[Raine24]

Maybe I'm sensitive due to the new Cobra B.A.T.s revealing to me that nobody knows how to spell "arctic" (or knows what a red line under the word means when you're typing) but it's not cel shading, folks, it's just shading. The "cel" in cel shading refers to traditional animation cels and the attempt to replicate the look, while this is emulating the look of heavily inked comic book shadows.

I don't like to be pedantic but this is a pretty different approach than, say, ML's toon characters, and I think the distinction between the two is why SDCC Batman is a "like it or leave it" result and the Legends figures are all looking like poo with people wondering how easy it'd be to take the paint off.

Anyway, I hope the SDCC Bats isn't too hard to get if the greys are indeed darker, because the near-white of mainline Knightfall Bats had me write it off entirely, same way that the bright blues on AzBats has kept me from being miffed about never scoring him. I am a painter and have no problem fixing up details, but large expanses of color should be intrinsic wherever possible to preserve functionality and that toy "look" that I dig so much.

Quote:

Originally Posted by StudioOneTwelve

Wondering when the McFarlane DC Multiverse bubble will pop more and more lately

I feel like we live in alt universes. This is one of the best-selling figure lines, and after the multi-year extension, DC is even giving McFarlane's offerings a spot directly in the DC booth. Production keeps ramping up yet we still get constant sellouts and everybody & their mom wants exclusive figures.

That could totally be the beginning of a story where somebody gets too big and everything crashes and burns overnight, but as the body of tooling available for character looks grows (even if we don't agree on how it's used) we've seen offerings expand to use it as much as possible, a very strong move toward driving down production costs and ensuring long-term profitability. This isn't a Funko Pop thing where costs only go down due to sheer volume, McF's tooling amortization game keeps getting better and from the outside this all looks sustainable.

They could stop making wholly new figures tomorrow and still be able to carry on for a couple of years, Mattel-/Hasbro-style. No toyline lasts forever (except Barbie) but unless he decides to just call it quits due to licensing costs, this line is going to have one of those long, slow, multi-year deaths, not a quick, messy death.