Quote:
Originally Posted by SashaMitchell
It's logistics. You can't send 500+ prints to an artist (a profession notorious for being flaky and unreliable), wait for them to sign all 500+ by hand, then mail them back to Sideshow for distribution. If that were the case, the prints would take years to come out and cost a ton more.
The mechanical signature really isn't as big of a deal as people make it out to be. The image itself is a reproduction, who gives a crap about the signature at that point? This isn't an original Picasso. Just buy it if you enjoy the image and can appreciate it as artwork.
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Sorry, but this post just isn't true at all. You can very easily send prints to an artist for them to be signed. And no, it wouldn't cost a fortune. It would cost around $300 to have a high end hard sided shipping case designed for shipping prints and each case could accomodate up to 200 prints per case. I even sent Sideshow the information for my contact over at Wellington Trunk out in Chicago, in case they decided they wanted to go that route as Wellington make some of the nicest custom hard sided shipping cases in the entire market. Thats the company I used to build all my lighting cases and thier practically indestructible. So Sideshow could have 2-3 cases designed for roughly $600-$900, which is a drop in the bucket given the overall profits margins they are seeing on thse prints.
And it would not cost a ton of money shipping wise. They could ship them to the artist and have them shipped back for roughly an additional $2-4 dollars per print, which I guarantee most people would be more than willing to pay in order to get a real signature over a fake siganture. In all honesty, these prints are overpriced anyways given the fact that they are unsigned and given the massive profit margins Sideshow is seeing with these prints, they could very easily just eat the shipping cost and they would still be seeing insane profit margins. In fact, given the fact that Sideshow would actually see a significant rise in sales/profits if they decided to go with real signatures and just a fraction of that rise is profits would more than cover all shipping costs.....well, Sideshow would actually see a legitmate rise in profits even after covering all of the shipping costs, if they went with real signtures.
And the idea that the high end professional artists creating these prints are somehow flakey and unreliable is nothing short of a fallacy. These artists are professionals and they understand full well how important it is to get things done on schedule and they also understand how important a reputation is in the market as a whole. If your reputation is that of being a flakey artist that never gets things done on time....well, they would not only lose a lot of respect, but also a lot of potential jobs as well. I don't buy for a second that the artists that Sideshow is dealing with in regards to thir Premium Print Line are flakey, unreliable, and irresponsible artists that would just toss the shipping cases with the prints into a corner and wait until they felt like it before actually getting around to signing them and shipping them back to Sideshow. Thats nothing but unsubstantiated speculation, one that you have absolutely no proof of. If what your saying was even remotely true, we would be seeing delayed comic releases on a regular basis, due to the fact that the artists doing the covers, or even the interiors, are flakey and irresponsible and just ignore deadlines and instead get around to doing the covers or interiors when they actuallly feel like it.
These artists are professional artists at the very high end of the market and Sideshow is an important client, one that can lead to a lot more work in the future. High end comic artists aren't a bunch of irresponsible flakes running around doing whatever they want when they want. This entire idea is just a fallacy. That is simply not the way highly respected high end professional artists operate. I have no idea who or what gave you this idea, but that is not the reality of the situation at all.
And while you may not think a fake signature is a big deal, that doesn't mean its not a big deal to everyone else. Thats just your subjective opinion on the matter and your in the minority in a BIG way with such an opinion. As I told Sideshow, go to any print collecting forum or even Statue Forum or Sideshow Freaks and do a poll in regards to whether people want a real signature or fake signature on limited edition prints and I guarantee you will see at least 90%+ in favor of real signatures. And the fact that the image is a reproduction is completely irrelevant. There are limited edition prints out there worth thousands of dollars and yes, a real signature on a limited edition print is HUGELY important. The idea that a piece of art has to be an original or a Picasso to be valuable or for a real signture to be important is nothing short of ridiculous. Personally, I would never buy a limited edition print that had a fake signature, especially at these inflated prices. Having a real signature is one of the single most important aspects of limited edition prints in general. Anyone who suggests otherwsie clearly doesnt understand the limited edition print market very well at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SashaMitchell
I personally agree that $50 and no signature, but numbered, prints are the best way to go. But I can't blame SS for pricing these things at $90 if that's what people are willing to pay. No company wants to leave money on the table. If enough people saw this as an issue, they could protest with their wallet, but they don't. If you look at this through the lens of economics, you'll see that it's collectors who are pricing these things too high, not Sideshow.
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Clearly you haven't been following Sideshow's Premium Print line very long or you just have a very short memory. People have been protesting with thier wallets as Sideshow's edition sizes fell by as much as 75% after people found out about the fake signatures. They went from 600-750 all the way down to 100-200. Given, the edition sizes have slowely been rising back up a bit, but thier edition sizes are still down roughly 50% from where they were before this whole signature issue hit the fan. If what your saying were true, Sideshow edition sizes would still be at 600-750+, which again is the level they were at before this whole issue went public. So again, people are voting with thier wallets and its cost Sideshow a loss of at least 50% in sales thus far, which easily comes out to be around $20,000-$25,000+ per print up to this point. So to say people aren't voting with thier wallets is just yet just another fallacy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PureInvasion
Well I'm not an art pro (should probably ask OrangeCrush as long as he doesn't mention the auto-signatures  )... |
