Are Hot Toys hand or machine painted?

Gruson · 07-26-2011, 11:59 PM

I was looking at the detail on the head and face of the Arnold Terminator 1 T-800.

Are these hand painted or does a machine do parts of them? The detail and precision of the eyes for example just look too good to be hand painted. Either way is fine by me but I am curious.

Just wondering because I have no idea how anyone could paint like this....I have even paid pros and they could not get this amount of detail in a piece so small.

Thanks.

Xenomorph79 · 07-31-2011, 08:44 AM

Prob machine... no way in hell these are all done by hand.

derekrodneysim · 07-31-2011, 08:51 AM

Doubt it's machine. To make a machine to do that, if even possible, will cost a ton of money. I don't think they'd make a machine just to do a single run. Just my two cents.

Chinese artists can be as precise as you want. Just a case of you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

theflash03 · 02-20-2012, 06:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by derekrodneysim

Doubt it's machine. To make a machine to do that, if even possible, will cost a ton of money. I don't think they'd make a machine just to do a single run. Just my two cents.

Chinese artists can be as precise as you want. Just a case of you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

Have you noticed the price tag on most of the figures from Hot Toys? A machine to do that would have been paid for already.

But you are probably right that they are done by a person. China has more people and potentially artists who can do this than the US has in the all of it's population.

demonhunter · 02-20-2012, 10:24 AM

I have yet to see a machine that can paint the realistic portraits on the HT figures.

The machines /robots can be used to paint simple parts, like the base color of the torso, armour etc, and maybe some minor simplistic details for some parts.

But no way, a robot can paint the faces.

Humans are still in the loop and are needed to do the final touch ups.

PureInvasion · 02-20-2012, 10:31 AM

I think a while back I saw a screenshot taken of a guy painting the new Jack Sparrow portrait. He had a whole case of the heads on his desk

riteguytu · 02-20-2012, 12:49 PM

A few pics. Scroll down:

http://blog.naver.com/kojun0422/140066119520

TX_Boy_210 · 02-20-2012, 01:11 PM

Man to be that talented at least their skills are not going to waist

joy_division · 02-20-2012, 07:49 PM

I would think a machine does the main paints and then humans finish off the details

gol · 02-26-2012, 03:05 PM

They have to be machine painted or at least assisted. Could be made through masks as well, but just consider that
-they all look identical
-they're MUCH better than any hand-painted resin out there
-they often provide an alternate face and several hands with great detail as well. If these were hand-painted, I can't imagine the extra costs involved for just extra parts.

We're in the era of 3D printing and I wouldn't be surprised if all of them were sculpted & painted on a computer first.

>>>To make a machine to do that, if even possible, will cost a ton of money

but it's not just Hot Toys that made an incredible jump in quality, it's all manufacturers, at the same time.
IMHO it can only mean one thing: new tooling appeared, and everyone started to use it.