ISAAC CLARKE

 Its been a long time since last entry but it wasnt because of Santa taking his time delivering the christmas toys in time, it is because all the toy brands decided to release all the pre-orders of the year in this months soo now, aside of being completelly broke, i am full of new figures to show in here!!

Lets begin with Dead Space! I love Dead Space way too much tough there never was too much merch related to the series, with the release of the remake two years ago (!!!) Good Smile Comapany released a Figma of Issac Clarke as well as a  Pop Up pParde statue and since the price of the Figma´s is honetly way beyond of any logical thinking, i decided to pick the Pop Up Parade statue since it was almost 1/3 cheaper.

This is a statue soo theres no artoculation at all (tough i am sure the molds are the same of the Figma) and while this guy can stand on his own perfectly, he comes with a black circular base that is very simple and elegant looking but it does the job perfectly fine. 

One think i dislike of this figure is the size....this guy is soo tiny, i mean even comapred to the other Pop Up Parde i have, this Issac looks child size compared to them and i think is exactly the same scale as the Figma. Soo is basically a statis Figma (or FigFIX) and i deffinetly wasnt expecting that...the price dosnt looks that atractive anymore.

Aside of scale issue, the sculpt is really good. The pose is very simple with him walking carefully at front while turning around. The detaiñing on his suit is really fantastic with all the wrinkles and sculpted details on the clothe section and all the metalic sections on top matching those of the game. Tough his knee pads as well as the screen on his chest feels like softich plastic, the whle figure is pretty sturdy.

Even his boots soles are sculpted and painted with a rusty color with a black wash. The boots and the chest plates and back plates, the armor on the arms as well as the helmeth are painted in a golden color with a lot of rust and black effects to make it looks like old ancient metal with the 3 lines of the face painted in bright baby blue to make it stand.

The stasis module on his hand as well as the life meter in the back are painte in baby blue, tough the life meter on his back is just a blue plastic rod and dosnt have any of the zig zag pattern it should have. His clothes under the armor also have a very old looks with a lot o dark wash to give deep to the wrinkles and all details, tough his shirt is painted in grey while in the game is much more darker than this.

In the end the shirt and the metalic parts dosnt mix too much color wise soo this makes it looks like he have more armor than expected, but is just a discrepancy on color. The pants tough have the rigth dark tones of blue and brown soo they looks much better.

His only accesory: his weapon, i removable and while it dosnt have any articulations and is missing the mobile parts, the overall sculpt is good as well as the metalic paint and yellow details, tough it looks a little simplifyed from a closer look.

Theres not much to say about this figure tough, despite having a very good sculpt and mostly a good paint, the size dosnt makes it stand out too much. I think this figure would been perfect as part of a Collectors Edition of the game since is in the perfect scale for that kind of figures.

Good thing tough, this is pretty much the Figma but static, soo that means i dont need the Figma anymore but that dosnt mean i dont want any more Issac Clarke figures! I just dont want figures with that price tag.

ISAAC CLARKE

 Why i like soo much Isaac Clarke? I never liked armored or mechanical looking characters, i even dont like Batman at all on the movies thanks to his robot looking outfit and a guy on an astronaut suit is the same for me, yet i somehow like a lot Isaac Clarke design, there is something cool on him, even if he looks soo bulky and slow moving, that i find really fascinating, specially on Dead Space 3 with the furry neck section.

Of course, maybe is because i love his game as well, one of the very first Playstation 3 games i played and probablly the most notable survival horror of its generation (with Resident Evil turning into the Rambo route and Silent Hill in total decadence) that manage to balance pefectly action with suspense, psychological horror with gore and a space age horror that i only seen on Alien. Dead Space is a game, even the thrid one with all its flaws is pretty much the best representation of At the Mountains of Madness.

Somehow tough there was a lot of merchadise of the games, something not even Silent Hill had back then and somehow, even more rare, i let it pass most of them and only got the ThreeZero 1/6 scale figure and the ArtFX statue from Kotobukiya, the subject of this entry!!

This guy is big...like, really big, the same size of a 1/6 scale figure from Sideshow or Hot Toys but considering the legs are flexing he is on a bigger scale and also he is really really heavy as well. Tough with the base included he can stand on his own perfectly with no problem.

Also despite being an statue this Isaac is articulated: the head and wrists and also his plasma cutter main section can rotate just like other versions of the plasma cutter. The weapon mid section and the hand that holds it have a cut joint that only rotates in one single direction, while the head and the freem wrists have ball joint and have a little bit more of freedom of movement.

The display options are limited but having them in this kind of product is rare. You can have Isaac looking at front, pointing his plasma cutter to his rigth or covering himself with the weapon from the left, the most anoying part is actually the plamsa cutter since it covers his face thanks to the position of the arm and while turning it around it also clashes with the monitor on his chest.

But once the plasma cutter is out of the way the view of Isaac is perfect. The sculpt is really really bautifull with all the intrincate detail on his suit perfectly represented, specially the furry neck piece. The protunding peices on his legs  like the jets and the knes wprotection are made of softplastic as well as the weird rails on his arms and the little jets on the shoulders while the rest of the body is made with high quality plastic, pretty dense plastic.

I love the different textures on each section, not only the furry neck but each part, like the knes section, is made on a different fabric and the protectors of the legs are full of scratches and other worn details. Even the green "cord" thingy that navigates around his legs and chest area is a real cord carefully enbroided with the plastic of the sculpt!!

The helmeth is perfect as well, again mixing cloth texture with metal and the only part that is missing any kind of detailing is the monitor machine on his chest. Theres no paint of sculpt there and thats odd given how crazy detailed is everyhting else, tough its imposible to see this section soo its OK i guess. Tough i still wish they articulated his shoulder soo he can move away the plasma cutter to see this monitor...

The paint job is amaxing! Very rich in diferent colors, greys, blacks, greens, browns, golden, metalic tones and other. Unlike the Three Zero version that have a brownish outfit, this one is grey with a dark wash on it that gives it a texture of a puffy materal. I think this is closer to the game design tough, i dont know why Three Zero went with the brownish look.

His mechanical boots have gret metalic with also cooper looking colors as well as golden tones, all with some dark washes to make them look dirty and very worn and the plasma cutter have the same color palette and worn feature, it looks pretty old and dated but that was Isaac main design concept.

Each bag on his belt have different tones of green and brown and his helmeth also have a big variety of tones of metal and golden. Its odd how this figure may looks just dark and simple but is actually pretty rich design wise!! Also the fur have a yellowish paint finish to  make it looks much more natural.

The only missing thing that the Three Zero version have is actual snow on top of his helmeth and outfit. I guess thats ask too much? But the snow base compensate that a little bit. The base is hollow and is the most ligth part of the piece with some simple blues to give a little bit of shadow to the snow.

Tough there is a corpse, or a piece of a corpse at least as wel where Isaac is standing. Theres a spinal cord and a littl of muscle structure with no shape at all with a dramatic spray of blood covering the snow in that section. Looks gruesome even if its imposible to know wath it is and helps a lot to condence the horror aspect of the series in a single figure.

Aside of the amazing sculpt and out of this world painting and high size, this figure have extra feature: led ligths. The top section of the waist can be removed to reveal a box for 3 batterys. Once they are in place and the top section reconected, with the push of a very discret button on his back the ligths turn on: the life bar on his back, the oxygen metter at the side, his gravity module on the palm of his hand and of course, his helmeth.

While the Three Zero use different ligths for each section (green, yellow and blue) this guy have only blue for everything and the ligth is actually pretty pretty strong since the actual ball joints are the bulbs. The effect is really spectacular and stands out even with all the ligths on and is easy to use.

I cant complaing in here about anything, this is a perfect representation of Isaac Clarke and maybe is better than the Three Zero one? I dont know...both have very different colros and the 1/6 scale one have a beautifully tailred suit and the different colors of the led ligths are oustanding but this Kotobukiya ArtsFX is really brillant as well.

There is a Figma and a Pop Up parade coming based on the remake but i doubt they reach this level of perfection.

ISAAC CLARKE

Dead Space was one of my favorite videogames from the last generation, it managed to trully scares me and build an interesting and arresting world around the Necromorphs and i also liked the third one. Dead Space 3 dumbed down some elements (like the weapons system) but it still managed to build a fantastic homage to The Thing and In the Mountains of Madness and was much better than any Resident Evil from that generation.

And i also got a special liking to his protagonist, Isaac Clarke, who was pretty empty in the first game but builds up to be an actually normal and realistically hunky man.

I wasnt unsure wich one of his figures get, the Play Arts Kai or the Kotobukiya statue but in the end i had the chance to put my hands on the high end figure from Threezero. This figure is REALLY expensive and i always had plans to save money for him but i was lucky enough to find him half the price!!! The bad part is: no box and he is missing 3 of his extra hands.

I dont care for the box and the missing hands were a tough choice, but he have the hands to hold his weapons soo i guess it was a good deal for the very low price i get him.

Isaac Clarke is HUGE. He is as tall as Guts and the Hot Toys Predators, tough he is not very heavy and can stand on his own perfectly (this adds him lots of points).

His helmeth is really amazing looking, with a pretty realistic copper and metal texture and paint and some white marks. At first i tough this white was missing paint sports, but is actually snow since it got a soft texture and is placed in a totally natural way.

His suit is INCREDIBLLY sophisticated, with lots of embrodiment and details like the cord in zigzag between the metal plates leave me in awe given how tinny they are. While with a limited color palette, this suit is really fine tailored beyond belief. The metalic parts are not metal, but they are with soft plastic. The whole metal texture comes from the amazing paint aplications they have and this means they are pretty resistant.

The suit looks dirty, really dirty and ancient (just like in the game) with “snow” placed in a pretty natural way (on his shoulders for example) and this gives him an uncanny and trully realistic looks. My favorite detail is deffinetly the fur on his neck tough, since its made with very high quality and yet is also covered with snow.

All the mechanical parts are made with plastic soo they can be moved a little bit to fit his limbs to a certain degree and the screen on his chest is covering a zipper. But even with the zipper, the suit cannot be removed tough he have a pretty cute sweater under the suit.

The screen on his chest is actually pretty anoying but game acurate, and it got green designs on it that makes it looks like a radar or a map. The back side tough is even much more amazing that the front thanks to the perfectly reproduced design on his back life support.

The “skeletical” design on his back is amazing to see at such small scale and the different fabric, leather and textures used in the suit is astonishing.The little puches on his back cannot be opened but they are the only part made with hard plastic.

His boots are also brillantlly done and they looks metalic and really heavy with the spikes on the base to be used in snowy and rocky enviroments. This spikey parts are made with plastic too and they keep the whole figure in balance soo i hope they resist enough to not broke. Also the actual boots under the metalic sections are made with rubber and i hope HOPE this materal resist the test of time and dont start to broke on my (the looks of the boots are the only clue that this figure is used and kinda old).

The mechanical sections of the boot in the front and knee opens for no reasons but to help the cleaning and to keep things insanelly realistic.

I dont have the closed fists and one of his open left hand but i got the hands meant to hold his weapons. Both hands are made with hard plastic but they sculpted wrinkles and dirty colors makes them visually consistent with the rest of the suit. Change them is actually really tricky tough given how his slevees with plastic parts keeps sliping over his arm.

His only accesoryes beyongd the hands are his Plasma Cutter and his Riffle. The Riffle looks, heavy, dirty and like a weapon that has been forgotten for the last 100 years and looks great. The Plasma Cutter is fantastic and my favprite of the two since the “head” is articulated soo it can shoot vertically or horizontally.

And overall, the Plasma Cutter have an amazing and intrincated sculpt and paint that makes it a piece of art.

Here is the downside of this figure: he almost cannot move. While his neck and knees are free to move around, the rest of his articulations are very restricted by the thick suit he is using. He dosnt have many choices to be posed aside of the “walking” natural stand. He cant point his Plasma Cutter too far up and making him hold his Riffle is very difficult too.

The suit, while extremelly good looking, is actually heavy and make the articulations of his arms and legs a little lose. He is as limited as the Hot Toys Naked Snake soo hes not specially fun to play with.

To counter this he have his own light!!!

By removing the back part of his helmeth you can find a tiny switch that turns on a blue LED on his brain and under the fur of his cuit he have a second switch for green light on his life support system and oxygen metter.

This three ligts looks TRULLY FANTASTIC and spectacular and give him and kick ass and creppy look with in the dark. The intense blue light coming out of his helmet looks eerie and the intense and vibrant radioactive green light on his back looks soo science-fictionish i have a hard time desciding how to display him.

The lack of movement on his articulations is really dissapointing, but this figure is soo beautifully crafted is hard to hate it. Threezero did an amazing job with the LED lights as well and as long as this guy i seen as a mixed media statue with limited articulations (like Sideshow), he is really fantastic addition for the collection.

Having Isaac Clarkee lurking on some corner of the room with his helmet iluminated is a testament to one of the greatest (and now probablly dead) survival horror ever created.