Kickstarter is always a gamble. Books don't usually get through shipping intact and arrive with broken corners, sometimes author/publisher messes something up and there's a page missing or duplicated. It looks like it's even more complicated with statues...
This spring British magazine 3dtotal made their second anatomical figure for artists and sculptors. Zbrush sculpt looked really nice on photos, so I backed it. Took some 5 months and here it was, a box with foam peanuts and 27 cm statue inside.
I don't know do I need to add something to the photos I took of the figure. I've made silicone moulds myself, so I know of the many problems of moulding and duplicating. This statue has all the defects bad casting could have - flashing, bad alignment of the moud sides, very careless clean-up. Hell, the fingertips are chopped off!!! This is not normal!
At first I thought I shoud clean it up, use some putty, sanding, primer and maybe even paint to fix it. But, after examining the misalignments and all the defects, it's just way too much work, most likely impossible. I can't slide back the moulded halves that don't fit.
3dtotal, to offer expensive statues of such a poor quality is disgrace.
I WANT MY MONEY BACK.
PS: I analyzed the figure and I'm pretty sure it's mould was made the fast and cheap way - as one silicone block, which was then cut open until the ears, so top part of the head is in the area where mould halves are connected. That's why the parting line is wobbly and doesn't even try to follow the anatomy to make it less noticable. Air vents are on the fingers, that's why tops of the fingers are cut off with them.
The moulds are missing the engineered-in synchro-elements, so they are out of place and don't fit together perfectly. There was probably a better master mould and several moulds made from master statues for 800+ retail copies. (Or just several cleaned-up 3D-printed masters for mould making, as they were surely damaged when cutting the moulds open.) All the moulds are different, so the quality of the retail figure is a lottery. But it is hard to believe that some of them are actually of better quality and can produce decent copies. So, I don't really believe that there's a option to get a better statuette, money back is the only option. Sad, actually.
To be continued...
