I'm about a 45-minute drive north of San Francisco, but my first ED is on display at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco for the next couple of weeks. After that, he'll be packed away in storage again.
Shoot me a message when you're going to be in town. It'd be nice to share horror stories.
When I was scaling up the NECA figure, there were a lot of things we took to calling "figure-isms." These were little inaccuracies that made the character practical as an action figure. For example, the feet on the figure are way too big and the gun barrels are way too long. Otherwise, it was pretty much spot-on as far as I could tell.
In hindsight, I probably would've been a lot better off with fewer people helping. Since I had to concentrate on actual money-making projects, I turned the ED-209 into a teaching project. I essentially invited everyone who'd ever asked me to show them how to do any of the processes involved. So I'd spend half a day showing someone how to lay up fiberglass or run the vacforming machine, or whatever, then they'd spend the next two days doing something I could do in about three hours, then I'd never see them again. There were about a half dozen core people that were really awesome and useful, but I spent so much time babysitting some of the less able folks that the help might not have been all that helpful. There were days where I spent so much time answering questions and putting out fires that the only thing I could get done myself was to occasionally sweep the floor.
The best thing to come out of it though, was that I managed to add a few new folks to my crew that I can count on when important, rushed projects come along.
