigues that he wore around base, that he wore the lapel stars on. Or, of course, you should put him in dress blues.

Meanwhile... just to confuse us more... both Col. Jack and Black Ops Jack... okay, *dude*. I have been known to wax rhapsodic about the way Jack looks when he's wearing his tac-vest, because there's this thing that happens with the lacings and the way it defines his back, and *rowr*. The figures... obviously fail to achieve this. A personal disappointment. But also... they make no SENSE. Look. They make no sense because he is clearly wearing the tac-vest over the shirt/tunic that is worn as part of the base fatigues. Base fatigues, mind you, are *not* BDU (battle dress uniform), despite the similarities. The greatest difference does lie in the tunic that is worn over the t-shirt. The short-waisted jacket being worn by the Daniel figure and the Gen. Jack figure -- that's the BDU jacket that is worn with the tac-vest. The tunic isn't. Which is why the figures look weirdly blocky. *sigh* Will the tac-vest actually be removable? If so... interesting, but...

Plus it doesn't look like the arms on any of the figures are actually articulated. I can understand this, because points of articulation seldom *look* good, so when you're making an action figure it's always a trade-off. But still.



Anyway -- if I manage to find any more info, I'll update. Meanwhile, hey... pass it on!

Comments

[suzvoy.livejournal.com]

Geez, he looks ANCIENT (no pun intended).

[eclecticavatar.livejournal.com]

hahahahahahaha... *wipes a tear from her eye*

That was great.

[suzvoy.livejournal.com]

Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week ;)

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Yeah... not the best paint-jobs. Not the best photos, either, of course... although I wouldn't particularly hold out hope that the actual figures were *that* much better in person. The best you could hope for would be that, like the Daniel figure, these are prototype paint-jobs.

However, mostly, I think these SG figures just point up the problem with the approach favored by this company. There's a few companies that favor this "realistic" approach, and they go and they scan actors' faces and all. (McFarlane is another company that does this; the company doing these figures is Diamond Select, and the sculpting company is Jean St. Jean Studios.) The *problem* is the amount of subsequent work they then put into the faces, and/or the skill level or even just philosophical attitude they have towards it.

I mean, obviously -- you scan the faces, you use that to create 3-D wireframe computer models, and you use *those* to create a maquette to work with. But you also have to pick a point at which to reduce the scale. That means that some details of the scan will never "read" at that scale anyway. But still. Once the maquette is produced, it will still have to be "edited" by hand-sculpt, because it will never be clean. So the skill of your hand-sculptor comes into it.

Actors' faces can never really be scanned with expression. To get a really good result, your clean-up sculptor needs to realize this and work back into the maquette. The scan provided an accurate template but it's never going to "read" properly as a "real person's" face, unless the sculptor is skilled enough to provide it with some "life".

Based on both the Daniel prototype and these Jack figures, I'm going, at the moment, with the critique that the studio's sculptor wasn't all that good at figuring out how to give the foundation "life". The "factual elements" of both Daniel's and Jack's faces are there... but the spark isn't.

And the paint-job (which may not have been done by the sculptor, either) also plays a part. It's quite possible that you could get one of these figures, and someone skilled at miniatures-painting could redo the paint-job on the faces and "fix" some of the problems. I may give that a go at some point; I used to be pretty good at miniatures.

The argument that I made back when we first got a glimpse of the Daniel prototype was -- I think that these figures that aim for this degree of "realism" are a mistake. Partly because of the static nature of the facial expressions forced by the scanning process. And partly because of the scale. I think that a really *good* likeness would probably be more successfully achieved by a sculptor who had the ability to give his figures' features a lightly cartoony touch. Not "cartoony" in a bad sense, obviously, but in the *technical* sense of an artistic style in which features are skillfully exagerrated to convey emphasis, expressiveness, and emotion. You wouldn't want them to look like 3-D anime figures... but a little bit of cartooning would help them "read" at that scale.

[moonshayde.livejournal.com]

*clings* I don't care. It's Jack and I miss him

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Yeah. *sniff*

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

Is the idea that we play wee games about Daniel going to JackWorld or something? Because that's an awful lot of Jacks...

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Seriously. I was having the same thought. Robotic doubles is what immediately leaped to mind for me, but still...

When you get right down to it, though, what they've actually done is just made two body sculpts, and 4 head sculpts (1 Daniel and 3 Jacks). Gen. Jack's body looks more or less the same as Daniel's. The other two Jack bodies are the same, just with different paint jobs (except Black Ops Jack's hands have the fingerless gloves, which may be sculpted and not just painted).

You know, people laughed at me when I suggested interchangeable heads, but dude, you might as well... What surprises me actually is that they went to the trouble to sculpt a 3rd Jack head, in the knit cap. They could easily have done a "black ops" Jack with a black-painted baseball-cap (i.e. "Within the Serpent's Grasp"), although the knit cap version is more recent.

I really don't *get* these companies that do these half-assed action figure releases. 4 paltry figures in the first series release, two of them the *same character*? Sheesh! It ought to be obvious that for the first big release, you should release *SG-1*, all four of them. (Plus one bad guy; you gotta do that, yeah.) If you want to give me Black Ops Jack or General Jack... well, thank you, that's sweet. But I could wait for Series 2, for that. C'mon. Sam! Teal'c! Geez.

But I've seen other companies do this, too. Like, the Firefly/Serenity figures -- series 1 is Mal, Jayne, and a Reaver. Oh, great. *sigh*

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

How are we meant to make the OT4 action figure orgy without a Teal'c and a Sam?!

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I've *got* to assume that Sam and Teal'c will be out in series 2... whenever *that* is... I hate this "dribs and drabs" release crap.

[nialla]

I have to wonder if the reason they're doing so many versions of Jack now is that RDA's contract on using his likeness is on a deadline?

I'm not sure how many years they run for, but I know the show contracts have been done annually since around season 5, and RDA's been gone for over half a season, so it's possible they really are trying to get some done without renegotiating.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Hmm.... that's an interesting theory. There was one site I ran across (I forget which one it was, now) that said something in the copy about "approved by RDA", which I thought was a somewhat odd thing to say, really.

The thing is... industry-wise, would RDA in fact own the rights to his likeness in that way? Or does MGM own the ability to sell merchandise bearing the character's likeness? It's a fascinating question, and one that I'm just not at all equipped to guess the answer to -- I don't know anything about such contracts in the industry. I think it's interesting, in terms of RDA having been an exec. producer on the show during his run on it.

On the other hand, there is a Q&A somewhere on Gateworld about the action figures, where someone asks if we're going to see Mitchell, or Hammond, or Jonas Quinn, or Apophis, etc. -- and the answer, IIRC, was that yes, MGM had licensed *all* of the characters to the company making the figures. That doesn't mean we will *get* all of the characters, and of course doesn't say *when* we might get any of them. (They're being awfully slow about releases thus far, aren't they?)

But apparently the potential is there. So, contract-wise, how does *that* work? Because one can easily imagine specific negotiations with RDA and MS and CJ and AT, regarding using their likenesses for action figures... but not Corin Nemec, or Peter Williams, and so on. Is that simply part of a basic contract that everybody signs? And if so, how long does that permission last? RDA's been gone for over half a season... Corin Nemec's been gone longer. (While a Jonas figure in the near future seems unlikely... the answer posted on Gateworld seemed to indicate that it was at least possible, nevermind its *probability*.)

RDA having been an exec producer, its quite possible that he had a different contract from the standard one, too. So, I see what you mean, about them wanting to take care of it before his agreement to it "ran out". This brings up his similar relationship to the put-on-hold Stargate platform/computer game, Alliance (for which he was also scanned, and for which he recorded hundreds of pages of dialogue). I wonder if there is any worry about his permission to use his likeness in development of that "expiring"? (Gosh, I hope not, because I hold out hope that we'll get the game someday, and it will have his stuff still in it.)

I wish I knew more about this kind of thing.

[nialla]

Hmm.... that's an interesting theory. There was one site I ran across (I forget which one it was, now) that said something in the copy about "approved by RDA", which I thought was a somewhat odd thing to say, really.

From what I understand, anything showing the actor's likeness must be approved by the actor. There was a big hullabaloo about the collector cards and binder last year, because it had only Jack and Sam on the cover and packaging. The story that finally came out (and some are taking it with a grain of salt) was that one of the actors nixed the other images of the team the company had to use for the project. It could have been any one of the actors, but that was enough to nix their use.

So, contract-wise, how does *that* work? Because one can easily imagine specific negotiations with RDA and MS and CJ and AT, regarding using their likenesses for action figures... but not Corin Nemec, or Peter Williams, and so on. Is that simply part of a basic contract that everybody signs? And if so, how long does that permission last?

I'd bet varies from contract to contract, and I'm pretty sure it's a part of their signing on for the show. I seem to recall that in some cases, even con appearance have been written into contracts. I know that was pretty common on Star Trek, but I think I've heard that appearances at Comic Con are now written into the Stargate actor's contracts.

I think the regulars have more say over what is and isn't done, because of veto power, but I'm not certain on that. As for recurring characters and the like, it may very well be like "write for hire" gigs, where an author signs away all rights to the publishing company for a lump sum. So it could be that they automatically sign off their rights to their image as it's represented by the character. Or else the company would have to go to each one and pay to use their likeness. I'm leaning towards the latter, but I'm just not sure.

This brings up his similar relationship to the put-on-hold Stargate platform/computer game, Alliance (for which he was also scanned, and for which he recorded hundreds of pages of dialogue). I wonder if there is any worry about his permission to use his likeness in development of that "expiring"? (Gosh, I hope not, because I hold out hope that we'll get the game someday, and it will have his stuff still in it.)

I don't think it would be affected, since the project was already underway before he left the show. But if something came up, such as needing him to read more dialogue, that might require more negotiations (read: $$$).

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. (I mean that sincerely.) Though, I meant that I found it odd for them to say that RDA had approved the action figure in the copy on the site I was on -- not that I thought it was odd that they'd sought his approval (even if I wasn't absolutely sure if it was required). Mainly, I guess, because by the time something like that makes it to the point of sale, I kind of assume the actor's approval is a moot point (either yes, they've gotten it, obviously; or, they weren't required to get it). As a buyer, I'm not sure that it would make a big deal to my decision to buy.

So yeah, maybe you're right, and that's why they're shoving out all of the Jack versions now. Though, I wonder if they could have gotten them approved, but then held them for a later release, so long as the approval happened within the right time period? (Could we get a Desert BDU Jack someday, which was just a repaint of the existing basic figure?) I guess, though, that having put the work into the bodies and the head resculpts, they're gonna use them. Those bodies are of limited use -- you can use them for Jack, Daniel, and probably Mitchell, and that's about it unless you want to make some other male SG team members. (Noting that the Gen. Jack pic above looks like the same body as the Daniel prototype pic, while Col. Jack and Black Ops Jack use the same body; but while Daniel and Jack are close enough in build to do that, you can't use the same body for Teal'c, or for Sam obviously.)

What I was wondering initially was whether they were shoving out all these Jack figures now because Jack *is* gone (though still in the omnipresent reruns), so it would be a good idea to bring his figure out sooner rather than later, and then you could move up the time-frame in which you bring out a Mitchell figure, so as to make the line contemporary with the show. Compared with what's going on in S9, both Jack and the Serpent Guard are kind of... retro.

Not that I think this is actually the reason.

[surreallis.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I don't think he looks too bad. Fairly cool for a smaller action figure. But 7", eesh. That makes them almost impossible to customize. I haven't been in the action figure world for a couple years now, but it's sort of a limited size I think. To prove my dorkiness, I've often considered making a custom SG-1 team, but I prefer the 12" figures as compared to the smaller, painted figs. You can get into great detail with the 12" and outfit them in practically anything. (I'm so Felgar sometimes)

The prototypes are sometimes much better done than the product that ends up on the shelf I guess. I hate crappy paint jobs on the faces that make the mouths look all sideways and such. I won't even go into gigantic cleavage on female soldiers. When anyone bothers to make them that is.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Personally, I'm not really that fond of 12" figures. I don't know why. I actually tend to *like* the figures in this scale. I've got to check, but I *think* these are in scale with the LOTR figures, aren't they? (Hey! Crossovers!) And better than the old 4" figures (Star Wars). I guess... I never used to play with 12" dolls, I had the 4" SW figures, and so when 6"/7" figures came out, it was like, oooooh! luxury! They're *so* much more detailed than 4" figures!

I guess I've never thought seriously in terms of customization of action figures, either. About the farthest I'd go is a repaint. And I suppose you could do some modest resculpting, if you were skilled.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

His face is too long and his hairline is too high. I don't care what process they used to arrive at those proportions, they don't work. He looks like the love child of John Kerry and Butthead.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

*snort* I actually think the features (and paint-job) on the Black Ops figure look the most okay... but here's my take on it: face isn't actually too long, but his jaw definitely isn't wide enough. And yeah... nice try on the tufty hair, there, but it's not quite right somehow (neither is Daniel's though), which is why the figure with the hat looks a bit better.

I'll reserve *final* judgement until I see it in person. But... yeah. Problems. The Daniel one has problems too. (However, in comparison -- the pics of the Mal fig. I've seen are much worse, likeness-wise.)

[paian]

This update is awesome. Thanks for posting all this!

You think basefatigues!Jack's tac vest would fit on BDU!Jack? (Assuming it's removable, which ... ::hopes::)

Is blackops!Jack also wearing something like a tunic? That's kinda weird.

The disappointment to me is that he looks so stern. It's probably stupid to wish for something like 'animation' in a fixed expression, but ... I dunno, there's a deadness to the expression they managed to render. Maybe they were trying to make him look badass. It sorta ended up badface instead.

Still, it's Jack! Woo!

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

The more I look at it, the more I *really* think that the tac-vest is going to be removable. (Hey, it's got to be... because you can't play "Jack and Daniel are captured by Jaffa" unless you can have the Jaffa disarm them, and that ALWAYS means taking their tac-vests away from them too...). It would explain things, like how weird the Daniel-figure's arms look, and the shot of Col. Jack shows something weird going on with his right arm (you can see space between his arm and his body). While wearing the tac-vest, the shoulders on both those figures look fine... unlike on the Daniel figure...

Oh, I just don't know.

Also, I noticed something weird...

Go to the first page I link to, the TimeSpace Toys page. Click on the link for General Jack. That's where I got the image I posted above, obviously. However. Click on the link to preorder the whole set. Now click on the very teensy group shot of the figures with the Gate.

In that picture, Hatless!Jack in the back there is very clearly wearing the base fatigues tunic, NOT the BDU jacket (as Hatless!Jack is wearing on the General Jack page, above). The collar is the dead giveaway there, although the hemline (and lack of view of the belt) is also key.

So... what's going on? I don't know -- this may actually be more evidence that one or the other is a prototype. We're just not being given enough information about where (or from what stage) these images came from.

The tac-vests *look* kind of bulky and loose to me in a way that suggests they might come off. And the way the arms of the Daniel figure join the body suggest to me that room has been left for the addition of a vest. But... I'm at a loss to explain WHY baseballcap!Jack and blackops!Jack are both wearing the base fatigues tunic, not the BDU jacket like Daniel is... *shakes head*

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

I think that the stern-ness of expression on Jack is an artifact of the facial-scanning process. (The Daniel figure's expression is kind of stern/weird, too.) Though, also... hmm... if you compare the Jack figures with a sampling of some of the Jack promo shots from S6 and S5, the blank/stern expressions are fairly similar. And who knows how the clean-up sculptors prepared for "editing" the foundation maquettes? What pictures did they have posted around their workspace to help guide them? How much of the live show did they watch? (You'd hope, a good bit, but...)

I mean... okay, I'm an artist. I know how hard it is to produce a good likeness from a static image, when so much of our concept of a person is based on an animated memory. Jack is really pretty hard to capture, because his face is so expressive. I'm also really used to evaluating stills for whether I think they have done a good job of capturing what I think is the essence of Jack.

One thing that really interests me is when I see a pic of him that I don't think is a very good picture -- but other avid Jack fans react to it positively. What are they seeing that is different from what *I* am seeing? I constantly wonder this. This pic is the best example of that:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v639/BladeGirlMana/Stargate%20Pics/Jack%20O%20Neill/JackONeill4.jpg

This is from, I believe, the S4 promo pics. I *hate* this pic. I can't explain quite *why* I feel this way, I just have this immediately negative reaction to it... it's not quite *right*. But how can that be? It's indeniably him. But I think it's a bad picture.

Conversely, I *love* this picture of Jack:

http://claris21.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/mgms7cast08.jpg

In terms of the basics of his features and expression... there isn't a world of difference between the two pictures. But I *perceive* there to be a world of difference between them. The latter, I think is a great pic of Jack. The former, I think is a bad one. And yet... I know there are huge Jack fans who *love* the former picture, to judge by the way they use it. Either... what do they see in it that I don't? Or what am I seeing that they don't? (This is the part where you tell me that you can't see any difference, or you don't know why I would dislike the former; but see, that's all part of the theory. Because just as much as I see a difference, there are clearly Jack-fans who *don't* see any difference.)

So at any rate, if you buy the theory at all that not all still images of a person are the same, and not all "capture" them to the same degree... then the question of *which* images a sculptor might have been using for reference as he cleaned up the maquette becomes important.

Further, there's just the theory I've floated before, which is that a lot depends on the philosophy of the sculptor working from the foundational maquette. I think that you *could* get an expressive quality from the fixed expression of a sculptural image... but to get it, you have to be a skilled sculptor, and when you're talking about action figures produced by this method, there are limitations of the process and of scale.

I personally think that the McFarlane and Jean St. Jean Studios approach, which sets value on a "photographic" kind of "realism" in figure/sculpture features, is missing the forest (overall impression of intangible expressive qualities) for the trees (individual accurate details).

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

oh, i do want the stargate to work. er, properly. although i'll accept one that lights up given the limitations of real life physics etc. ;)

thank you for the links. the whole thing still makes me giggle like a fiend. ;)

:::wanders off muttering: i will not pose daniel and jack action figures on my desk at work:::

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Ohhhhhhh yes you will. You know it. The question is, *which* Jack? ^_^

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

::::ponders::::

:::considers threesome:::

:::considers foursome::::

:::takes into account the size of my desk at work:::

i'm in such trouble, aren't i? hee!

[elishavah.livejournal.com]

The vest looks like life jacket, wtf?

Cripes. And people wonder why I never had action figures. Because they're scary!

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

What amuses me about the vest is that on the show, some folks wearing the vest really look like that -- like the Michelin Man. But RDA doesn't, as much. And it's not just the way he laces the back, or whatever. I'm convinced (after studying, say, Jack next to Maybourne in "Paradise Lost") that a lot of the time, wardrobe puts "stuff" in the pockets of the vests, to make it look like the vests are really serving their purpose... but that RDA wears his without anything in the pockets at all. I think that's why his often looks less bulky than anyone else's (inasmuch as any of those vests can look un-bulky).

At any rate... for the figures, my theory on the vests looking super-bulky is two-fold. First: I am guessing that the vest is pliable but removable. (The LOTR figures included a bunch of pliable removable clothing, mostly cloaks and some overvests.) Therefore, it will never be as form-fitting to the figure as a real vest would be to a body, and it's got to be made a bit big so it can be gotten on/off. Second: the two Jack figures pictured wearing the vests have it on over base fatigues tunics. That automatically gives the torso a more cylindrical shape. But my guess is that even if the BDU-jacket-wearing Daniel figure has a removable vest that you can put on it, it'll still look too bulky in the torso, because the jacket underneath it can't compress the way they do in real life.

If the guess about the removable vest is correct at all, that is. But the technology is now there to do it relatively well (prior to the pliable plastic used with the LOTR figures, such a piece would have had to be fairly rigid and even less successful looking, plus harder to get on/off). I was wondering from the start, ever since we saw the prototype Daniel figure, whether they were going to try to do this. The other solution obviously would have been to sculpt the vest right on the figure. That would have made it svelter, yeah. But it wouldn't have given the figure as much play-versatility.

I kind of agree that action figures can sometimes be scary. And they're almost always imperfect -- it really just depends whether it's *more* or *less*. (I say "almost always" because there are some Japanese-made action figures of anime characters that are uncanny in quality -- but being based on cartoon characters to start with, they have a much easier time achieving an acceptable likeness.)

Yet, I also have a strange fascination and fondness for them. I think something about the effort that does or doesn't go into making them accurate or making them a "work of art" as opposed to a "good toy" is really interesting. Some are more sculptural than toy. I get really fascinated by the ones that remain true to being toys, while also striving for a higher degree of sculptural quality. That's why the question of "what is an accessory" interests me so much. To me, a really successful action-figure toy has to have good accessories. The more accessories, the more versatility, the better. The same goes for movement. An immobile statue isn't an "action" figure... but articulation of the figure for movement is at cross-purposes with a good-looking final product, sometimes. So I'm often interested in those compromises.

I really think that these SG1 figures are shooting for *quality*, and yet, somehow, they're also kind of missing the mark. Some important component isn't there. And I find that interesting too.

[fbf.livejournal.com]

Jack looks like he has the GI Joe hands with "Kung-Fu grip". *bg* oh man, did I just show my age or what? hee.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know EXACTLY what you mean! :) (The secondary question would then be whether he had a button in his back for "karate-chop action"!)

I think you just need to imagine a P90 in his hands. The copy on some of the sites assures us that there'll be accessories like authentic weapons. (Weirder, I feel, is that the Daniel figure is *also* molded so that he can hold a P90. Not that Daniel never used a P90, of course. Memorably. But still...)

[raqs.livejournal.com]

the number of filthy things that will be done with these just boggles the mind.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Well, hey. It's not like their clothes come *OFF*. (That would have been more likely with 12" figures.)