Dark Horse Comics and laser-mavens Gentle Giant have announced an agreement for Dark Horse to act as the exclusive sales agent for Gentle Giant's consumer products, including a series of licensed Star Wars mini-busts and a Green Goblin mini-bust from the Spider-Man movie.  Gentle Giant has been the industry leader in the cutting edge technology of three-dimensional scanning that has led to an enormous increase in the quality of likenesses for sculptures and action figures based on movie actors and sports stars.  Gentle Giant provided the sculpts for the Dark Horse Planet of the Apes statues and busts last year.  Now Gentle Giant is producing merchandise under its own name, and Dark Horse Comics will be handling the sales and marketing.

 

In April, Dark Horse will be soliciting for a Green Goblin Bronze Statue, which Gentle Giant created from scans of actor Willem Dafoe who played the role in the upcoming Spider-Man movie.  Also in April, the first four busts in the Star Wars series--Mace Windu, Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Padme Amidala--will be solicited in limited editions of 2,500 pieces each, with a release date of June 5, 2002.  The second group, set for an early August release, will include Jango Fett, Zam Wesell, and Count Dooku. 

 

Mace Windu Bust

All of these figures are the result of a rigorous process that involves a session with the actor posing as their heads and bodies are scanned by sophisticated equipment that creates three-dimensional data that is then outputted into a solid buildup that reflects the precise geometry of their features and physique, at which point traditional sculpting and painting methods are used to create a finished piece that is extremely realistic.  Gentle Giant also scans props and costumes in order to insure that the accessories are every bit as realistic as the characters themselves.

 

For Gentle Giant the creation of merchandise under their own name takes the company from the obscurity of its crucial behind-the-scenes role to the forefront in the creation of actual merchandise that will be released under its own name.  Other key players in the 'action figure' revolution of the past few years like the sculpting group Art Asylum have preceded Gentle Giant in the leap from hidden collaborator to manufacturer (see 'Art Asylum Goes Major').  For Dark Horse Comics this agreement reinforces its position as a key purveyor of Star Wars merchandise (the Dark Horse graphic novel adaptation of Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones debuts on April 24).