Palisades/Henson Coloring
Awesome!
I'm worried by this statement: "Note that the colors on the nose are being revisited" -- they're the closest yet! Don't let Henson tell you it's blue!
Does anyone else besides me feel that Henson themselves are the reason for some of the very few shortcomings of the line? Pink headed Animal, sky-blue Gonzo nose, Floyd's flourescent moustache... etc.
It seems Henson has two sets of style guidelines that they use - the puppets themselves and representations of them by outside sources. I get the feeling that the colors Palisades are being told to use are just the default colors that Henson tells people to use for CARTOONS of the Muppets.
While I understand (somewhat) that, for example, the desire to have cartoons of Gonzo have consistent coloring, they have to settle for something easy to reproduce. But when you've got an incredible company like Palisades who is willing to do a dozen paint passes (or whatever they're called) just to get Gonzo's nose right, you'd hope that they'd cut them a little slack. Palisades seems more dedicated to preserving the characters' likenesses than JHC themselves.
I think the coloring of Floyd is the best example of my theory that they are using cartoon coloring. The seperation of the moustache and hair colors makes perfect sense for a cartoon -- otherwize you wouldn't be able to distinguish them in a 2-dimensional line-drawing, and there'd just be a mass of red around his head. However, when you look at the puppet or the figure, there's no need for such a drastic color distinction.
The final item of evidence is Ken's comments on the "Clifford" thread on the Palisades. Hi posted a cartoon of Clifford first, and also the puppet. When asked what the colors would be like he responded that they would be exactly like the cartoon, and "close" to the puppet...
Does this make sense? Does it matter to any besides me? Has my long-repressed desire for a correctly colored Gonzo-nose driven me to insanity?
- Derek