Anyone who has ever played with action figures has had the thought. What would it be like to be as small as the figures and roam around with them in their vehicles, or what if they were as large as life and roamed around with us? Daniel Picard enjoyed collecting the high-end, Sideshow Collectibles 12-inch “statue” figures. He was also a photographer. So Picard blended them together and posted them online. He then sent some of his photos to Sideshow Collectibles’ management and the result is Figure Fantasy: The Pop Culture Photography of Daniel Picard, a hardcover collection of his creations, published by Insight Editions.
What makes Picard’s photographs work is the “magic” of lining up light and shadow so that his photographs of real world situations blend seamlessly with spliced-in images of 12-inch figures. The Sideshow Collectibles figures are exclusively used in this collection–these are the figures that sell for hundreds of dollars because of their highly detailed production quality. (Sideshow made the borg.com Best of 2016 list here last year, and we discussed the Star Wars line last year here). So this line of figures was ideal for Picard’s project.
The situations Picard selects, the clever humor, the juxtaposition of the fantastical and the mundane, all combine to make Picard’s work stand out from the standard attempts at similar combinations you might find on the Internet.
Our borgBest of 2016 list continues today with the Best in Print and a bonus wrap-up of other year’s bests. If you missed it, check out our review of the Top Picks and Best Movies of 2016 here, the Kick-Ass Heroines of 2016here, and the Best in Televisionhere.
Without further ado, this year’s Best in Print:
Best Comic Book Series – Old Man Logan (Marvel). With just enough backstory from prior series focused on the future world version of Logan/Wolverine, writer Jeff Lemire and artist Andrea Sorrentino took us through the struggle of the superhero that survived all his contemporaries, only to be plunged into a parallel world where everything is familiar but nothing is the same.
Best Graphic Novel – Wonder Woman: The True Amazon, Jill Thompson (DC Comics). Writer/artist Jill Thompson is probably the best creator in comics today. Her origin story of Wonder Woman is vibrant, and she presents a flawed, complex, and ultimately strong and fearless heroine. The best Wonder Woman book we’ve ever read.
Best Comic Book Limited Series/Best Crossover Comic Book Series – Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (DC Comics/IDW). James Tynion IV and Freddie Williams II pulled together an impossible team-up of characters that ended up working great together. An action-packed, nostalgic fun trip.
Best Comic Book Writing – Matt Kindt, Dept.H (Dark Horse). Kindt pulls together an incredibly nostalgic assemblage of the best action concepts: classic science fiction of the H.G. Wells variety, G.I. Joe Adventure Team-inspired characters, and a fun character study and whodunit that will have you searching out your old game of Sub Search. We just hope he makes a prequel at some point so we get to see a similar quest with an old fashioned copper-helmeted deep sea diver. A fun read month after month and the best writing comics have to offer.
After the cut we continue with the best in comics, books, and more from 2016:
If you haven’t seen the Sideshow Collectibles line-up of premium 1:6 scale figures, then the below gallery is for you. In the past twelve months Sideshow Collectibles and its Hot Toys brand has released some of the best sculpted figures we’ve ever seen for the Star Wars franchise, beginning with a superb line of Star Wars: The Force Awakens figures. In the past month we’ve seen even more great figures previewed for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
These movie-accurate collectible figures are specially crafted for the new films, featuring new body designs and armor, highly polished helmets and accessories, sophisticated tailoring of costumes with detailed textures, premium accessories like utility belts with LED lights, lightsaber hilts, character-specific weaponry and poseable add-on hands, and themed figure stands. And the human figures reflect the actors’ likenesses quite well.
These previews are a great way to get a first look at the varieties of Stormtroopers coming soon in Rogue One. Rogue One takes place just before the original Star Wars, so it’s interesting Disney/Lucasfilm included so many new Stormtrooper designs. Does it add to the film (Star Wars has always been about new, out-of-this-world characters) or is it because fans are going to be wanting to collect them all?
It doesn’t matter because they turned out great. We’ll see updated Stormtroopers and TIE Fighter Pilots, plus the new Shoretroopers and Death Troopers. Check out all these figures from Rogue One and The Force Awakens:
You’ll be hard-pressed to find another character like Boba Fett. As merely one among innumerable creations of George Lucas, his own Man with No Name cultivated his own mystique and fans elevated him to cult status. Those who grew up with Star Wars as I did first met Boba Fett on the front cover of an action figure package, an image of a freebie toy you could mail in to receive for saving the little proofs of purchase off the back of the packages. If you ordered early, like the kid up my street did, you might get not only one but two rocket firing action figures and you could sit across from each other and fire away. The most fun action figure ever made, Kenner quickly decided to glue in the rocket for safety concerns.
Boba also appeared on a holiday Star Wars special many prefer to forget (not me). One of several of Lucas’s BF characters (like Bob Falfa in American Graffiti and Bib Fortuna in Return of the Jedi), there is no reason kids should have flocked to him like we did. His appearance in The Empire Strikes Back was for mere minutes of film. He was left to a cruddy death scene in Return of the Jedi, one of the reasons I saw Return of the Jedi in the theater once vs. having seen Star Wars in its original theater run ten times.
Boba Fett was so popular Lucas brought his image and armor back in his prequels in the form of his father, Jango Fett, even establishing that every Stormtrooper in the Empire was a clone of his father, and the early clone troopers became an early in-universe variant of Boba’s Mandalorian armor. This wouldn’t have happened but for this unique status fans brought to this character. Regardless of why we like him and think he is the epitome of all things cool, it’s hard to deny his incredible worn and damaged armor is a key part of his appeal. Created by Joe Johnston it stands out among the best creations of any sci-fi character in any franchise.
So it is a superb pick for the subject of this year’s big charity event at Star Wars Celebration VI. Working with the Make a Wish Foundation, the As You Wish Helmet Project is a charity event that invites designers and other artists to take a plain vanilla Boba Fett or Clone Trooper helmet, supplied by an entrepreneurial costume creation house called The Dented Helmet, and turn the helmets into something unique.
More than 40 artists have signed up and are providing the finishing touches on their creations this week. The final results will be displayed in the Dented Helmet booth at Star Wars Celebration VI beginning this Thursday, August 23, 2012 to Sunday, August 26, 2012, in Orlando, Florida. After the Celebration is over, the Make-A-Wish Foundation will auction off all of the helmets on eBay, with 100% of the proceeds going to the charity.
Although it’s not a contest, you can’t help but recognize how the artists put all their passion into these creations, which are being previewed as they are finished on Facebook. And with that, we’ve included several helmets above that will hopefully fetch some good bids for a good cause, including one that was re-created by original designer Johnston, shown above at the top of this article. My favorite is the creation of my friend Tom Spina, who provided a stunning, inspired mash-up of the original Total Recall and our favorite bounty hunter, complete with life-like Arnold Schwarzenegger life-mask. Like Spina’s creations in this year’s Super Bowl ad where he re-created the famous Star Wars cantina scene, here again he went all out and the result is as cool as Fett himself.
Mark your calendar for this auction. It’s not every day that a Joe Johnston Boba Fett helmet is available to the public and even though it’s not screen-used, you know you want one. With creations from Spina, WETA Workshop, ANOVOS, Sideshow Collectibles and dozens of other artists, this event will be sure to turn heads. Check out the links above for images of other inspired works of sci-fi art.
