lanena, Fig-lab and the talented group of international artists who participated in the Dai Kaiju Card Monster Custom Toy Show last month have all agreed to donate 100% of the proceeds from the Show sales to relief for the victims of the disaster in the Tohoku region of Japan.

Website is here: fig-lab.com/daikaiju
Japanese page is here: fig-x.jp/daikaiju

Here is my contribution to the Lunartik Mini Tea Custom Show. The custom was made from the provided mini tea toy by Matt Jones, Glyos pieces by Onell Design and pieces of my Charlize Harlow toy. Painted with acrylics. Measures about 13cm in height.

Lunartik’s Mini Tea Tour featuring 70+ custom works of art, created from Matt Jones’ platform toy, Lunartik in a Cup of Tea.

The Mini Tea Tour debuts at the 43° Gallery in Berlin, then moves on to Vienna to the Sixxa store for spring, then off to the USA and to Dragatomi for summer, and lastly we see this year’s tour come to rest in Forbidden Planet’s Mega Store in London for the Christmas season.

I feel very honored and fortunate to have been invited to the 5th Anniversary Celebration of Mark Nagata’s Max Toy Company.

We (the participants) were asked not send in customized toys but instead come up with our own interpretations of the protagonists and antagonists of Mark’s fictional universe. It was not long ago that I came across the website captainmaxx.com which shows various (fake) vintage cases of packing design, tin toys and photos about Captain Maxx – Mark’s own version of Japan’s most well known superhero: Ultraman. I liked the approach so much that I felt inspired to create my own attempt at turning Captain Maxx and his enemy Eyezon into a fake ukiyo-e print suggesting that the hero and his adversaries might actually be rooted in Japanese folklore, albeit relatively unknown.

The diptych is painted on two panels of grey cardboard using ink, acrylics, brushes and airbrush. Each panel is slightly larger than A4 (ca 8×12 inch). The painting will be shown in Tokyo April 2nd and 3rd and later at San Francisco’s Double Punch Gallery. Prints of the painting will be available later.

Below are some images advertising the show.