My Mudman - The Face-up Review

I just received my bearded Gnaeus head with an Impldoll default face-up today. I knew they had changed their face-up artist and I had been a bit a bit worried about it already in beforehand, but I could not have prepared myself for the shock I got this afternoon.

I had tried to instruct Impldoll in multiple ways to give me clean, classic face-up, but... well, clean and classic it's not! This new face-up artist they have really does seem to be utterly incapable of following the designs and replicating the promo face-ups. They take liberties and persist with their style regardless of requests. Already my default Akasha and Tdelia, who are also by this same new artist, look nothing like their promos.

The work of this new artist also seems often hurried and sloppy. They forget to paint the teeth of the vampires, do goatees where there shouldn't be any, blush the foreheads crazy red or gun down the entire face with their airbrush so that you can barely tell the skintone from underneath anymore... Ouch! I'm not a fan of this caveman eyebrow style of theirs either. The several centimetre long eyebrow hairs creep me out, quite frankly! My new Gnaeus has darkish brown blushing all over his face in places where there really should not be any! He looks like he tripped up and fell face first into a mudpit, for crying out loud! The detail work is ok standard in the lower eyelashes and lips, but crikey, those brown and red blotches all over are not acceptable!!! Where is the quality control on these face-ups?! Does anyone inspect them before they're shipped out?!

I do most of my own face-ups, but I also like to collect other artist's face-ups. It's thrilling for me see the work of another artist and I value even default face-ups as works of art in their own right. To me they are still each unique and handmade, something to cherish. I find it more interesting to have some face-ups to photograph that aren't done by me, so that I get plenty of variation in looks and styles. It's fun to study other artist's techniques and I appreciate often the choices they've made, even if it's not something I would necessarily do myself. It takes something really quite extraordinarily shocking for me to throw negative criticism at another artist, particularly publicly. I'd be willing to accept even rather big differences to the original designs. However, I do not appreciate sloppy, haphazard and unprofessional work! And what I've got in my hands today looks to me horribly messy and just downright dirty.

Impldoll has one of my favourite sculptors in the world. I love their work! I was a huge fan of their previous couple of face-up artists. They also still have that swift and good customer service that I appreciate, but this newest face-up artist, in my opinion, is not up their standards. A great sculpt would deserve a good quality face-up. What a shame that's not the case anymore... :(

ON ANOTHER TOPIC:

It's almost as if Impldoll guessed I'd be displeased, because my parcel contained a white blank basic Sophia head as a freebie gift. So, hail Mary, I've entered the VIP head recipient status now as a customer. Luckily, I did not get an LE head, so that I'd need to worry about having "stolen" one from someone who would have really wanted it. I still don't approve of this practice of throwing heads arounds like candy. It de-values their own product.