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[kradeelav]

here’s the post where I show off one of the major bucket-list projects of this year, getting a Zihark figurine made!  :D



 

Without getting too sentimental, FE9/10’s been a major influence on me for well over a decade now - and while I’ve enjoyed getting the chance to buy more merch/artbooks/cipher cards/etc of Tellius lately, I’ve always wanted to go a step further and actually have a figurine of one of the characters (especially this guy, as my favorites always lean on the side of ‘rad side character that has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the spotlight lol’). I had a Moment™ earlier this year where I realized there was actually nothing, y'know, stopping me - and so, this Fuck-It-I’m-Getting-A-Goddamn-Zihark-Figurine project was born.

If you’re interested in the a-to-z process of how I got this made (especially if you’re interested in your own figurine and don’t know where to start) - hit the read-more!  Also happy to answer questions/comments. :)

Before even beginning the research phase, I had several requirements on my list: that’d it’d be under a set budget, that it’d be both modeled and painted (some folks only do one), and that it’d have a high level of quality/detail/movement (as a professional designer/artist, this was a big one, and thankfully easy to filter.)  

While the figurine community wasn’t a complete unknown to me (I vaguely knew the difference between resin kits vs totally custom builds/sculptures vs commercial builds a la the Overwatch Reaper statue) - there was still a good week or two where I familiarized myself with figurine subreddits, sites, picking images that met my quality standards and would be handy reference images for fabric/motion/specific textures.  As someone who’s done a fair number of commissions, you can never have too many. ;____;  

I eventually made this reference sheet for quotes -

- with enough detail about the character and style (and complexity of both) so people could see where it was going.  Lots of emphasis on movement, on a vaguely-westernized-anime style (since a lot of the custom build community are more used to seeing western games/movie characters*).  

* sidenote - there were some very interesting cultural patterns about the figurine community … honestly you can’t really say it’s “one” community as there were distinct differences of what eastern vs western builds were - on the western side, you had overly exaggerated/masculine superhero and horror-monster builds on one end, and T&A fanservicy poses of ladies on the other end - still somewhat more tame than I expected, tbh.  On the eastern side, you had your vanilla anime builds with occasional shouen protagonist (with the shockingly rare bishie fanservice one every now and then; ‘otome figure’ is your keyword for those), but hands down it was ….. yep, your legion of oft-reknown hentai/eechi custom builds of girls (s i i g h). (Amusingly I personally thought the craftsmanship of the eechi builds were the best of all four quadrants - it almost felt like the western ones were built for mass appeal (cue more generic protagonists), and the eastern ones were more for the dedicated fan who didn’t mind spending wads of cash on their waifu favorites?   calling myself out here like whoa lmao)

tldr - kotobukiya’s ES line was a lifesaver as they were literally the only professional example of ~‘bishie anime dudes that tastefully appeal to ladies  but also stuff you wouldn’t mind your grandma seeing”~ that I could find which was … sort of depressing, haha. 

Anyway, I contacted two artists (both western, as they also tended to do more true-full-custom builds more) - Sean Kyle Studios and joker-laugh.  The latte’s schedule was booked, and it happens that Sean had an open slot (and the quote worked for both of us), so it was an easy choice.  Also picked Sean after looking through his dA gallery namely for this piece -

- felt like he had an unusually strong eye for fabric folds/wrinkles and different textures, a good hand for anatomy/muscle-structure, and all around fun idea of how to exaggerate.

Won’t name exact prices publicly (asks are OK), but for this kind of all-custom build/detail, you’re definitely looking at a low-four digit number.  Sean was amazingly professional during the whole process, and I’d definitely endorse him if you’re looking for something like this - he’s still open for one-off commissions as of this post.

We talked about a few of the details, I sent over the first third of the payment,  and he started working on the head, and then sent over few quick roughed out poses~

Some bits were working for me, some weren’t (was thinking about where it was going to be placed; likely a small bookshelf cube so nothing terribly exaggerated in any one angle), so I drew the picture here to nudge it in two specific directions  - defensive and a more aggressive posture.  (Also note the suggested dynamism with the arrows - most of the successful figurines, I’ve found, always have a line of motion.)

Ultimately made the final call to go with the defensive one as I felt it fit him as a character a bit more, and it was easier from a structural perspective too.  Sean was amazingly fast at the actual build process - we both got distracted about halfway through with various IRL fires, but he took less than a month to go from the wireframe to this -

:D !!!

After that it was pretty quick - another payment, painting done, talking about assembly/shipping, and then the final payment right before he shipped it over here.  He boxed it up in a few parts which definitely helped with durability - it was just a matter of getting modeling glue to slap those together into the finished piece ~

Overall - no regrets, had a lot of fun with the whole process (having previous commission experience helped; Sean actually mentioned how that was helpful on his end too) - and damn, it is pretty awesome to see a tangible reminder of those games on my shelf.  :] Even disregarding my fondness for Zihark as a character and his whole arc, I’ve always loved FE9/10′s character design - it’s realistic for a JRPG, truly tailor-made to personalities and specialties, and there’s a whooooooole load of neato color symbolism if you read a little into it.

… and yes, of course, my inner fangirl is still squee’ing quite a bit, I won’t lie.  :P 

Comments

[meibatsu]

Wow!

You actually got your own Zihark sculpt made? That is DEDICATION!

[kradeelav]

>:3 so worth it, the artist did such a good job too ~