Carson is on a roll with updates this week! First, we were treated to an Art of G.I.JOE A Real American Hero Project Update and now he spoils us with an update from Operation: Recall! Check out the scoop presented without interruption:

Engineering color studies, and package paintings, and sculptures – oh my!

The Operation: Recall team is diligently attacking the O:R mountain of work from every angle!

Front #1: Engineering color studies

A huge thank you to Chad LaForce, Scott Brown, David Emmanuelli, and Chris Scott for their help in translating Mark Pennington and Ron Rudat’s color studies into these colored figure 360 turnarounds and accessory engineering drawings. These are going back to Ron and Mark to reference as they complete their presentation art, to Doug Hart for reference as he completes his package paintings, and to the figure painters for reference as they create the paintmasters.

You will notice some minor changes, usually necessitated by resolving colors around design details as the figure turns (looking at you, Damselfly!) and some more major changes where we felt like something just wasn’t working (looking at you, Night Raid!).

Damselfly has some ventilation on her back. That meant that area needed to be covered with fabric, so we covered her back and her front to facilitate this. She doesn’t need to show a lot of skin to be beautiful, and to blow you up from on high!

I went back to the drawing board with Night Raid, researching the Russian attire of the 1980s and settling in on an Afghanka with a splash of Kamuflirovannyi Letnyi Maskirovochnyi Kombinezon (KLMK) camo. Night Raid is a tired old war dog, and I wanted him to show his age. I felt that these uniform choices make him much more a product of his time. Then I worked with JE Russell of Chicken Fried Toys – Dime Novel Legends fame to refine the design. We decided to add some gray in the hair and beard to further set him apart from the young bucks, and we added some old school Russian goggles with flip up lenses. We even colored the lenses orange/red like Hit & Run – since that’s what originally inspired John to design this character. I hope you like him.

We think Night Raid is a great example of how a project can evolve from one step to the next, and hopefully for the better each time.

Front #2: Package art

Package art is underway, and Doug Hart is killing it! Here’s Breacher kicking down your door:

As with everything else, package art is a team effort. As you can see below, it took several steps to arrive at the beautiful Breacher + Hellhound painting shown above. First I presented Ed Morrill with a kickoff packet introducing him to Breacher + Hellhound, along with a cardback template to show him how much space he’d have for the artwork. From there Ed drew several sketches, and we selected the one shown on the top left. Then I snapped photos of 3D printed accessories and a figure posed to match Ed’s sketch (top middle). Then I mocked the package up for Doug with some additional photo reference for Hellhound (top right), and sent him a kickoff packet for all four wave 1 figures. Doug created his first sketch (bottom left). I marked that up with some perspective, accessory and uniform notes (bottom middle). Doug revised the line art, and then he created the painting you see in the bottom right. He also created the screaming variant shown above, where Breacher is yelling and busting down the door.

Front #3: Figure sculpture

Mike Good recently share his sculpture work on the Mzimu Corps and it literally brought a tear to my eye. The detail is insane, and his mask looks so good over his face. Remember, Mzimu Corps are army builders with different scarification patterns on their arms, so Mike sculpted three sets of arms per Mark Pennington’s designs. This is easily becoming one of my favorite Year One figures.