Storm Collectibles came out with a 1:6 scale Dennis Rodman a while back. To better approximate the basketball player’s various styles, it included 10 snap-on hairpieces and at least 2 headsculpts, one neutral, one with sort of a sneer. There was a 3rd preorder exclusive with heavy purple makeup, just to make things interesting. I have no interest in Dennis Rodman and every interest in beautiful headsculpts, so, when I saw the purple head parted out at Monkey Depot for $7.99, I decided that I needed to make it into a character.

This purple-painted Rodman has to be the single weirdest headsculpt I’ve encountered in my life because it blends exquisite detailing, accuracy, and paint with some of the worst, laziest proportions ever.

First, the good: Not only is this an incredibly realistic likeness of Rodman, but it’s also full of lively details. You can really see the strong bone structure of his cheeks, and they’ve even got the characteristic bump on his upper nasal bridge and downward point to the bulb of his nose. I’m really digging that nose…and the mouth. The asymmetry is just breathtaking. While the symmetry of the brows, eyes, ears, and nose is really nothing special, the natural unevenness of the mouth brings in lots of character and expressiveness. Though not on the level of Hot Toys, which somehow manages to sculpt realistic pores in 1:6 scale, this head nevertheless boasts some subtle veining at the temples, as well as creases on the forehead. He even has two piercing indentations in his left lobe and one in his right. Very cool.

Paint on this headsculpt — my second major reason for purchase — also really shines. There’s some delicate darkening around the brow creases, as well as the five-o’clock shadow area, to suggest subsurface color changes, as well as some light brown freckles on the backs of the cheeks, closer to the ears. But the real standout of this paint job is the makeup. The deep purple eyeshadow is bright and even, blending in with a lighter, more pearlescent application, which reaches up to the very even [which presumably means that they’re painted too] brows. There’s a subtle [surprisingly, given that Rodman doesn’t strike me as subtle] application of light brownish pink blush on the inner apples of the cheeks and the nose, while the lips have purposely dark, slightly uneven lip liner, as well as purple lipstick that matches the eyeshadow. Have I mentioned how cool this headsculpt is?

Uh…well..parts of the headsculpt, at least. The bad: This is like a Hot Toys quality portrait combined with the crappy quality and proportions of Sideshow’s early licensed character sculpts. And by early, I mean back in the beginning of the millennium, when they kept making bobble-headed dolls with lantern jaws and teeny tiny eyes that were way too far up on their heads. There’s a beautiful face here in the Storm Collectibles Rodman sculpt, but it really suffers for the weird-looking head it’s attached to.

Okay, apparently the Storm Collectibles Rodman figure body has a thick neck post; also, as I mentioned previously, the headsculpt has swappable hairpieces. Therefore, one would reasonably expect the head itself to accommodate both for height added by removable hair and girth supplied by big fat neck. That’s nice, but, even with [absent] plastic hair and [absent] big fat neck accounted for, this head sculpt still has an alarming lack of a) upper cranium and b) rear jaw area. Check it out.

 

 

I have not yet figured out how to deal with the, uh, missing anatomy. Adding cranial height will be easy enough with an appropriate volume of hair [hee hee hee!], but I’m still thinking about the jaw area. My best bet might be to find a neck on which this head fits and then splice the neck onto whatever body I’m using…