Weta Workshop - Captain Titus Statue

[lansalt]

I guess it's great for those into that sort of thing, but I just wish GW had put the same effort into the Titus miniature.

[Jukkiz]

46 minutes ago, lansalt said:

I guess it's great for those into that sort of thing, but I just wish GW had put the same effort into the Titus miniature.

"wah, you didn´t like your Primarinaded Titus  tippytoeing around corpses?"

[Halandaar]

3 hours ago, Alby the Slayer said:

 

Tell me about it, Frater.

 

I tried to make an order to see the shipping fee and for it's another 300 euros, so roughly 1600 euros. It's too much and with Abbadon it will be worse probably.

 

Btw I tried for example to send it in Great Britain and in dollars was about 1400. So I dunno but I don't think it will be only 675 pounds like @Halandaar said. 

 

Edit : Yep site said it's £1,127.79s excluded taxes.

 

In my defence I never said the price included shipping 

[EmpiricalReed]

I'm always fascinated at the amount of work and care that goes into making something like this (even if I've no intention of ever owning one!)

 

Zorpazorp has spent a lot of time in Weta recently and has a video looking at the production of Titus. I thought it was pretty cool.

 

 

[Kastor Krieg]

7 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

The people laughing about the price have never looked at the anime statue market. This guy is borderline affordable compared to some of those exorbitant costs. 

Other price points being gouged out to the hilt do not make an RTX 4080 "affordable".

And this prepainted exercise of consumerist idiocy costs about midpoint between RTX 4080 and 4090. For a piece of static plastic.

 

I don't even want to think what's the per-piece cost of production here. Materials negligible, mould being the main factor. I'd be surprised if it's more than 200 USD. Probably more like 120-150 USD, gauging from the posts made by @N1SB in the Krieger thread.

90% markup. Come on, buy up. Once in a lifetime!

Edited November 16, 2023 by Kastor Krieg

[Slips]

1 hour ago, Kastor Krieg said:

Other price points being gouged out to the hilt do not make an RTX 4080 "affordable".

And this prepainted exercise of consumerist idiocy costs about midpoint between RTX 4080 and 4090. For a piece of static plastic.

 

I don't even want to think what's the per-piece cost of production here. Materials negligible, mould being the main factor. I'd be surprised if it's more than 200 USD. Probably more like 120-150 USD, gauging from the posts made by @N1SB in the Krieger thread.

90% markup. Come on, buy up. Once in a lifetime!

As N1SB said in the other thread, though, that the main cost of these products isnt materials, its labor. In the video shown above, during the design/prototyping/mastering process theres easily a team of ~10? ish, id assume really well paid people working on this project for what was mentioned as being multiple weeks on top of the base licensing costs. And if Casting/Cleanup/Assembly/Painting/QA takes ~100 hours per statue, thats a lot of labor costs even if its paying the staggeringly lower wages of a factory worker in china.

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say before it even gets shipped off to a factory in china for mass production that theyre, all in, probably down at least 100k+ the majority of that being labor. Granted, if they sell ALL 1300 of them at ~1.2k USD, theyre up 1.5 million which is a lot of money but for big business, more or less peanuts. We know theres economies of scale at play here since theyve ordered at least 1.3k individual statues to be produced so the margin does get a bit higher but then they have to pay for any warehousing/storage if they dont all immediately sell out and get sent to buyers as well as pay GW their royalties upfront.

So, optimistically, I'd wager, best case scenario, Weta comes out of this with ~700k in profit? A lot of money for a single person but at this scale of production and company size? Not really the biggest of windfalls.

 

However, thats unlikely to be the case; they'll probably be holding onto quite a bit of stock in a warehouse and running sales on them for months or even years to come before fulling selling out lowering that margin.

 

To be clear, as someone who got into collecting 1:4 scale statues and has easily 30+, these prices are pretty much normal and in line with the industry at large. While its expensive for people not in the market (much in the way that Warhammer itself is very expensive for outsiders), its not an outlier. An outlier would be the Prime1 Studios 1:6 scale FF6 Terra on Magitek Armor at 14k. Hell, people regularly buy 1:1 replicas or life-sized busts of movie characters and those easily go for 3-4k each for busts and 10k+ for 1:1's. Theres currently a lifesized hulkbuster by Queen Studios being sold for 72k and someone in California has one.

 

 

Edited November 16, 2023 by Slips

[MithrilForge]

As Slips has put quite well, It's about who and where it's made that determines a cost as well.... you can get cheap made in china stuff from some slave laboured poor unfortunates or you can get something from the west that's a lot more cost wise but made by people like you and I who need a better minimum wage to live in the utopian society that we do...

 

M

[Kastor Krieg]

1 hour ago, Mumeishi said:

As Slips has put quite well, It's about who and where it's made that determines a cost as well.... you can get cheap made in china stuff from some slave laboured poor unfortunates or you can get something from the west that's a lot more cost wise but made by people like you and I who need a better minimum wage to live in the utopian society that we do...

 

M

I went to look at where the company was from and on their Wiki I've found this. Hiring an "independent reviewer" who goes on to ignore abuse, and harassment allegations of 11 employees and refutes sexual harassment of one as "unsubstantiated or reasonable in circumstances", stinks to high heaven.

I'd be ashamed to give them a cent of my own money.

Workplace culture[edit]

Beginning in June 2020, an investigative project by Kiwi public TV broadcaster 1 News into Wētā's workplace culture resulted in over 11 current and former Wētā Workshop employees anonymously sharing accounts of "bullying and harassment".^[16] Another former employee Layna Lazar came public with her own allegation by social media posting the same month that she was sexually harassed repeatedly and after seeking recourse, was fired, this prompted an independent review by Hive Consulting in December of that year. Their reviewer Ashley Benefield cleared the company of the allegations stating that "the majority of allegations in the post including the most serious allegations, have either not been substantiated or were reasonable in the context of circumstances not described in the post". The review's December 2020 report did not address the anonymous allegations of over 11 employees originally reported by 1 News back in July, and the concerned employees stated in response they were not informed of the review having finished, either, in spite of their reluctant cooperation in it. Lazar stated in response that she "genuinely 100 percent still" stands by her public allegations.^[17][

Edited November 17, 2023 by Kastor Krieg

[Marshal Rohr]

Titus is a weird one to lead with but I will 100% buy Abaddon if I win powerball this week. 

[Orion]

1 hour ago, Kastor Krieg said:

I went to look at where the company was from and on their Wiki I've found this. Hiring an "independent reviewer" who goes on to ignore abuse, and harassment allegations of 11 employees and refutes sexual harassment of one as "unsubstantiated or reasonable in circumstances", stinks to high heaven.

I'd be ashamed to give them a cent of my own money.

Workplace culture[edit]

Beginning in June 2020, an investigative project by Kiwi public TV broadcaster 1 News into Wētā's workplace culture resulted in over 11 current and former Wētā Workshop employees anonymously sharing accounts of "bullying and harassment".^[16] Another former employee Layna Lazar came public with her own allegation by social media posting the same month that she was sexually harassed repeatedly and after seeking recourse, was fired, this prompted an independent review by Hive Consulting in December of that year. Their reviewer Ashley Benefield cleared the company of the allegations stating that "the majority of allegations in the post including the most serious allegations, have either not been substantiated or were reasonable in the context of circumstances not described in the post". The review's December 2020 report did not address the anonymous allegations of over 11 employees originally reported by 1 News back in July, and the concerned employees stated in response they were not informed of the review having finished, either, in spite of their reluctant cooperation in it. Lazar stated in response that she "genuinely 100 percent still" stands by her public allegations.^[17][

 

Yep, I believe it. I've heard 2nd hand information on that stuff from colleagues.
Sucks for everyone who wasn't a perpetuator, even the people who weren't directly harassed. 

I thankfully don't have any personal experience with Weta, although they tried to poach me one.

 

As for the product itself, awesome execution, boring subject matter.
Everything has to be generic tie in so I'm not exactly surprised.

Price seems appropriate, provided the actual shipping product matches these pictures.

[Captain Coolpants]

All going crazy about the price, bit it's just as big and heavy as a warlord titan, but comes repainted for less than the titan. And let's be real, most people who own said titan use it as a statue/on display for most of its life anyways. 

 

Both are still silly prices though of course, I'd never buy either 

[Orange Knight]

The price isn't crazy.

 

I just have no where to put it. If I had a bigger games room and shrine to geek then this could be the centerpiece. 

[N1SB]

Thanks to Brother Reed for the video.  I wonder if the designs on the board are a preview of what's to come or just discarded designs:

 

 

17 hours ago, Kastor Krieg said:

I don't even want to think what's the per-piece cost of production here. Materials negligible, mould being the main factor. I'd be surprised if it's more than 200 USD. Probably more like 120-150 USD, gauging from the posts made by @N1SB in the Krieger thread.

90% markup. Come on, buy up. Once in a lifetime!

 

I hear ya, like how much of that is the licensing cost to GW.  But yeah, skilled labour at New Zealand prices, by Weta, who are awesome.

 

I was looking at the NZ$1,200 figure and that £1,000 figure.  It reminded me the following is also $1,200, by a Chinese craftsman.  Carved from almost a single piece of wood except for the polearm, Red Faced Guanyu from the 3 Kingdoms period is the patron saint to both Chinese policemen AND Chinese gangsters, masterfully carved from a single piece of some rare wood (except for the polearm).  But just to show things aren't so different...yes, he's standing on a Tactical Rock.  Actual model is about 6-7", so 1/10-12 scale?

 

 

Oh, and when I said $1,200?  That's Hong Kong dollars, or US$150 as you said.  I remember because I hem & haw'd over it.

 

But apples & orangutans...can't compare this to Lieutenant Titus of the Ultramarines.  Guanyu is public domain, no licensing cost.

[Kastor Krieg]

4 hours ago, N1SB said:

US$150

For a unique manual sculpt and the workhours put into it, it's a very very low price in turn.

That's my point exactly though - artists creating unique handcrafted items are underpaid while the mass produced copy-paste of an IP (wonder if GW didn't give them Space Marine and Termagaunt CADs, I'm pretty sure it wasn't all sculpted anew) is priced 10x more and will sell in thousands.

Awful, awful state of things.

[Slips]

22 minutes ago, Kastor Krieg said:

For a unique manual sculpt and the workhours put into it, it's a very very low price in turn.

That's my point exactly though - artists creating unique handcrafted items are underpaid while the mass produced copy-paste of an IP (wonder if GW didn't give them Space Marine and Termagaunt CADs, I'm pretty sure it wasn't all sculpted anew) is priced 10x more and will sell in thousands.

Awful, awful state of things.

Its stated in the video that they got the base models from the game directly sent to them by Saber.

[Brother_Angelus]

1 hour ago, Kastor Krieg said:

For a unique manual sculpt and the workhours put into it, it's a very very low price in turn.

That's my point exactly though - artists creating unique handcrafted items are underpaid while the mass produced copy-paste of an IP (wonder if GW didn't give them Space Marine and Termagaunt CADs, I'm pretty sure it wasn't all sculpted anew) is priced 10x more and will sell in thousands.

Awful, awful state of things.

Maybe just let people enjoy things?

 

If you don't want it, that's fine.

[SalamandersBro]

Wouldn't pay more than tree fity

[Cenobite Terminator]

I can’t afford one but I find the model and whole process fascinating.

[N1SB]

13 hours ago, Orange Knight said:

The price isn't crazy.

 

I just have no where to put it. If I had a bigger games room and shrine to geek then this could be the centerpiece. 

 

St. Celestine, I think, is going to be the standout for this reason.  We saw her silhouette and it immediately twigged for me.  And I think you nailed it as usual, if this collaboration continues, it's going to be things like the Primarchs that people really want.  You can't use them in the game...but you CAN use the game, as terrain.  It's like on the Imperium side a planet poured all its resources into a giant statue to their patron saint...and you fight over it, for pride.

 

I think, but don't know enough to make a judgment, the most interested people would be FLGS owners.  Any one of these collectibles would be a storefront display.  In a small town, I'd go to the local newspaper and pitch this as a human interest story, we have a piece of Weta Studios, from Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, many films, right here in our hometown...and yes, we do carry the Battle for Middle Earth game!  But it's definitely a marketing investment for work purposes.

[Kastor Krieg]

On 11/17/2023 at 10:23 PM, Brother_Angelus said:

Maybe just let people enjoy things?

 

If you don't want it, that's fine.

What's your exact problem? This is a forum, I'm allowed to have an opinion. Maybe just let people comment on things. If you don't want to read mine, just block me, that's fine.

[Kastor Krieg]

On 11/17/2023 at 9:18 PM, Slips said:

Its stated in the video that they got the base models from the game directly sent to them by Saber.

That makes it even worse. It's just a CAD repose and blammo, sculpture goes into production. I appreciate the technological challenges of such a large scaled detailed and painted model, but still it doesn't make the price look any better.

[Slips]

10 hours ago, Kastor Krieg said:

That makes it even worse. It's just a CAD repose and blammo, sculpture goes into production. I appreciate the technological challenges of such a large scaled detailed and painted model, but still it doesn't make the price look any better.

Trust me, I wish 1:4 scale statues were ~350-400 like they were way back when instead of the 700-900 they are now (I, for example, bought the Lilith statue from blizzard for 495 in ~2019 and its going for ~800 now direct from blizzard not even 2nd hand marked up) but, unfortunately, the statue market isn't so budget conscious so prices keep going up and people go "yeah thats fine" even as others just go "thats it, im out". Ive heard of people with over 100k in pre-orders and payment plans for stuff and been called rookies by others.

 

That should kinda give you a glimpse as to why, its priced as such and nobody really making a stink out of it.

 

While they did get files from saber that made design arguably much easier, they still have to get it past GWs approval process and as someone who worked on the Marvel Avengers game I can tell you that that on its own is a LONG and expensive process because they ultimately have the say on what you end up producing even if you dont agree with it.

[Kastor Krieg]

2 hours ago, Slips said:

 Ive heard of people with over 100k in pre-orders and payment plans for stuff and been called rookies by others.

That should kinda give you a glimpse as to why, its priced as such and nobody really making a stink out of it.

Whale buyers fuel price races even in our small niche hobby. A company's greedy push on pricepoints motivated by certainty of whale purchases and FOMO driven by preorders / exclusives is exactly what I'm disgusted by. The fact that most everyone is compliant with the state of affairs and neither raises a stink or walks away is a part of the problem.

 

While they did get files from saber that made design arguably much easier, they still have to get it past GWs approval process and as someone who worked on the Marvel Avengers game I can tell you that that on its own is a LONG and expensive process because they ultimately have the say on what you end up producing even if you dont agree with it.

Yeah, I've worked with GW IP as well (in the FFG/GW RPGs era, Dark Heresy 2 specifically), so I'm familiar with the process and the challenges. 

 

The difference though is between having to translate a full 1.5 mln char (~300k words) rulebook, edit it, proofread it and then do the DTP formatting, and somebody providing the publishing house with already translated, edited, proofread text that they only have to "bend into book shape" in DTP, do a final proof and be off to the races.

Both products go through the same GW approval set of hoops after that, but the amount of effort and expense in incomparably less in the "we got the ready made high res 3D sculpts and only had to repose them in scale, figure out mould requirements and start production" case.

[WrathOfTheLion]

It is very nice, and Abaddon will probably be absolutely fantastic. However, it is more money than I'd be willing to spend on something like that.

 

I do find it ironic that it's overpriced back in Britain, given how GW prices things for elsewhere.

[TrawlingCleaner]

=][= Alrighty folks, let's cool our jets on this one and stick exclusively to the statue. Enjoy something or don't enjoy something, it's no reason to start poking fingers at each other =][=