I’ve just been informed of a great new article by Zach Oat at Topless Robot where he illustrates how off-the-mark some Star Wars toys’ actors likenesses have been. They’re so far off, in fact, they actually look just like completely different celebrities.
They’re pretty funny. Here’s a small sampling (be sure to read the article if you want to see them all).
Slave Leia as Christian Bale
Malakili as Denholm Elliot
It’d be great if these were intentional, but it looks like the sculptors need to find another day job.
I was under the impression that modern figures like these underwent a computer process where the actor’s face is laser scanned and then a machine uses the coordinates to create the sculpt. Stereo-lithography, I think they call it. Although I understand right, sculptors still touch-up the computer’s initial product. So I wonder who’s more at fault?
I think some modern figures do use that scanning technology, but these actors faces were most likely not scanned. I say this, because these toys came around 15+ years after the original movies. I doubt they’d use the “current state” of an actor’s face. Plus, finding all the actors and flying them out to a scanning station for a star wars figure doesn’t seem feasible… but I’m sure George Lucas could afford it.
I think malakili looks more like stephen fry… http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=stephen+fry&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
HAHAHA
HAHAHaa so true
Funny, I was just glancing at a Raider’s of the Lost Ark 3.75″ action figure at Wal-Mart yesterday and was struck by how much Indy looked like Robin Williams!
Indy Williams toy? I’ll have to check it out the next time I’m in the toy aisle. I haven’t really checked out the new Indy toys. Are they any good? Any cool monster-like toys in the set?
To the best of my knowledge, this is usually deliberate. The reason is that if the faces are different enough then they don’t have to deal with licensing the actors’ likenesses and associated issues/costs.