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Last year, Bungie spoke briefly with
Todd McFarlane of the eponymous McFarlane Toys about his upcoming
line of figures set in Halo 3's universe. Now that the figures
are out, Bungie takes us into more detail about the action
figures and how they came to be.
Creating an Acition Figure
Program
STEP 1:
Taking inventory of the visual and creative aspects of a given
license (see above).
STEP 2:
Building a program.
This is where we take what we know
and put together a plan that will allow for the best possible
introduction of the product to consumers, along with keeping
an eye on maintaining interest among fans and casual consumers
for the long haul, and allowing for the eventual expansion
of the products offered to other action figure categories.
Usually this is were we put together
a rough lineup of figures for the first few series, and then
run it past the licensor for any comments or concerns they
may have. This is also the time where we begin asking for
any specific assets that will allow us to better re-create
the characters in question: reference imagery (including concepts,
full turnarounds, and in-game shots), digital assets, official
character histories, etc.
Once the lineups are selected and solidified,
and we have all relevant files and imagery in-hand, we get
to work on the fun part — the art.
STEP 3: Concepts
This step was a little less involved
than it would normally be, as we simply presented our list
of figures, along with some rough digital imagery, to Microsoft/Bungie,
and pointed out the places and ways we were going to include
articulation, and then got to work on Step Four…
STEP 4:
Sculpting
This is where we take the two-dimensional
imagery seen on the television screen and bring it into the
three-dimensional world. There is a lot of back-and-forth
during this stage of production, both between our Design Group
in New Jersey and between myself, and us (McFarlane Toys)
and the licensor (Microsoft/Bungie).
At each point during the sculpting
stage, each figure is reviewed and altered as needed to ensure
the best end product...
4.1: Sculpting (Digital)
Being that we were working with digital
assets, we started off by taking the 3-D files we were provided,
and tweaking them in the computer. From there, we simply print
out the rough starting point on a special printer that can
take that digital info and translate it directly into clay.
The “concept” image above is actually a pretty
good indication of where we start.
4.2: Sculpting (The “Rough”)
Usually the “rough” sculpting
stage is where we take a lump of clay and begin building the
very basic anatomy of the figure. The main focus at this point
is to perfect the pose and proportions.
With HALO, however, we had the luxury
of working from digital models. This allowed us to go right
into the computer to make the necessary adjustments, allowing
for proper proportions in relation to the joints need for
the level of articulation we were going for.
As you can see below, the rough “sculpt”
is fairly close to the initial digital model shown earlier,
with some additional detailing having been added, but still
a ways away from the its final form.
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