It’s taken over two and a half years of development to get here, but pre-orders for the First 4 Figures True Form Midna Statue finally opened up on Friday! On the eve of Validation Tuesday—the day when everyone who preordered early can validate their order for Day One bonuses and low numbers—I thought now would be a good time to help those still on the fence decide with a recap of The Making of True Form Midna Documentary Recap! Don’t have time to watch the whole 97 minute video? I’ve got you covered…

[Note: The best way to enjoy these First 4 Figures Making of Documentaries is always to watch them yourself in their entirety. In fact, if you decide you want to watch it now, I’ve placed the video below for you to do so! But if you don’t have the time to do so or already have and just want a refresher, read on for 2500+ words of all the juiciest details…]

0:00: The Intro:

• Along with their beautiful, super-white background, First 4 Figures CEO Alex Davis and Chockles have a middle-sized turntable, which is quite speedy and makes a beepy noise as well–fancy!
• True Form Midna is the 7th piece in the Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess Series (following Zant, Wolf Link & Imp Midna, Ganondorf, Link on Epona, Princess Zelda and Ganon’s Puppet Zelda)

3:09: “What inspired you to create this statue (and you can’t just say ‘the game’, because that’s a given!)?” (from Anna Tikikata Watson)

• This is something that F4F has been working on for a long time. F4F started working with Nintendo in 2006 when there were only three people in the company, and Alex’s wife (Kanako) would receive quite a few requests for Midna in her true form.
• Kanako would reply as customer service that it wasn’t likely because True Form Midna only appears for a few minutes in the game, but the popularity of this iteration of the character has grown over the years and been amplified by the First 4 Figures Facebook Page and later the First 4 Figures Official Collectors Club Facebook Group.
• Once the F4F OCC opened, there was discussion and promotion about True Form Midna so frequently that it was just too hard to ignore anymore.
• If it wasn’t for people rallying for this character, she wouldn’t be being made today because she literally appears in the Zelda Twilight Princess game for less than two minutes.
• It is the fans and collectors who inspired First 4 Figures to create this statue.

9:23: “TFM was supposed to go up for order in Q2 2017. After one years it’s her time to shine! What changes did you make in this year?” (from Alessio Bucci)

• There have been quite a few different tweaks done to TFM over the time period. Alex can’t begin to tell us how many times they started and restarted.
• “We painted her the wrong color.” When we first made her, her skin tone was a slightly bluer color and First4Figures got a ways down the line before Alex realized that True Form Midna’s colors didn’t match Imp Midna’s.
• She was also very, very challenging to make and the difficulty kicked F4F’s butts for many, many months.
• The other major reason that TFM was delayed was because First 4 Figures didn’t want to have another situation like they’d had with the Life-Size Majora’s Mask, where Nintendo requested changes before production and production ended up being delayed by almost a year.
• F4F wants the time between pre-order and delivery to be straight-forward and smooth, so for True Form Midna, First 4 Figures decided not to open up pre-orders until final approval had already been given by Nintendo.

14:40: “How long have you had this project underway for?” (from Miranda Sykes)

• In October 2015, Alex Davis actually sat down and decided to look into doing a True Form Midna statue. Had initial pose concepts and ideas for this statue at that time.
• In January 2016, the F4F OCC group opened and the amplification of requests for this character became apparent and Alex decided to really go ahead with this project, despite the character’s short screen-time in the game.

16:38: “How did you decide which pose to go with for her? Usually, when regarding Zelda/Nintendo, you guys are restricted to official art only. Unfortunately, True Form Midna lacked an official artwork when the game was released. How did you decide which pose was the winner and how easy or hard was it to convince Nintendo to accept it?” (from Silvio Lattuada)

• It’s a bit of a misconception that First4Figures is restricted to doing Zelda statues that only use the official artwork. While the original Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask statues were done, it was difficult to create “HD” versions of the angular in-game models of the characters, so the easiest way to create statues of those characters (such as Fierce Deity Link and Skull Kid) was to use the universally-accepted official artwork of those characters.
• F4F chose to use the official artwork because it was the universally-accepted idea of what the characters should look like–not because they were restricted to creating those characters using the artwork. It made sense to go with something that people would recognize for those characters.
• For the most recent games like Twilight Princess, Breath of the Wild and Skyward Sword, there’s more movements and defined character models from the games that people could recognize and F4F didn’t have to depend on official artwork as much.
• When it came to True Form Midna, First 4 Figures really wasn’t worried about the pose. Having said that, F4F originally used inspiration from a Hyrule Warriors Twilight Midna pose, but that concept was rejected by Nintendo and is now in the Vault.
• Nintendo wanted the pose to be from the game from the scene where Midna first turns her head and you see her in her true form, so that this statue would be an exact snapshot of the moment and strongly tied to Twilight Princess and not another game like Hyrule Warriors.

24:14: “How early in the process was the decision to not use fabric made and why?” (from Jonathan Jakubowski)

• The Zant statue–the first statue in the Twilight Princess line–came with fabric clothing. The third statue in the line, Ganondorf, came with a fabric cape. Princess Zelda and Ganon’s Puppet Zelda also had some fabric on the very front of their dresses. However, Wolf Link & Midna and Link on Epona had no fabric on them.
• True Form Midna’s cape, however, would have been nigh-impossible to have in the shape that F4F wanted if it was made of soft goods.
• Alex decided pretty early on in the concept that fabric wouldn’t be used here–F4F really hasn’t used mixed media at all since the Princess Zelda statue (besides on the sail of the King of Red Lions). Alex didn’t think it was important to keep using mixed media for this piece.

28:56: “How much did you love to work on this project? Also, any difficulties when you started her?” (from Pascal Michaud)

• Zelda is one of Alex’s favorite franchises, and it’s an amazing gift and honor to be able to work on any statue from the franchise. Alex loved working on TFM, and Chocks had a lot of involvement working on her at the later stage with a lot of work on the designs to bring something so simple to life.
• True Form Midna is not very dynamic–she’s just standing there. Other statues such as Saitama and Guts are in dynamic poses that people don’t see every day, which makes it easy to replicate those poses in statue form. Whereas F4F didn’t want True Form Midna’s everyday pose to look like she’s from “the uncanny valley” (ie looking almost human, but not quite there).
• When you look at a pose you see every day, such as someone just standing around, you can tell if that person looks stiff or natural instantly. When something is 99% there looking natural and not stiff, that’s not good enough. “Just standing there” is probably harder than doing an action pose that people don’t have a natural point of reference for.
• TFM isn’t just stiffly standing there–her hips are going slightly forwards, but she’s arching back because she’s turning her head to turn backwards. This is why TFM’s eyes are looking to her right–because she’s looking over her shoulder. There’s subtle movement in her eyes, head and body because of the moment that’s being captured from the game. All of these things had to be considered when making the pose.
• It was actually really tough to achieve this balance to get True Form Midna looking natural.
• TFM’s arm also isn’t going straight down–it has has a slight bend, which affects the flow of the cape over her arm. This is another reason that fabric would have been quite difficult to implement here.
• First4Figures knew the pose had to be the one that Nintendo requested, and then F4F had to make it look realistic and natural, rather than stiff.

37:00: Alex and Chock Discuss Details About the Sculpt and Base

• Midna’s crown was actually quite difficult to achieve, because it’s composed of separate pieces that have to be put into the correct position right in the middle of her forehead. The little prongs go a little bit higher in the in-game model, but also have to go through the hood–F4F had to make sure that they didn’t go over the hood, since they have to go through it. This was a difficulty with translating the 3-D model into physical form.
• F4F spent a long time working on the face in the sculpting stage. The makeup on Midna’s eyes was difficult–the colors include yellow, red, orange and purple. Midna’s unique eyebrows are very unique and angular and not shaped like a normal human. The angles are really subtle and Midna-esque, and her makeup is very outer-worldly. A lot of time and pain was spent getting the eyes on Midna just right.
• Should Alex and Chock ever want to do a cosplay of Midna, they’ll know exactly how to do the eye makeup! “Put a message in the YouTube video comments if you want to see Chockles dress up as True Form Midna!”
• There’s a vertical line around Midna’s belly-button area. It was specially-requested by Nintendo that this be more obvious in order to improve the shape of her stomach.
• Character design is supposed to be subtle and classy.
• Individual fingers are relaxed–not like she’s getting ready to do a karate chop.
• The print on the back of Midna’s cloak was really difficult to achieve, as it was difficult to get it to match and flow with the actual shape of the clothing.
• Originally painted Midna’s cloak black, but then you couldn’t see the darkest parts of her patterns printed onto it. So the cloak ended up being dark grey instead for greater contrast with the patterns.
• The pattern on this inside of the cape also took a lot of time, even though you can’t see a lot of it easily on the statue.
• The cloak has a very distinct green color on it.
• What a journey–TFM really challenged F4F and kicked their butts for a long, long time.
• It wasn’t just about the pose/concept/sculpt–but the whole idea of having the hair on the outside seamlessly blending into the inner body was a nightmare to execute engineering-wise. Really, really though–but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!

57:15 On The Base:

• The base is a representation of the Twilight Mirror (which is like a portal between the worlds of Hyrule and the Twilight Realm).
• Lines are hand-painted on the base in a way that’s intricate and really hard to do–not printed on. A beautiful way to represent the Twilight Mirror in a 3-D way as a base.
• You can feel the grooves of the lines and Hylian script on the base–they’re not just printed on.
• Really wanted to incorporate the Twilight Mirror as part of the concept of the base itself, because the Twilight Mirror is such an important part of her scenes.

1:00:34 On Measurements

• Midna is 4 cans tall
• 17″ tall (43 cm)
• 9″ wide/deep (23 cm)
• A compact piece for once! Quite a lot of impact for the small space it takes up!
• Midna’s size was governed from the moment Zant and Ganondorf were made, as she had to be in-scale with them
• Weight: 2.9 kg (about 6.4 lbs.)

1:05:00 On The True Form Midna Exclusive Version

• There’s a button on the back of the base that activates a light-up LED function in Midna’s hair
• True Form Midna’s hair glows super bright when the lights are activated. It made sense to have this feature to match the light-up feature of the Imp Midna on Wolf Link statue.
• The EX version doesn’t have any difference in dimensions from the normal version, although the rechargeable battery built in may slightly increase the statue’s overall weight.

1:09:20 “What was the reason for the choice difference between the regular and exclusive?” (from Joseph Grigg)

• Whoops, Alex already answered this question. Rewind to the previous section!

1:10:45 On The True Form Midna Definitive Edition Version

• Something quite new for First 4 Figures! A beautiful case with which to display your True Form Midna in a definitive way!
• Where did this come from? People always asking if there are any cases that F4F can recommend, but the choices are rather limited. Alex and Chocks talked about how Midna is a compact piece, which made her a perfect piece to try out something new like a display case with. There’s no change to the overall piece besides the base being made a bit thicker to accommodate extra features.
• The full case does not spin on its own–it’s on a turntable during the video.
• This is F4F’s first-ever case, so there are a few aspects that are still a work-in-progress.
• Right now, the case is made of acrylic pieces that have been molded together into one piece, but it wouldn’t make sense to have it like this for shipping. F4F believes the case will eventually be made of four individual pieces of glass that slot into the display case, but this still needs to be tweaked and confirmed.
• The final display case will look relatively similar to the prototype–the materials and dimensions may just change slightly. Width and depth of the case seem to be perfectly balanced right now, but the height may be reduced slightly.
• Acrylic sides would be lighter, but more prone to scratches and dust than glass would be. Glass is heavier, but much clearer and won’t have as much reflection as acrylic. F4F just wants to make sure that glass can be shipped in a safe way–F4F is experimenting, as this is their first time making a display case.
• Being able to separate the sides of the display case for shipping will be safer and will also keep shipping costs down (as the box won’t have to be as humongous if the display case isn’t shipped as one fully-built unit).
• Would like to add some subtle etching to the display case–maybe the name of the statue or the F4F logo.
• Believe that the top and bottom of the cases–the black parts–will be acrylic, but not 100% sure yet.
• Will keep collectors updated on the progress and any revisions to the Definitive Edition display case through the website and F4FOCC group.
• There are micro-USB slots and indicators on the top and bottom of the display case, as well as buttons. No prizes for guessing what these mean–they activate the 8 spotlights (4 on the top and 4 on the bottom).
• But could the Definitive Edition really not include all the features of the Exclusive Edition? “Definitively–NO! You can’t do that! So how do we deal with that?”
• It wouldn’t be practical to force collectors to get out a ladder and take the display case apart just to push the button on the base to activate the EX light-up hair–so there is no button on the base! Instead, there’s a one-button remote control that allows you to easily activate Midna’s hair from a distance.
• Pressing the remote button a second time will activate the 8 lights in the display case. The lights are purple–because they’re UV (Ultra-Violet) lights! Chocks knows these lights from his clubbing days!
• The Twilight Mirror base is painted with UV reflective orange paint that really glows with the use of blacklights. There’s glow-in-the-dark green accents throughout the piece as well that glow otherworldly. This gives her a Twilight Realm feel in dark conditions.
• It would be a shame if you couldn’t see the beautiful patterns on the back of Midna’s dress without climbing back into the display case to rotate her, though–so there’s one more feature! The top part of the Twilight Mirror base is motorized and turns in the Definitive Edition only. This activates when you hit the button on the remote for a third time.
• Will come back with more information on the weight of the Definitive Edition once the materials used for the case have been finalized. Width and depth should be about finalized now, although the height will likely be reduced a bit.
• True Form Midna makes an epic piece on her own, but also looks really, really good for anyone lucky enough to own the other statues in the collection.

The True Form Midna F4F statue is now up for order in Regular, Exclusive and Definitive Editions, and is scheduled to ship out in Q2 2019. Validation begins at 11AM EST on Tuesday 5/15/2018 for those who pre-order early, so be sure to get your orders in ASAP if you want to snag your Day One bonuses and the lowest available number for your statue!