Sideswipe29 wrote:So let me get this straight. You wouldn't do a gallery of an older toy until it's relevant again because as you say it's an "older" gallery?
There's a lot of factors involved. Everything from relevancy, current workload, condition of vintage figures, trends in the comics, overall character's popularity, etc. I've been working on these galleries for 11 years. In the mid 2000s, I had a lot more freedom to do whatever galleries I wanted because there wasn't this massive onslaught of toys continuously coming out like there has been the past few years.
Older Transformers toys just don't get as much traffic as newer Transformers toys. I was bummed after I launched the galleries of Black Zarak and Grand Maximus a few years ago when I saw how poorly both galleries were performing initially. I thought those two galleries would generate all sorts of traffic due to the novelty and rarity of both items. While they are the end-all-be-all galleries of those two sets, they're just not good traffic generators. Black Zarak (July 2012) has 74,144 pageviews currently and Grand Maximus (October 2012) has 72,604 pageviews. By comparison, Evasion Mode Optimus Prime (which launched April 2014) has 249,116 pageviews.
I've owned every Hasbro Transformers toy (1984 to current) since 2007 and own a sizable portion of the European exclusives (only missing the Motorvators) and a very large collection of Takara exclusives and variants (minus a couple dozen Takara late G1 toys and and minus some regional variants prior to Henkei). If I had it my way, I'd do nothing but work on old Transformers galleries ... they're fun to do and a lot less work than the modern toys are due to their lack of poseability. But "work" comes first ... I have to work on what will generate traffic first, and then work fill in the gaps as time and relevancy allows.
Sideswipe29 wrote:So it's not so much that you couldn't do a gallery for the Protectobots because you always could have but you wanted to wait until they were relevant again so they could be a "new"gallery? So with that logic, why didn't you wait for all older G1 characters to become relevant and then make "new" galleries for them? Why have you bothered to hold out on a protectobot gallery and not other G1 stuff?
As I mentioned above, I've been working on the galleries for 11 years now. Due to less products being released prior to the live action movies, I used to have more time to work on older galleries. Since the movies, it's just been a matter of me finding time to work on older products which I usually try to squeeze in when those characters become relevant again.
Sometimes the relevancy is "self-created" such as in late 2013 when I had 4 complete G1 Reflectors and a really nice modern KO (the one with the new G1 box) to sell in the Seibertron.com Store on eBay. I took that time to do Reflector because I wanted to generate a little bit of interest in him first prior to posting those items for sale in the Seibertron.com Store and because I was excited about having 4 complete ones to sell.
Last summer, I photographed the G1 Powermasters after having two points of relevancy: comparison photos of Generations Doubledealer with vintage G1 Doubledealer and doing the gallery of Fire Guts God Ginrai because of BotCon Ginrai which came out last summer.
Sideswipe29 wrote:Sorry for all the questions. And I in no way mean to criticize you because your galleries are always incredible and it's smart to wait until characters are relevant again. I'm just trying to figure out why you waited to do the protectobots and not wait on others.
These are great questions ... happy to answer any of them. Bottom line is this: there's no black and white rule that I follow. I focus on new/current products first because that is what's most relevant and will generate the most traffic. I work on vintage and other older Transformers products that haven't been photographed as time allows. I generally try to do older figures that are relevant first and then work my way through the ones I want to as time allows.
The same thing applies to when I don't have time to photograph a toy the first time it is released. I'll usually wait until a repaint comes out to get it the 2nd time around and launch both of those galleries at the same time. Million Publishing Artfire is a good example. I really need to do his gallery, but if I'm going to do his gallery at this point, I should do United Grapple, GDO Hot Spot, and 2014 Protectobot Hot Spot's galleries. It's easier to do all of a mold's galleries at one time then it is to do them one-at-a-time.
Hope this all makes sense. If you have more questions, please let me know.