Announcing the 4th Fortnight Bonus Round: 'Hero or Heroic Group' & Curt's Dekard (or the sixth Nexus 6)

I'm happy to announce that the fourth thematic bonus round is now ready for viewing.

Just as the last round, this weeks entries, whose focus is on Heroes, are incredibly diverse and creative. From flights of fantasy to historical icons, from movie tough guys to venerated heroes of ancient sagas - the gallery runs the gambit. So please enjoy and remember to leave a comment with your selections of your favourites. Remember you can vote for as many as you like so don't feel constrained.

For my own part I knew that the Challenge would start taking its toll by this point so I had planned beforehand to have a fairly streamlined, single-figure entry. But streamlined does not mean flippant. Oh no, I really pondered on this one. 

"They don't advertise for killers in the newspaper. That was my profession. 

Ex-cop. Ex-Blade Runner. Ex-killer."

I clearly remember seeing Blade Runner in 1982 and being struck by its clear-eyed vision of our dystopian future. Since the film's original release, the protagonist, Rick Dekard, has become iconic due to the controversy behind his origins. The film's remake in 1992 'revealed him' as one of those he himself was hunting, a Replicant, a synthetic human, a type of robot whose genetic design made them virtually indistinguishable from humans ('More Human Than Human' as the Tyrell Corporation claimed). 

Personally I've always preferred the original cut with him clearly portrayed as a human. It seems less contrived and somehow more honest. In the original film, Dekard begins to question what it is to be human, what it means to take a life, to die and ultimately what it means to fall in love with that very thing which you've been taught to revile. I think this resonates closer to us today as we've become more polarized, suspicious yet increasingly intertwined with our social media and digital identities. We have become increasingly insular, yet strive to be connected. Wanting to be engaged yet demanding a level of detachment from others. How wonderfully troubling.

Anyway, enough of my 2nd year pop psychology blather. I think Rick Dekard is a film hero tailor-made for our modern sensibilities and so I bring him here in 28mm from Aberrant Rezolution. A very nice sculpt and quite a clean casting, it was a pleasure to work with. Nonetheless, I find it odd when sculptors, who dedicate themselves to painstakingly portraying a particular character, seemingly refuse to follow through with all the details. I really like the subtle posing of the figure, the facial features are amazing and Dekard's clothes are spot-on, but why in Ridley Scott's name isn't his pistol correct? Dekard's 'Steyer-Mannlicher Police Bulldog' is almost as iconic as the character himself, but it's not properly conveyed in the figure. Aggravating. This all being said, I had no inclination to fiddle with putty to try to mod it so I merely added the two LED lights often seen in the film and called it close enough. But this is a tiny quibble, all-in-all a great figure for the collection.

Remember to check the gallery of all the theme's entrants - there are some real corkers in there!