Action figures, to most of the world, are toys. To some fans or collectors, they’re a curio or a commodity, like baseball cards or commemorative plates. For the authors of Pop Sculpture, however, they are so much more. Pop Sculpture is a guide for the confused and curious, meant to inspire an interest in making your own designs, but it is also an argument that action figures are not toys, not commodities, but art.
Tim Bruckner, Zach Oat, and Rubén Procopio worked with Disney and DC Direct to reveal the secrets of designing, creating, and selling your own action figures (not dolls, they insist). Although Pop Sculpture is, first and foremost, a practical guide for the career-minded sculptor (and a great asset for those readers), it’s a treat for the casual collector or fan as well. As a degraded and commercialized art form, figure-making is rarely explored and explained in as much depth as it is here. The curtain is drawn back, and the process is revealed to be far more difficult than it previously seemed.
Pop Sculpture details the lengthy process of making action figures through the examples of a statuette-style Athena and a more familiar, pose-able Thor figure. Design and molding are described in easy-to-understand terms, with diagrams, cut doodles, anecdotes from the authors, and tips from pros along the way. Although the focus is mostly on comic-book characters and superheroes, you get the feeling that these techniques could be applied to a variety of models (in fact, some of the authors’ examples feature original characters with a more high-art bent).
In every stage, it’s evident that Bruckner, Oat, and Procopio are passionate about what they do. For as strange as it seems to insist that an action figure must “tell a story” or have a “line of action,” the authors’ advice is geared toward helping the reader to succeed. For instance, they emphasize careful planning in the design stages; that way, you won’t waste time molding and casting only to discover that your product is unworkable later.
For the sculptor and non-sculptor alike, the real treat in Pop Sculpture is the photography. Not only does it include pictures of various finished figurines, but in most cases, each step of molding, casting, and painting is painstakingly photographed. The artists’ work spaces are documented as well. There’s nostalgia in the images of paint palettes and basement workbenches; the process resembles that of model kits for children, but here it is vastly more intricate, serious-minded, and, if you believe the authors, lucrative.
For all of the geeky wonder that this guide inspires, Bruckner, Oat, and Procopio are well aware that they have something to prove. The authors write in the introduction, “Unfortunately, action figures are often held up as crass commercialism of the highest degree and artistic integrity going out the window. To many, action figures are not art; they’re a commodity. We beg to differ.” After seeing the amount of work that goes into every stage of creating action figures, Pop Sculpture makes good on its assertion of artistic value.