Seibertron wrote:Stormrider wrote:Mkall wrote:Stormrider wrote:I'm not very impressed with the headsculpts of Soundwave, Gigatron, or Metalhawk.
I like Gigatron's head. It's a nice reference to Last Stand of The Wreckers. I only wish that the body asthetics could match the head to give us a proper Overlord.
I completely agree that the face reminds me of the Last Stand of the Wreckers. And I am with you - Gigatron's face and body do not go well together. One is cartoonish, the other is movie.
This face is a terrible Transformers face. It's not what his face looks like in LSOTW. The overall shape of the head is, but the face itself is proportioned very poorly. To demonstrate my point, I put this montage together of various headshots of Overlord/Gigatron from the LSOTW comics, the BotCon prequel comic, Overlord's original box art, and the Invasion box set artwork. It's obvious that the LSOTW face/head was what they were going for, but the end product just fails miserably. Not sure if the oddly angled eyes are what's wrong, or the long nose, or the way-too-human lips (which look terrible on Nick Roche's artwork as well), or way too large of a space between the nose and the upper lip (the philtrum) ... but altogether the face is just proportioned poorly. Maybe it's because I'm an artist and I can clearly see that the facial proportions are incorrect that this face bothers me so much. I see what they were trying to do, it just didn't work out well. They should've stuck with a traditional Transformer face.
Sorry, but IMO that montage (to me) validates my opinion of the head. They were going for a Roche-inspired head, and they mentioned that at the TCC panel IIRC, and they got all the elements more or less accurate: chin, lips nose, helmet. Given what they were aiming for I'd say they did a decent job of it. Now did they get a good homage to the Original Overlord? I think you and I can agree they didn't.
I don't mind, however, given that more and more my collection appears to be shifting towards IDW-styled figures; with Perceptor's sniper rifle and Kup's Cygar. Thus I think I'm just more accepting of it because of it.
I think the head's look could be improved with a better application of paint on the eyes. In your gallery, and my figure, the paint-apps are sloppy and there appear to be a slant-eyed look that could bely a more angry or determined visage which may or may not work well with the figure's face. We'll never know though.
TL;TR - I don't mind the head, you do mind the head; let's agree to disagree.
EDIT: In looking for pictures of G1 Overlord, there aren't many out there that I could find where the head is shown clearly aside from
tfu.info's page. It could be the flash playing off the head, but I think there's lips on it as well. Thus until I'm proven wrong, I thus believe this to be a decent homage to the original Overlord, but not as good as it was to Nick Roche's