How Its Done
By Oleg Naumov
Howdy! As you don’t know I’m a fan of “Futurama” — a great cartoon sci-fi situation comedy show. It was created by Matt Groening, the very same guy who created “The Simpsons”.
As you might know, “McFarlane” is a great company, became famous for their high quality action figures. But unfortunately they don’t think that “Futurama” is as good as “The Simpsons”, that’s why they don’t bother creating “Futurama” figures. What a shame I gotta say!
Of course there’s a lot of other manufactures, but… wait let’s compare! Here are the main characters from both of the shows, as portrayed by Matt himself:
Bender and Homer as they appear in the show
And what we got in the market today? Check this figures, first created by Toynami and second created by McFarlane:
Bender and Homer action figures.
I bet you can see the difference in quality without even enlarging the picture! Damn, there isn’t a slight doubt that McFarlane’s figure is so much better. I boldly can mark Bender’s figure as “Made in China”, while Homer’s figure is definitely was “Made in USA” (though it was made in China too).
I googled with hope to find something that looks more like Bender, but they all suck even harder!
“Fine, I’m gonna make my own disco club! With blackjack…and hookers…!” — Bender Rodriguez.
I decided to create a 3D model of Bender, making it look “McFarlane style“. Now peep it!
At first, I came up with this:
As you can see, it’s just a model, with default poor lightning. As a character, Bender has some things that are always associated with him: Cuban cigar and a bottle of beer. As a bonus I decided to create large “Futurama” logo attached to the base.
But still, the render looks ugly. Let’s add some texture and materials to our figure!
Now is the sweet part. Let’s turn on a global illumination and put our figure in a 3d studio with advanced lightning.
The render looks much better now, but the figure is “low poly” — we need to smooth our objects. I played with lightning a bit more, trying to make our image look as McFarlane’s.
By the way the texture on the bottle is the same as in the show. Which one are you gonna buy?
3D Bender and Bender action figures.
3D Bender and Homer action figures.
I hope someday McFarlane will release “Futurama” figures, and I wish to other manufactures will create more detailed and accurate figures.
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See the images from this post in higher resolution:
