INTERVIEW: Four Horsemen Studios

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In anticipation of a hot holiday season for Mattel’s fan-favorite DC Universe line-up, SuperheroTimes.com recently caught up with the men responsible for this fan-favorite comic figure series which is – quite literally – flying off retail shelves everywhere. Known throughout the known toy world – and in some alternate dimensions – as The Four Horsemen the sculptors and fabricators responsible for some of the coolest figures in your collection were given the names Chris Dahlberg, Eric Mayse, Eric Treadaway, and Jim Presiosi by their parents. Now, these real life toy gods bring to life classic comic characters in perfect action figure form and do so not only with a smile on their face, but with a song in their heart…

SHT: The DCU Classics figures look fantastic. With so many artist interpretations of each character to choose from, both comic and animated, how do you go about choosing a particular design and what’s involved?

Four Horsemen (4H):We’re very fortunate that both Mattel and DC have allowed us to have a little fun with this line. Although we’re trying to create the most iconic version of each character that we do, we’ve also been encouraged to have a little fun and throw a bit of our own flair into the characters as we see fit.

When deciding upon a design for a character, we don’t use any one artists’ interpretation of the character. We like to take a look at as much of the characters’ history as we can and take inspiration from every facet of the characters’ heritage.

We look at comics, cartoons, movies, toys, statues, etc. and then we take what we like best or consider most iconic about those incarnations of the character, add in a bit of our own influence, and try to blend all of that into a Mattel/Four Horsemen version of the character.

SHT: So far, you and Mattel have made great choices for the Collect and Connect characters. Is there any chance fans will see even larger figures in this format, such as Anti-Monitor, in the future?

4H: There’s always a chance. Something like that really all depends on fan support for DC Universe Classics and the continued popularity of the line. We’d LOVE to be able to release something like a two foot tall, glow-in-the-dark, roto-molded Chemo figure (below), but there’s no way we can ever do anything like that if the sales aren’t going well…

SHT: How long does it usually take to get from the design phase of a figure to the final product’s release? Please describe the process involved…

4H: Well, right now we’re working about a year in advance. If scheduling continues to go the way it has been on the DC Universe Classics line, the figures we’re working on now should hit the shelves late in the 4th quarter of 2009.

First we brainstorm with Marketing and Design over at Mattel to come up with characters and waves that we think will work well together. After we nail down a preliminary annual wave line-up, it gets run past DC for their approval. This often requires another brainstorming session and changes to the line-ups are often made.

Once all of the characters are set, we start into a wave by digging up as much reference as we can. From there we begin the sculpting and fabrication of the figures and accessories. Sometimes we are familiar enough with the character that we can just go right into the clay or begin fabrication, but more often than not, some rough sketches are created just to give us a guideline to work from.

After the sculpting and fabrication on the figure has been completed, it goes through the molding and casting process, using silicone rubber for the molds, and a fast setting urethane resin for the castings.

For the DC Universe Classics we usually create one unpainted tooling pattern which will be used to create the steel molds at the factory for production, and one fully painted ‘paint-master’ which will be used for both promotional purposes and painting reference.

A LOT of work goes into making two castings – one of which usually gets pretty much destroyed during the tooling process at the factory.

SHT: Any chance fans will see vehicles or playsets in either the DCU Classics or DCU Infinite Heroes lines in the future? Perhaps a Collect and Connect bonus vehicle of some sort…?

4H: Again, there’s always a chance, but there are still quite a few large-scale DC Universe characters we want to see done as Collect & Connects before we get to that.

Being big fans of the New Gods characters, we think it would be really cool to get around to doing Metron and be able to build his chair as the Collect & Connect item (below). A Collect & Connect Batcave or Fortress of Solitude would be awesome too, but that’s getting waaay ahead of ourselves…

SHT: Any chance fans will see non-superhero characters like Lois Lane and Alfred Pennyworth in the DCU Classics line somewhere down the road?

4H: It’s not out of the question, but currently we’re focusing more on the super-heroes and super-villains of the DC Universe. To us, they’re just more exciting and fun…

SHT: What other non-superhero characters would you like to make?

4H: If we were to do non-superhero characters, a business suit version of Lex Luthor would probably be very near the top of our list. Obviously, as you mentioned, characters like Lois Lane, Alfred and even Commissioner Gordon would also be high priority.

SHT: Will fans be seeing other DC imprint lines in action figure form; characters from books published under the Impact, Vertigo or Wildstorm imprints?

4H: That would be a question that Mattel or DC would need to definitively answer for you, but as far as we know the answer is ‘no’. As far as we know, Mattel doesn’t currently have the rights to any of the characters from Impact, Vertigo or Wildstorm. (Editor’s Note: This is correct. According to Mattel, the company does not have the rights to Impact, Vertigo or Wildstorm characters.)

SHT: What does it mean to you on a personal level to be sculpting some of the most well-known superhero characters of all time and is there an added pressure to please fans?

4H: Of course. We’ve all been comic book fans since we were kids, so it’s like a dream come true to be working with Mattel and DC to turn many of our favorite comics characters into three dimensional, six inch, articulated representations of those characters, but one thing we always try to keep in mind is this… No matter how big a fan of the DC Universe characters we are, and no matter how much we think we know about those characters, there are TONS of rabid DC Universe fans out there who know WAY more than we do about this stuff.

Even though we’re doing the work for Mattel, those rabid fans are our real bosses. If we don’t satisfy them, then we aren’t going to have a job for very long.

SHT: Which character or characters have become your favorite/s since starting the line and why?

4H: Etrigan and Orion were a couple of our favorites from the very beginning. We were so jazzed to be able to launch the DC Universe Classics line with a New God and a fairly unknown (at least to the general public) demon anti-hero.

Getting the chance to do characters like Black Manta, Solomon Grundy, and Batman Beyond in the first few waves was pretty cool as well. Not really obscure characters, but certainly unexpected for that early in a line.

As for waves that haven’t been released yet, it was great to finally get Metallo produced. Wave 6 is a big favorite of ours – Kalibak, Mr. Miracle (with Big Barda following in the next wave), Shazam and Hawkman? Some of our all-time favorites. And Killer Moth (below)? Who the heck ever thought we’d get to make that guy?!?

SHT: Which character/s not yet in action figure form would you most like to see made into a DCU Classics figure and why?

4H: Any of the New Gods we haven’t done so far would be at the top of our list. We’d like to be able to complete both the satellite-era Justice League, and the classic Legion of Doom, just for sentimental reasons…we’re well on our way with both of those. The Metal Men and Hawk & Dove are some of our quirky personal favorites. And any chance we can get to do any of the JSA and Golden Age heroes would be a blast…