A little while ago I got an email that had me excited. None other than Jason Washburn had contacted me with the prospect of contributing a set of illustration to their famed book series “Color Ink Book”. These quarterly publications are an interesting marriage of two concepts in the world of illustration: The DIY mentality of the children coloring book and the appreciation of the wide range of artistic styles in illustration art. Combining the two results in black and white periodicals celebrating famed and new artists while the print on high quality vellum paper invites people to interact with the art on a more personal level.

As Halloween approaches the 13th edition is not only timed well but it also features only horror illustrations. There is plenty of blood, gore and zombies, of course. I contemplated something different though. Recently I have been infatuated by old medical illustrations and journals – books such as Ernst Haeckel’s “Kunstformen der Natur” or “Human Monstrosities” by Hirst and Barton Cooke. These inspirations fell on fertile ground as I was rethinking my earlier ideas of the “Netzwerk” universe.

In my mind all these freaks of nature are a result of fungal infections combined with a kind of digital corruption that affects all living and synthetical matter. This fungus feeds on available information in its surroundings and recombines it with the existing material…

Make sure to get yourself a copy of this awesome book: Color Ink Book Store”

When I went to work in India for my first time a few months ago I planned on hunting down some original Indian toys for my collection and/or customizing. It may have been due to the city that I went to (Bagalore) or my lack of hunting skills but it turned out to me more difficult that I thought it would be. Chinese bootlegs of western pop culture were everywhere sadly though there seemed to be a distinct lack of toys based on Indian culture.

Finally, after a few weeks of searching I came across some very cheap Indian toy cars made from vinyl. The production quality was so low the flashing was visible everywhere without any cleaning of the seamlines after casting. One of the toys that I bought even had a hair of an Indian factory worker sealed inside the bag! What were these? Small reproductions of the omni-present auto-rickshaws. Perfect for a little custom mash-up run.

Initially I had planned to turn these into some kind of transformer-like toy but it soon turned out to be a very difficult thing to do. Mostly because I had grown fond of the bad production quality and I did not want to try to make it look better than it actually was. Let alone cut the vinyl pieces apart to make the transformer work.

In the end I decided to give the toy four arms as a little nod to the Hindu religion while at the same time transporting a feeling of the ever present trash flying around in Indian cities. The God of Trash is a conglomeration of all the cast away useless junk come to life to haunt those that believe that there is always someone that will take care of things left in the gutter.

All in all it is silly mash-up of an Indian vinyl toy auto-rickshaw and resin parts. A little stab a low quality productions juxtaposed with intentional free-form texture sculpting (I made that up).

First revealed at Toy Karma 3. Get it here: Rotofugi Toy Karma 3 Exhibition

Each colorway is limited to two pieces. Six colorway are planned.

And finally, it is finished.

The piece I have been showing off in the posts below is a custom toy version of my Charlize Harlow character. It is a mash-up of several toys including Emilio Garcia’s Jumping Brain, Camille Rose Garcia’s Lulu, Ashley Wood’s Bambaboss, Ultraman Astromons and a Rolito bird. It will be on display (and for sale) at the upcoming Brain Evolution custom show at the new exhibition space of LA’s Toy Art Gallery – Friday, September 16th, 2011.

With a height of 38cm (ca. 15″) this is my biggest custom toy sculpture to date and due to the materials used it is probably also the heaviest with a weight of 720g (ca. 1.5 pound).

My Jumping Brain custom is shaping up to a rather big one. Here are two more in-progress pictures. Tentacles and transforming arms included. As you can see, I have thrown a few more toys into the mix since my last post.

Intermission!

A short primer on how to eat food in India. 

1. Clean
Clean the plate by rubbing paper tissue over the surface to make sure it is actually clean.

2. Order
You ordered food and here it is. Dig in. Here: 1 roti (flat bread), 1 aloo palak (spinach curry with potatoes) and a lime juice.

3. Eat
Eat using your right hand. No extra tools necessary. Don’t use your left. Why? It is reserved for wiping your butthole. Exception, it seems it is ok to use the left for drinking or using the spoon to put more gravy on your plate. You wash your hands afterall, right?

4. Clean, again
When you’re done the waiter will bring a bowl of warm water with a piece of lime. No, this is not a drink. You squish the lime and the acid in the juice and the warm water will help to remove all the oily stuff from your hand. Afterwards you can use a paper tissue to dry your hand.

5. Pay
Pay your bills and add a tip for the service and good food.

6. Nibble
And, something little and sweet to nibble on. Here it is all aniseed but there may also be some salty seeds sometimes.

The prints of my Eyezon paintings are ready and in the store. Now, since this has been revealed and even printed I thought it might be nice to show off how the whole painting was made. I hope you enjoy it.

1. After working out the composition thumbnails I start with a 1/1 sketch of the painting. This one is actually drawn on very thin paper because I transferred it from previous sketches.

2. Next, I take a charcoal or similar piece of drawing tool and rub the backside of the paper. Then place the paper over the desired surface and basically use this as a cheap method to transfer the sketch/drawing onto the canvas.

3. After I transferred the basic line work I take a pencil of a similar color. In this case brown and tidy everything.

4. I forgot to buy some masking film and so I have to use my regular painting tape. It’s a bit more work but works just as well.

5. My aim was to recreate the gradients that can be found in quite a few ukiyo-e prints and in this case the airbrush was a very helpful tool. The spray even added some wonderful texture making the gradient more lively.

6. The last final step in this case was the inking and painting the details with a brush.

Scanned painting

Prints are available here

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.

I am honored to be among this exquisite group of artists celebrating the 10th anniversary of Ilanena Hoshina. Really honored because this whole project went through in less than two weeks. Ilanena-sama showed a preview image of one of the custom toys on twitter and I told him that I would have enjoyed participating (thinking that 2 weeks was not enough time anyway to be invited and well, usually invitations are closed this shortly before the opening).

But what I did not expect was his reply. He asked me for my address and within one week I received a box with his Dai Kaiju Card Monsters. I already knew what I wanted to do but when I started working on Monday evening I wasn’t successful. I gave up early and it took me a second attempt the next evening to finally come up with the results that I had envisioned.

Inspired by cutaway anatomy drawings of kaiju monsters I wanted to do something similar, yet, also different from what Jason Freeny is already quite well known for. Then I remembered having seen sheet plastinations in an article about Gunter von Hagen and knew that this would be what I wanted to try to recreate. I have to admit that by creations below are not really plastinations in the literal sense. With the little time I had (deadline is next weeks Monday!) I also did not have the time to sculpt proper organs. Hence, the approximate result of a fake plastination. Yet, I am really happy with the results.

…………………………..
Ilanena Hoshina: website, flickr, twitter
Wikipedia: Plastination

And, already well documented on this blog but finally the official announcement. The custom run of 7 Night Gamers will be available for purchase soon.

Each 6 1/2″ high vinyl figure is customized by Daniel hand sculpting and painting his unique vision of the original Night Gamer. Features include, altered head with multiple glass eyes, an internal color changing motion activated LED unit and a unique plush toy animal suit. These are signed by Daniel on the base of the feet.

The edition will be offered via the Plaseebo web-shop on Monday January 24th for $375. each. plaseebo.net

The new year has brought many changes. I am not self-employed any more and I am now working full time as a Senior Visual Designer Sourcebits. So, now making custom toys and my own sculptures has become a hobby once more. Despite having a lot less time to invest in this area it has also freed me from the need to put out anything for the pure sake of surviving.

What you see above is my most recent creation. I usually have a tendency to go overboard with details and it was a nice change to try to reduce an already heavily textured toy to minimalistic doll-like features while still keeping the original proportions.

Alien Argus Adelheid has a little backstory: Despite her eyeless face Adelheid was born gifted. Since her birth she seemed aware of more than any other human around her. Her parents named her Adelheid because despite her upsetting looks, she was of very gentle and noble nature. Everyone else called her “Alien Argus” because once you had met her you left with the impression that she had seen everything. Your past and your future, your very being. Adelheid met an early and unfortunate end when she was lynched by scared group of villagers blaming her for the death of the mayor’s child which she had predicted earlier. Her parents never had any children thereafter.

Oh, and she has pants for every day of the week:

Customized version of Mark Nagata‘s Alien Argus toy. Made from soft vinyl doll parts, Apoxie Sculpt, acrylics and fabric (the doll’s original dress) and internal impact activated color-changing LED. Stands ca. 27cm tall.

Available for purchase at the upcoming “Alien Argus Custom Show” at LA’s Toy Art Gallery.

Mama, Papa, look!

A short little video of the LEDs in action. It gives you an impression of what it looks like but it is mere approximation to the actual experience.

The soundtrack is from Eliot Lipp’s album “City Synthesis”.