Kool Stuff [3]: Unfulfilled Nostalgia - Diamond Select Toys' Mortal Kombat Collectibles, Part 1
This post is part of Kool Stuff, a companion book to Long Live Mortal Kombat: Round 1 (now on Kickstarter!) that contains interviews I was unable to do before hitting Long Live MK’s deadline. Subscribe to Episodic Content to keep up with news on Long Live MK, and to follow along with Kool Stuff as new chapters are published.
The landscape of Mortal Kombat "kollectibles" is a spoil of riches. Fans can find elaborate action figures, busts, and statues of beloved characters, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. What I'd never thought about before going down the rabbit hole of toys, however, was that each manufacturer has a specialty, sometimes more than one.
Diamond Select Toys is a perfect example. They've licensed dozens of popular brands from Star Wars and Marvel to Cobra Kai and Mortal Kombat, and the types of products in each line exemplifies a quality-over-quantity approach. Mortal Kombat's line includes four dioramas and two busts, enough to satisfy collectors yet leave them pining for more.
Over the last few weeks, I've spoken with representatives from Diamond Select Toys to learn about the intersection between comics and collectibles, how the company chooses what types of collectibles to support in each line, and each product's multi-step process through design, sculpting, painting, and prototyping.
Part I: Broad Appeal
Every franchise starts somewhere. Mortal Kombat was born from John Tobias's and Ed Boon's shared desire to try their hands at crafting a martial arts game infused with lore and attention-grabbing spectacle. The more blood, guts, and intriguing lore, the more quarters the game would attract. Diamond Select Toys creates and distributes collectibles based on characters from some of the world's most popular movies, video games, and comic books. It's no surprise, then that the company has grabbed the attention of some of the most creative artists, writers, and marketer in the entertainment business.
ZACH OAT [Marketing Supervisor]
I was an art major in college and started working at ToyFare magazine. I was a copyeditor, and we reported on action figures and collectibles. We didn't cover a lot of Mortal Kombat stuff at the time; this was during most of the 2000s, and there wasn't a ton of MK stuff coming out at that time. I worked there for about eight years, and I got to know the people at Diamond Select Toys because they were very active during that era. They got started around the time I started at ToyFare in 1999.
I took a break from the toy industry for a few years, and when I came back, they were looking for a marketing supervisor. I applied because I'd been writing about toys and talking to people about toys, so I had a lot of experience. They took a chance on me, and I've been here for 10 years.
Before Diamond Select Toys, there was Diamond Comic Distributors, transporter of comics to retailers across North America. Also called DCD or simply Diamond, the company was founded in 1982 in Hunt Valley, Maryland. It started with comics, grew to support graphic novels, and soon added toys and other collectibles. As DCD signed distribution agreements with more publishers, it broadened its distribution from North America to international regions. Soon, DCD was distributing to thousands of retailers around the world.
By 1999, its catalog of toys aimed at adult collectors was deep enough for DCD to found Diamond Select Toys, or DST, an arm of the company dedicated to all things collectors.
ZACH OAT
Diamond Select Toys was tasked with creating toys that appealed to the specialty comic market. They started out making toys based on gaming properties and independent comic books, and eventually, they got the Marvel license. That was a real shot in the arm: We started the Marvel Select action figure line around 2002, and were making statues, action figures, busts, and even posters in the beginning. The company took off from there. It's since expanded to selling toys in Toys 'R' Us and Target. We were selling to Walgreens for a while; we sell to Hot Topic, Walmart sells our products, and, of course, the Disney Store. We have an exclusive agreement with the Disney Store, so they get a lot of exclusives from us.
So, we've expanded beyond comic shops, but we still sell to most of the comic shops in the world, and we still make products to appeal to core fan bases. Our core fans are gamers, comic readers, and those types of fans.
“Doing effects isn't easy. How do you sculpt fire?” -Salvador Gomes, sculptor
Rather than cast a wide net, Diamond Select Toys frontrunners Chuck Terceira and Robert Yee and their team of marketing pros such as Zach Oat carefully weigh what brands to bring into the DST fold.
ZACH OAT
A lot of it has to do with what's in the media. We recently started making Lord of the Rings action figures in the last year or so because interest in the license was surging due to the upcoming Amazon Prime show. There are certainly products we make that are entirely based on nostalgia. We have products coming up from the Disney Afternoon block, like Darkwing Duck and The Gargoyles. Those properties don't have a lot going on right now, but there is that wave of nostalgia for those '90s properties. We'll be doing products based on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. With Marvel, we're constantly trying to develop products based on the newest series and most popular characters.
We also started a Ninja Turtles line after a little bit of a break, and it's based on a very hot comic storyline right now. It's very hot in comic shops and specialty stores right now. Cobra Kai is doing well thanks to the great response to season four. Once the series made the shift to Netflix and season three got the green light, we started developing product for that, action figures and other products.
So, it's a mix of current media and unfulfilled nostalgia. There are properties that never had products, or didn't have many. We did collectibles for The Black Hole, the movie from 1979. We've done TRON because there weren't many great, classic TRON figures. We're also doing GI Joe right now, and there are lots of GI Joe products out there already--we'd done some in the past--but we were able to get new categories, including our PVC dioramas, which we did for Mortal Kombat; and our Minimates, our two-inch figures.
Pointing to pillars of popular culture such as Mortal Kombat and Star Wars and saying, "I want to work with those" is easy. The rub is in crafting the right approach to licensors, the people in charge of granting access to the license Diamond wants.
ZACH OAT
We put together a package of materials that would represent what we want to do with their license. We've been around for over 20 years, so we've worked with a lot of these companies before. Mortal Kombat is controlled by Warner Bros., and we've worked with them extensively. We used to make DC Comics products, and we're working with them on other properties. Getting them to sign on was probably not a huge deal in terms of the application process, but if we're going to a company for the first time, we like to show them what sort of projects we're interested in doing, present some sort of line plan for the types of products we want to offer and a rough timeframe.
Then we have to negotiate a guarantee. Sometimes licensors are flexible on that, and sometimes they're not. We have to figure out how much we'll have to make in order for it to be profitable: how many products to make, how many categories, and all that. It's really an audition process when you're working with a company we've never worked with before.
“As fans know, Scorpion and Sub-Zero were the same models in the first games, they were just different colors. I wanted to differentiate them.” -Joe Allard, designer
While Diamond's marketers considers what brands to aim for and how to attract licensors, they're also pondering what types of collectibles to make within that brand, or line. Casting a wide net is ideal, but not always feasible due to business concerns.
ZACH OAT
For most licenses, our ideal would be to become the master toy licensee and do whatever we want. Usually, though, the licenses we choose have some overlap with other companies. If another company is making action figures for a license, that licensor may let Diamond make figures as well, but if someone else is already doing that, that aspect is generally off limits. Statues, or gallery dioramas, are something we try to get for every license we do. Minimates are a lot of fun to do, and so are action figures, but for many licenses, action figures aren't an option.
We chose three characters for fans who have loved Karate Kid for almost 40 years. They're based on the characters from season one, and I believe we're going to expand the line to incorporate more Cobra Kai-specific characters. Those three guys have aged pretty well. They don't look that much older than they did in the '80s. With all our figures, there can be a certain smoothing of wrinkles that gives them more of a youthful appearance.
Our selections can be determined by height or articulation, for example. Those can be locked up by other companies, which can limit what we're able to do. We won't be making Ninja Turtles action figures anytime soon because action figures is a pretty locked-in category. We make Marvel action figures, but we're only allowed to sell them to certain places because Hasbro is a master toy licensee for Marvel, although we've been making Marvel action figures longer than Hasbro, because we started making them back when Toy Biz was the licensee and owner of Marvel.
We try to cover as many categories as possible. Getting a license for a single category rarely pays off, for lack of a better term. You want to have multiple income streams to make a license profitable. I can't think of any licenses we have right now that only have one type of product. Cobra Kai only has action figures right now, but we have other stuff planned. For Mortal Kombat, we started with busts, and then we did the PVC dioramas. We were exploring other categories for MK, but I'm not sure of their status. But having action figures is always great because there are very few properties that would make us say, "You know, we could sell a statue of that, not an action figure."
Then again, there are licenses where you'd say the opposite: "I could sell an action figure but I can't necessarily sell a resin statue," because those might go for around $150 to $200. More in a category is better, but it may also depend on how much a licensor is charging for a guarantee in that category. If they're looking for a certain amount of money for action figures, maybe that's something we wouldn't necessarily go for if we don't think we can meet that.
Mortal Kombat remains an attractive license for companies that specialize in collectibles. Since the mid-1990s, MK fans have been able to choose from a panoply of action figures, posters, films, and even more esoteric items such as POGs.
ZACH OAT
It's something different every day because Mortal Kombat is one of about 20 licenses we have. Our top two are probably Marvel and Star Wars, but Mortal Kombat is in the top 10. These rankings are balanced by the amount of output we have; it's not high because it's not one of our more focused-on licenses in terms of constantly developing new figures. We've been working on getting one piece, a diorama of Scorpion from MK11, released for well over a year. I'm not sure what the hold-up has been, but we finally got production samples, so it should be out within the next month. Pandemic delays have been a factor, as well.
Mortal Kombat is definitely a top-10 license for us, and we have a few categories.
Part II: Striking a Pose
Diamond Select Toys can make virtually any type of collectible. All they need is the right license and the right artists for each job. Those artists come from many countries and backgrounds.
JOE ALLARD [Designer]
I've been drawing since I was kid. A lot of the toys I played with, a lot of the cartoons I watched, they inspired me to want to do this. I had some family members who did some painting when I was young, and that probably had an influence on me. As far back as I can remember, I've loved to draw. As I got older, I realized I could make a living drawing, so I thought I should try that. I spent a lot of time in school drawing when I should have been taking notes and paying attention to what my teachers were saying. Drawing has always been my thing, and I've followed that passion all my life.
NELSON X ASENCIO [Designer]
I've been drawing since I was a kid. What attracted me to art was anime from the 1970s. I used to watch Battle of the Planets and these other cartoons, and I tried to come up with my own ideas. I didn't try to draw Marvel characters until later on as I grew older. I've been drawn to anime. In the '80s, you had things like Akira and Macross, which they would show at seven in the morning out here in Brooklyn. I'd sketch in school instead of doing my work, just little doodles on the sides of my notebooks.
I started collecting comics in the early '80s. Back then, there weren't a lot of comic stores around, so I'd get them from the newsstand with my dad. We discovered Forbidden Planet New York City, and that was like a gold mine. You had everything there: anime, comics, just everything. It was awesome going there as a kid. It was amazing too because they had Gatchaman action figures imported from Japan. Seeing these items was incredible. When I discovered comics, I was leaning toward specific artists. I loved Art Adams back then and still do; I'm happy he's still doing comics like covers for The Amazing Spider-Man. I was influenced by fantasy artists like Frank Frazetta; Hajime Sorayama, a Japanese artist. I kept doodling and haven't stopped.
SALVADOR GOMES [Sculptor]
I am an artist from Brazil, and almost as soon as I was born, I was doing something related to art. Drawing, painting, things like that. Here in Brazil, we don't have a good art school, so you teach yourself. You get your hands on supplies and just try things. You make a lot of mistakes, but you fix those mistakes, and you'll learn and develop processes.
When I was around 18 years old, I wanted a statue of a superhero. It was mostly superhero stuff. As a teenager, I collected Conan: The Barbarian comic books. I wanted a statue of the character for me, but no one in Brazil made that type of thing, so you had to import from overseas. It was so expensive. I wanted to buy a statue, but I realized the price was too high. It was a one-tenth-scale statue. I tried to do my own characters and made a statue for myself. People saw it and asked me, "Hey, would you be willing to make one for me?"
They wanted Marvel characters, mostly. People love that. I love the aesthetic of those characters and everything related to comic books, so I knew Marvel characters very well. Back then, I didn't know much about materials. I didn't have access to good materials, so I just used epoxy. I bought it at a hardware store. The thing about epoxy is once it hardens, it's very hard; it looks like a rock. You can paint over it and then give it to people without fear of it breaking or anything like that.
People paid me. This wasn't a full-time job; it was just a hobby, but I realized I could do it for a living. Now, here I am, working for toy and game companies and so on.
Diamond Select's artists have some overlap in their skill sets, but most are hired because they have made a name for themselves in certain areas of expertise.
JOE ALLARD
My first professional job was coloring comic books for Malibu and Marvel Comics back in the mid- to late-'90s. My first passion was comic books. I wanted to pencil comics, so through junior high and high school, that was my focus. I geared most of my work toward breaking into the comic book industry. Through high school and my early years in college, I would send samples to editors of my favorite comics, trying to get tips and guidance on what I could do to improve. While I was in college, I landed a job as a comics retailer called Brave New World; they were in the Santa Clarita Valley here in Southern California. That was a great place to work. I got to absorb all the comics all day long, and they'd have signings where comic artists would come in and show off their art. I showed them some of my artwork and got mentoring from them.
In the mid-'90s, I found out about an internship at Malibu Comics. At the time, the big companies were Marvel and DC, but they were in New York and I was in California. My only access to a comic publisher was Malibu. They were a smaller publisher that was located not far from me in Agoura Hills in Southern California. I applied for an internship there, and because of some experience I'd gained working jobs in high school, they offered me a position in the shipping department. It wasn't an internship, per se, but it paid money and it allowed me to be around all these comic book professionals. I took the gig and did the shipping job for about a year. I was a sponge, talking to everybody in the office: editors, artists, learning everything I could.
About a year into my employment, the owners of Malibu were looking to sell to either Marvel or DC. In order to do that, they wanted to beef off their coloring department. At the time, most comic companies were still using watercolors and coloring by hand. Malibu was one of the first to go digital and the first to use Photoshop to color their comics, so they were beefing up their coloring department, and I was able to get my foot in the door there by coloring comics in Photoshop. Pretty quickly afterwards, Marvel purchased the company, and I found myself working for them as well. For the next couple of years, I colored comics for both Malibu and Marvel.
My plan was to work my way from colorist to penciler. Then video games came in and kind of ruined everything for me. Kids stopped reading comic books and started playing Nintendo, Sega, and all that stuff. The comic industry took a major dive. Due to that and other factors, Marvel shut down Malibu to save costs or whatever. All the artists found themselves looking for jobs. While most of them moved over to animation, I ended up looking into toy design. There was a local company called Applause Inc. that was looking to hire toy designers. They wanted people to design Marvel and Star Wars products, and those were two of my biggest loves, so I applied there. I had no experience designing toys, but I had a lot of experience coloring characters and other artwork in my portfolio. I was fortunate that an art director there saw something in me that screamed, "Toy designer," so that was my first job designing toys. We did gifts, collectibles, and tchotchkes: straw, vinyl dolls, and stuff like that for pretty much every property under the sun from Star Wars to Sesame Street for several years.
“Chuck came along and asked if I was interested in working on Mortal Kombat. I said, ‘Of course.’” -Nelson X Asencio
NELSON X ASENCIO
One of my first art gigs was doing t-shirts, airbrushed t-shirts and stuff like that at a record shop. Then I worked at a comic book store in the early '90s. I met this guy named Billy Tucci who created a comic called Shi. He hired me to be his assistant. I worked in comics for a few years, and then around '97, I worked at this place called Art Asylum. It was a design house in Brooklyn. That's when I transitioned from comics to toy design. From that point, I was hired on to do 2D work. We had sculptors, painters, molders to make castings, and all these jobs in-house, so I got to learn the process of start to finish.
Art Asylum was like a school for me. That's where I learned how to do turnarounds for action figures, which means the front side and back side the sculptor uses as a guideline. There's also the callouts: how many articulations, how many breakdowns. All of that is pointed out with these turnarounds, or as we call it, control art. Art Asylum was where I learned the behind-the-scenes processes of toy design. We were doing stuff with Diamond Select back then, a bunch of Marvel statues. I learned all of that back then.
While Diamond's artists boast skills that allow them to work on any license, they share a passion for geek-dom like the collectors they serve. Like those collectors, they have their favorites—such as Mortal Kombat, for example.
JOE ALLARD
Since I was a kid, Batman has been my number-one superhero. I've worked on a good deal of Batman designs, but in my mind, I have not worked on enough Batman designs. [laughs] I want to work on more Batman and wish I'd done some stuff for the new movie [March 2022's The Batman], but it hasn't come around yet. But I've done many fun Batman projects. I've done a one-sixth-scale figure for Sideshow, their very first Batman figure, probably around 10 years ago. We got to translate, what does Batman look like in sixth-scale-figure form where he's got articulation but a cloth outfit and accessories? I got to design what his accessories looked like, which was fun.
But if I had to choose one favorite, it would be the Adam West Batman statue I did for Tweeterhead several years ago. I grew up on the Adam West TV show. I'm more of a fan of darker Batman depictions, but when I was a child, Adam West's Batman was my first live-action Batman. I loved that show as a kid because it was Batman, and today I love it for its campiness, the colors, and the creativity.
I did a bunch of Batman '66 designs for Tweeterhead when they were starting out. When they revealed the Adam West statue I did at Comic-Con, Adam West was the one to reveal it. Because of my affiliation with Tweeterhead and working on that design, I got to meet Adam West. That felt like I was meeting Batman himself. The little kid in me got all giggly. There's a photo of me with Adam West, and everyone who looks at it says, "Look at that smile on your face." Yeah. I was a five-year-old kid again. It was the most amazing experience for him to design a statue of him, in the Batman outfit, that I designed.
SALVADOR GOMES
After making characters for a while, I learned about VISA work around 2010 or so. I shifted my work toward software and made digital things. Around 2018, I made an art portfolio and sent it to Diamond. They hired me, and I believe the first project I worked on for them was Mortal Kombat.
JOE ALLARD
I worked at Applause for a few years, and then I worked at what you might call a think tank. It wasn't a toy company, but it was a creative agency hired by toy companies to help design products. I did that for a few years. Ever since I wanted to be a comic penciler, I had this idea in my head of being a freelancer and working from home. That's how pencilers worked: Other artists went into an office every day, but pencilers were able to work from home and send their artwork to publishers. I had that in my head. After six or seven years working full-time, I realized I could also be a toy designer and work for myself. That's what I did. I left the think tank and started freelancing, and I worked for everybody from Hasbro and Mattel to Disney. Eventually, Diamond Select Toys entered the picture. I'd worked a little with Art Asylum, another toy company from back then. I was good friends with the owner, Digger Mesch.
Eventually, Diamond purchased Art Asylum, and I got to work with Chuck Terceira and Robert Yee. I'd met Chuck years prior. A mutual friend of ours worked at Applause with me. I did stuff for Chuck at Diamond while I was still at Applause; that was my intro to Diamond Select. They weren't making their own stuff back then; they were doing custom retail. Diamond would hire Applause to help create products and I always seemed to get those jobs. It was a lot of Star Wars stuff for Chuck early on. That's when I was still employed full-time with Applause.
When I went freelance, I was able to hook up with Robert through Art Asylum and my connection with Chuck, and do more stuff for Diamond Select. Those guys are great friends and great clients. I absolutely love working with them.
NELSON X ASENCIO
I work closely with Chuck. He sends me projects from time to time. I've done Marvel work, Star Wars. It's cool to work on all these properties. As a kid, you love seeing these properties on TV and as action figures in stores. To actually be involved with them is cool.
Chuck came along and asked if I was interested in working on Mortal Kombat. I have fond memories of going to the pizzeria with my friends and playing the first game. It was so different from what Street Fighter II was because of the gore. I think that was the attraction for us: the fatalities, seeing blood squirting everywhere. It was also the art. They used digitization. I'm also a fan of Street Fighter, but that and MK were different entities and opposites. One was cartoonish, and the other was very realistic for the time.
So when Chuck asked me if I wanted to do it, I said, "Of course."
Part III: All in the Eyes
For nearly 30 years, Mortal Kombat has been a fixture in video games, Hollywood films, television, and collectibles. There are The franchise built its reputation through spectacles like bearing witness to a never-before-seen fatality in a packed arcade and from gameplay that distinguished it from peers such as Capcom's Street Fighter II. Another way Mortal Kombat set itself apart was by keeping a focus on its characters. Every game introduced new "kombatants" and brought back familiar faces from past entries, often with new looks, attitudes, special moves, and motivations.
Some fans play Mortal Kombat games to see fatalities. Others compete on grand stages and make their living dominating tournaments. Still others play because the love characters such as eternal rivals Sub-Zero and Scorpion, the 10,000-year-old Princess Kitana, and Raiden, the god of thunder. Who will return in the next game? Who will die before the credits roll?
The team at Diamond Select Toys understand the reverence fans have for each character in the franchise. That makes the task of choosing which characters to reimagine as collectibles extremely difficult: How could they go about choosing a few characters among dozens and dozens of fan favorites?
ZACH OAT [Marketing Supervisor]
Mortal Kombat is one of those licenses that has a very broad appeal; you'll see MK products in mainstream stores, but it also does well at the independent comic shop level because of the interests of the fans who go to those stores. If I had to guess where licensors were coming from, they wanted characters with long-term appeal like Raiden, Sub-Zero, Scorpion, and Kitana.
JOE ALLARD [Designer]
Usually, it's Chuck and Robert going, "Who are the most popular characters? Who would fans want to see?" Sometimes the licensor will make suggestions because they know which characters in their property are the most popular. For the most part, it's the toy or collectibles company that chooses what they want to do. Chuck came to me and said, "We want to do Scorpion and Sub-Zero."
Every collectible made and distributed by Diamond Select goes through a multi-step process. Each artist is in charge of one step. For Diamond's Mortal Kombat busts—known as Legends in 3D—of Sub-Zero and Scorpion, Joe Allard was the designer, the artist in charge of deciding on each collectible's look. Salvador Gomes was the sculptor who had to take Allard's illustrations and expand them from two dimensions into three.
JOE ALLARD
Diamond has a lot of freelancers, so for this specific job, I did the Legends in 3D busts of Scorpion and Sub-Zero. If you're a designer for Diamond, Chuck and Robert will come to you and say, "We need these busts designed of Sub-Zero and Scorpion from Mortal Kombat." And basically, that's it. It's up to me to decide what that means. I draw the image, and it's first approved by Chuck and Robert, and then by the licensor, the owner of Mortal Kombat. Once it's approved, it goes to a sculptor, who does the three-dimensional sculpture that you see as the product.
“My job was to decide what details I could take from those original, low-resolution games and translate into a super-high-detailed collectible.” -Joe Allard, designer
SALVADOR GOMES [Sculptor]
The first project was a bust of the classic versions of Sub-Zero and Scorpion. They liked them and asked if I wanted to make more Mortal Kombat collectibles. I said sure because I loved the franchise. I've put a lot of work into making Mortal Kombat products because I love those characters.
JOE ALLARD
Because I love all the properties I work on, I already know the characters and property when a job comes to me. I was familiar with Mortal Kombat. I played it as a kid and saw the movies, so I immediately knew who these characters were and had an idea of what I wanted to do with them. In general, my job as a designer is to illustrate what the final product will look like. Maybe first I'll do some quick sketches, or thumbnails. I'll share those with Diamond, with Chuck and Robert, and say, "I was thinking I'd like to do Sub-Zero on an ice-freeze base, and Scorpion on top of a flaming, fiery base. What do you think of that?"
If they're on board with my rough sketches, I progress to the next stage, which is a tight design. Once that's illustrated cleanly and clearly, and approved by Diamond and the Mortal Kombat people, it goes to the sculptor to create the final product. So, it's my job to define the initial look of what the product will be. I'm the first step in the process by giving a 2D representation of what the 3D product is going to be.
When Chuck came to me, he said they wanted to base Sub-Zero on the original Mortal Kombat's design. I think we might have bled into Mortal Kombat II a little bit, but for the most part, we wanted the classic incarnations of these characters--the first time the fans fell in love with them. That was my main goal. It had been so long since I'd played the original games that I did a lot of research. Fans know their looks have changed over the years, little things like details in the masks and outfits, to how much detail was on display as the graphical quality of the video games got better and as the movies came out. But the busts were definitely based on the early video games. My job was to decide what details I could take from those original, low-resolution games and translate into a super-high-detailed collectible.
SALVADOR GOMES
I get concepts from artists. When I receive one, I try to look at it like a regular person, like, "Okay, what is the concept designer trying to say with this?" Sometimes, a 2D pose doesn't work in 3D, but I like to see the emotion in the art first. Every concept has an emotional aesthetic, but it's not always easy to translate. I learned English on my own as well, but when I try to process something written in English by thinking about it in my native Portuguese, it doesn't make sense at all.
It's the same thing with art. When I see a concept, I can't look at it and say, "Yes, I can sculpt this in 3D right away." It won't be exactly the same. Maybe I could make a 3D sculpture work with one pose from a 2D image, but when you turn it around, you might see something weird. You have to feel the emotion and bring that into 3D. I would say that's my approach. I'm always trying to see the concept first as a normal person, not an artist. I just admire the art. After that, I attempt to translate it.
“Mortal Kombat is definitely a top-10 license for us.” -Zach Oat, marketing supervisor
Masked characters such as Mortal Kombat's male and female ninjas—most of whom are not really ninjas in the traditional, denotative sense of the word, but "ninja" has served as a handy frame of reference for 30-plus years—are both easier to work with, and more difficult. Easy, because the mask can receive extra attention since it's as much a part of a character's look as their eyes and special moves. More difficult, because if any detail of the mask or the facial features around it seem off to fans, the collectible is deemed worthless.
SALVADOR GOMES
Before working for Diamond, I was working for a game company in Malaysia. I was working on Street Fighter V products, and I'd made a lot of statues of characters, but I'd never worked on busts. Everything I made showed full bodies. Working on busts has similar difficulties as working on full-body products because of character faces. The face is the most important part, so you place more import on making sure they're well done. If you do a great job on a character's body but don't have a nice face, people will say, "This doesn't look like Sub-Zero."
JOE ALLARD
What we like to do with our Legends busts is tune up or amplify the details of these characters. A lot of the projects we do are comic book-related, and in comics, there are not always lots of details. There may be textures on a costume that are lost because they're tiny illustrations in a comic, or in this case, low-resolution video games from back in the day. What I did here was take the characters' silhouettes, what was in front of me, and amplify details and add other details. If you look at the busts and then look at the original game's graphics, the busts look just like them, but I tuned up the masks. The masks have a little more detail and are more shapely than they were in the original game. I added more details to their outfits, like the quilted material and the stitching that maybe wasn't visible in the original game but you could imagine was there. You can see the quilted texture in some images, but it wasn't always clear. I amplified that and tuned it up.
“If you don't have experience, you might think, Oh, this is easy. I won't have to make a nose and a mouth because they'll be covered. Then you'll realize, Oh, my god, this is much harder than I thought.” -Salvador Gomes, sculptor
As fans know, Scorpion and Sub-Zero were the same models in the first games; they were just different colors. One yellow, one blue, but all the same details in their outfits. One thing I wanted to do was differentiate them. I didn't want to make two of the same sculpt. I wanted there to be differences between the two characters so fans didn't feel like they were buying the same piece twice. What I did--and I wasn't sure how this would go over with the Mortal Kombat licensor--was I changed their masks slightly. I kept the main details in both masks, then added personalization to each one so there are differences. I did that so when you look at them, you can say, "Okay, these aren't just the same guy but wearing different colors." These are different masks and totally different characters. That was the most important thing to me: Showing details between the sculptures that identified them as different characters.
If you look at their masks on the busts, they're not identical. I took some artistic liberties and changed details to make them different. That was the main challenge: Making them look the way they looked in the video game--which was identical--but make them feel like different characters.
SALVADOR GOMES
People would think sculpting half-covered faces is easier, but I think it's not.
JOE ALLARD
It's 100 percent more difficult.
SALVADOR GOMES
When you have to combine organic features and other parts of the face, and they have to fit together, you need to have two techniques in one part of the project. It's hard. If you want to sculpt a face, you have to put a harder surface on top of it, and that means having a different approach than sculpting just a face. It's difficult to get nice lines and a nice flow. You cannot have sharp edges, and all edges have to be the same.
JOE ALLARD
With these characters, at least I had eyes to work with. When I'm working with Darth Vader or Spider-Man, you've got nothing. All you have is a mask. There are collectors out there who collect helmets or masks, but it's important to me with these busts to let collectors feel that there are people behind the masks. In order to convey that, it's all about the attitude conveyed by the head: the way it's angled, the way it's turned, the way it's tilted. That's one of the only ways I have to convey emotion. With these Mortal Kombat busts--and with almost all of the Legends busts--the heads rarely face forward. There's always a tilt, a turn, or something going on with the head to convey emotion and energy. It's the most important thing for me since it's almost all I have to work with. With masked characters, I have to figure out a way to express who they are and their intent with just their head. Tilting, turning, angling it up or down, just trying to get some expression with the little real estate I have on a bust.
The drawing itself is easier because I don't have to worry about facial features, but the design in general is more difficult because I want to get emotion out of the little bit of room I have to work with.
SALVADOR GOMES
It's a lot of technical consideration. If you don't have experience, you might think, Oh, this is easy. I won't have to make a nose and a mouth because they'll be covered. Then you'll realize, Oh, my god, this is much harder than I thought.
JOE ALLARD
For busts in general, the facial expressions and the head's angle are the most important parts. Busts don't give you a whole body to communicate body language like you do in a diorama. You can't discern an attitude from the way they're posed or the action they're taking; it all has to come from the head and face. In general, faces, mouths, everything to do with the head is collectively the most important part to try and collect the collector to the character.
That said, with these busts in particular, all I had to work with was the eyes. They're wearing masks over their faces and hoods over their heads, so the eyes were the most important thing, the biggest focus, to convey some kind of emotion and bring out characters. Without that, a bust is just an inanimate sculpture. You want to show that there's a human in there, and they're experiencing emotions: they're angry, or stern, or serious. With Scorpion and Sub-Zero, the eyes had to convey their feelings, their thoughts, their focus. I put a lot of thought into their eyes.
Because they looked nearly identical in the games, I wanted to differentiate between the two. Scorpion is [undead]. Adding the wrinkles, the crow's feet, and the dark circles around his eyes was intentional in my design and translated to the sculpture as well.
Take a look at either of Diamon's Legends in 3D busts for Mortal Kombat, and you'll notice something special about each ninja's mask, vest, and face. They're made from high-quality resin, yet their clothing appears as soft as the quilt folded over the back of your sofa.
SALVADOR GOMES
This is another area where technical skills apply. I have to know a lot about human anatomy, of course, but I also had to learn about fashion design. I had to know how clothes were stitched together. Artists have to know so many things, not just anatomy. Using Scorpion as an example, his clothes are made from different materials: some cloth, some leather. Leather should be soft instead of hard.
JOE ALLARD
It's a little of both. If I'm doing my job right, I definitely indicate it in my design. In the vests, I drew wrinkles and stitching to show it's a fabric, quilted, kind of puffer vest. In the neck areas, I drew wrinkles to show it's soft and that it's turning when the character moves his head. In the masks, there are no lines or creases; it's all smooth to show that it's hard. So, I indicate these things in my design, but it's even more the responsibility of the sculptor to take what they see, the indications in my designs, and pump that up to make it even more impressive and obvious: this is a hard surface, this is a soft surface, this is wrinkled because he's turning his head, and so on. Salvador did an amazing job with that.
SALVADOR GOMES
Sometimes I need to know how materials are made in the real world, and then I use software to make those materials. Anatomy such as muscles, that's made by hand. But if I need to make a piece of clothing, I find a way with the computer to simulate that material. Then I can jump in, make some changes, and make it more my style. That's why technical skills are so important. Your computer and software are tools to help you make realistic clothing or whatever you're doing.
Metal isn't as difficult. Most programs have metal textures, and you can use it to convince people certain details look like metal. But for clothing, you have to find a way to use your programs to simulate things like stitching and folds. You still have to put a lot of manual work into it, but computers can help so much.
“I was lucky enough to sculpt all the Mortal Kombat products, and I hope Diamond makes more and gives them to me.” -Salvador Gomes, sculptor
JOE ALLARD
After Salvador does his part, it's the job of the painter to paint products with the right finishes to make it all feel real. Masks should be glossier because they're harder surfaces whereas the clothing should have more of a matte finish because it's cloth. It's a three-part process: I have to indicate it; the sculptor has to amplify it; and the painter has to continue those thoughts by painting with the right colors and finishes to give the impression of different textures.
The hardest part of nailing the look and feel of Scorpion and Sub-Zero's Legends in 3D busts, especially for Salvador Gomes, was creating fire and ice, the elements that define Mortal Kombat's most bitter of enemies.
JOE ALLARD
They were both challenging. When you're trying to take something that's energy and make it a solid object, you have to take a lot of artistic license, and you have to be particular with how you make things look. I think the fire was a little more difficult. Ice is solid; you can sculpt ice and make it look like real ice. But to try and capture fire in a realistic way, in an inanimate object, when fire is living--it moves, it's nothing you can hold on to--in general, fire in any sculpture is really hard to capture. My part of drawing it was a lot easier than the sculptor's job sculpting it. I've worked with a lot of sculptors over the years, and some of them are great at fire. Fortunately, our sculptor did a great job translating not only what I drew, but adding his own style and thoughts to make it feel like fire. It's easy to make fire look like a pile of weeds or something else that isn't fire; it's a big challenge.
SALVADOR GOMES
I was lucky enough to sculpt all the Mortal Kombat products, and I hope Diamond makes more and gives them to me. I love them because of all the special effects as part of the characters: Scorpion's fire, Sub-Zero's ice, Raiden's lightning.
JOE ALLARD
One thing we did, and one of the things I love doing, is incorporating translucent resin. That really helped make Sub-Zero's ice look like ice, and the fire look a little bit more like fire. Scorpion's bust's fire is solid, unlike real fire, but it's translucent so you can see light through it, and sometimes light bounces off it strangely. That's opposed to it just being a chunk of opaque resin that's painted to look like fire. This is a clear, orange resin that helps with the effect of making it look more like flames.
SALVADOR GOMES
I found a way to make nice effects, and I would love to do more. I spent more time doing those effects than sculpting the actual characters. First, I would work on a character, and then I moved on to their effects. It took two or three weeks just to finish just the base of the fire effects, because I needed to do tests. For example, for the fire, I had to make it three times. The first two were okay. I sent them to Diamond and said, "What do you think about this?" Because I was testing a lot of techniques to see which fire looked the best.
Doing effects isn't easy. How do you sculpt fire? It's tricky. I found a way to make it nicely, and it's easily reproduceable. That's the important part. It's one thing to figure out how to sculpt fire, but if it's not easy to make copies, it's worthless.
In part two, Diamond Select Toys' artists wrestle with more technical and creative obstacles as they craft Raiden, Kitana, Sub-Zero, and Scorpion’s Gallery Diorama statues.
This post is part of Kool Stuff, a companion book to Long Live Mortal Kombat: Round 1 that contains interviews I was unable to do before hitting Long Live MK’s deadline. Subscribe to Episodic Content to keep up with news on Long Live MK’s Kickstarter (set for March 8) and to follow along with Kool Stuff as new chapters are published.