Heavy statuettes revealed

eyefork

L3: Member
Oct 27, 2008
130
186
Isn't the material quite expensive? And they're all hand painted. For example scout is going to be a fair bit cheaper than the Heavy.

Yeah, the materials and printing are expensive, as well as the hand assembly and painting. I like how people assume the employees are underpaid simply because they're Asian. Oh yeah, and that's totally a sweatshop :rolleyes:
 

YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
7,135
6,056
They posted some more pictures of semi-painted statues on facebook last week and I pinged Arsenio as requested about my statue and apparently they're closer to shipping than I thought:
statueprogress.JPG

(email is from the 7th, I'm slow at posting)
 

Hawk

L7: Fancy Member
Dec 3, 2007
419
213
Thanks for the update, YM!

I'm actually pretty excited to get my statue.
 

Hawk

L7: Fancy Member
Dec 3, 2007
419
213
Sorry to bump an old post again, but has anybody received or been charged for their Heavy statue? I've had neither. The website said it would be available Q4 2010, which has passed, so I'm curious about what's going on.
 

WastedMeerkat

L3: Member
Aug 15, 2009
144
142
Sorry to bump an old post again, but has anybody received or been charged for their Heavy statue? I've had neither. The website said it would be available Q4 2010, which has passed, so I'm curious about what's going on.

Valve time is infectious.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
7,135
6,056
Sorry to bump an old post again, but has anybody received or been charged for their Heavy statue? I've had neither. The website said it would be available Q4 2010, which has passed, so I'm curious about what's going on.

Follow their facebook thing, you'll get regular updates. (by that I mean roughly once a month)


They're currently in quality control and will ship in ~3 weeks. Then you've got to wait at least another 3 weeks for their big ol' boat (the one you can see in granary) to get to your country, then another week for it to actually get to you.

The answer I got about if the staff ones were in this bunch was a little vague, but I believe they are. So I won't have to wait any longer for mine.

As for being charged, you'll get charged as soon as they actually ship, so make sure that money is in your account!

167952_484073645027_153758185027_6101799_6007985_n.jpg
 

Ravidge

Grand Vizier
aa
May 14, 2008
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Red heavy spotted.
 

Mariner

L2: Junior Member
Jan 16, 2011
59
20
The sad thing is that, at least in my experience, Asian laborers are capable of exquisite craftsmanship.

My mother ordered a porcelain teacup and lid (now discontinued) from the Republic of Tea. This thing felt like it was made of glass because it was less than 1/8" thick, and featured an exquisite raised dragon and flower motif, all hand glazed and immaculately ivory white. Shipped from and made in China, packed in recycled perforated-cardboard, and broken by us in about two weeks by dropping the thing from 5 feet off the floor. :blushing:

The funny thing is, although it was being discontinued, it was still incredibly cheap, especially for how well it was made. When ever companies use outsourced labor to create poorly made products, it's not always the fault of the workers. It's simply what the company tells them to make.


As for the proportion problems and the idea of using 3D printers, from what I understand, it's a matter of scale and material. Even large objects often require hand-polishing and remolding depending on how fine the base material's grain is.

Also, if you directly imported the in-game geometry into the printer, it would look terrible, and no matter how you sand it, it would never look like the normal mapped and smoothing grouped model as rendered through the engine. I'm sure Valve has the original, high-poly reference mesh that they took normal maps from, but it's possible that it's proportions differ quite a bit from the game model due to poly reduction.

In the end, a traditional sculptor may actually be more effective at translating the in-game appearance of the character models than a direct printing, though obviously you still have the issue of quality control and proportions, the latter of which we might not have an accurate gauge of due to lens distortion.
 

Hawk

L7: Fancy Member
Dec 3, 2007
419
213
They're currently in quality control and will ship in ~3 weeks. Then you've got to wait at least another 3 weeks for their big ol' boat (the one you can see in granary) to get to your country, then another week for it to actually get to you.

Thanks for this update. I didn't realize they had a facebook page. I'm definitely looking forward to when my Heavy finally arrives.