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15

Oct
2012

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In Artwork
NYCC
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By aw177

AW177 New York Comic Con 2012 Day 1!

On 15, Oct 2012 | No Comments | In Artwork, NYCC, Shows, Thoughts | By aw177

New York Comic Con 2012 happened between October 11-14, of which I attend 3 days.  I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to attend NYCC this year, but after some thought, decided to get my professional pass and head down to the con.  On day 1 (Thursday Oct 11)…

I arrived early to mule some prints for a friend of mine.  The show floor was pretty empty, at least for a comic convention, which was great since you can easily walk around and not bump into anyone and not have to swerve in and out of human traffic! While getting the prints, I already saw my first celebrity sighting:

Phil LaMarr NYCC 2012

Phil LaMarr of MADtv Fame!

He was doing some type of interview, but after grabbing my prints, didn’t bother to stay and listen.  Hit the middle of the con floor and there was a long line at the Lego booth, apparently people were in line to buy some Lego exclusive:

AW177 NYCC 2012 1

AW177 NYCC 2012 3

 Again, it was really cool that you can walk around comfortably:

AW177 NYCC 2012 2

Spotted some cosplayers playing an Avengers/Kinetic game: Catwoman vs Black Widow! Game was pretty cool, your character moves and attacks according to your movements.

Playing Avengers

Cool Lego sculptures of DC Superheroes and Darth Maul:

AW177 NYCC 2012 4

Darth Maul Lego

The Project Triforce booth was right across from the Lego booth, where they had some really cool displays of video game replica weapons and equipment; and who was there in their booth? World famous cosplayer Linda Le, aka Vampybitme!

Vampy

She was dressed as Lady Nightwing, the female representation of Batman’s original sidekick Robin -> Nightwing!

I’ve always found the Square Enix booth with their Play Arts figures really cool and detailed, so decided to drop by to see what they had in their display.  They had a whole bunch of Batman figures, some from the movies and some from the video games.  I was tempted to buy the Batman Arkham Asylum figure but held off!

AW177 NYCC 2012 5

My little cousin is a fan of Halo, so decided to spring for a red Halo Spartan figure for his birthday!

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Close by the Square Enix booth was the Bandai booth showing Gundams.  Of course I had to take a picture of my most favorite, the Red Astray Perfect Grade! I always wanted to build one but with so many parts and not enough time, there is no way I can ever finish it! Ah well, a pic will do for now:

Red Astray Gundam

Huge Unicorn Gundam display:

Unicorn GundamWalked by the Archie Comics booth – read the digests when I was younger and saw some funny Archie t-shirts; tempted to buy a Jughead t-shirt to take me back to my youth, but what is it with comic cons that makes you want to buy stuff and then go home and say, “why did I buy this”?  Luckily I said nah!

Archie Comics

Oh and what’s the deal with Archie, he some sort of mack daddy or something? I mean c’mon, guy got 2 pretty girls always chasing him even though he got no money and a beat up car…anyway on to the Marvel booth…

AW177 NYCC 2012 8

Marvel booth was cool, just had the Avengers display up – was expecting to see something with Iron Man 3 like at SDCC, but guess not. This was the only Iron Man display I saw:

Iron Man

Had some Marvel Vans on display, pretty nice but would never wear them:

AW177 NYCC 2012 7

Marvel booth, what the hell? Boring…at this point I decided to head to the Block to see what was going on with my fellow artist peeps.  I had 2 customs and a few packs of gumballs in my bag that I needed to drop off.  Gumballs? More on that later!

On my way to the Block, I passed a booth that had cars on display: the old school Batmobile and Batcycle (dope):

AW177 NYCC 2012 11

The Delorean from Back to the Future (love love this car):

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And the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo!!!

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What an awesome display! They had an Asian model at the booth that you can take pics with her and what not, but no one seemed interested in her, just the cars! Anyway, on to the Block…

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Benny of Tenacious Toys combined his booth with some other artists to form one large booth, probably the largest one in the Block.  They had an L shaped booth, starting on one end left to right: Kris Dulfer of Kid Ink Industries, Mr Munk, Matt Anderson & Rsin, Tenacious Toys, Bad Applez Inc. (OsiRisORion & Nemo), and Ian Ziobrowski.  I have to say it was really good to see each and every one of them, not only are they are my NYC toy art peoples, they are just good people overall.  I had a blast talking and catching up with them!

I had to drop off my custom “Night Terror Owl” that was sculpted by Matt Anderson for his display (Matt’s mug is to the right):

Matt Anderson Display

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 The large sculpture next to my custom owl is Matt’s “Koi”, which is pretty awesome in person – such details and craftsmanship!

Amazing story – as soon as I saw Matt, he told me that someone came by and decided to buy ALL of the Night Terror Owl customs – ALL 25 OF THEM, even though some were not even at the con yet! The buyer didn’t even see mine yet and bought all of them sight unseen! That’s amazing, I have never seen or heard of that done before – congrats to Matt as I know he worked really hard on them and gave many different artists a chance to custom something for display at NYCC! I wanted all the profit made on my owl to go to him as he’s my friend and he deserves most of the credit!

Matt Anderson Display 2

This was one of the first customs I did w/ no planning whatsoever; I usually plan it out and draw up a design digitally to see how it would look like, this time I just took Sculpey and applied it, thought it may look good this way, shaped it, painted it with colors I like, and this is what it came out to look like! I really like how it came out!

Matt Anderson Display 3

Matt and Kris contemplating on the day’s events!

Matt & Kris

Also saw Rsin’s Kidrobot NYCC exclusive production dunny in his display case:

Rsin Dunny

Rsin is one of the hardest working artists out there, forgoing sleep and work constantly to get his artwork out into the public.  His hard work paid off and was rewarded with his first production art toy from Kidrobot.  Not only did he make it onto a dunny, this was a NYCC exclusive, with a signing on Friday from 12-2pm! A look at some of his customs can tell how much work he puts into each and every one of them:

Rsin Customs

The Zukie booth was behind the Tenacious one and I had to drop off my custom Zukie figure from the Zukie vs. the World show.  Saw Alison Perez, aka Miss Zukie running her awesome booth:

Miss Zukie NYCC

Alison is a wonderful person and friend and I respect her a lot for making and promoting her custom and production Zukie works.  She works hard and deserves much success.  Thanks Alison for everything and for displaying my custom Zukie!

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AW177 Zukie

Next up was a visit to the booth of my friend, Dai Tran of RAWRS! He had on display some of his really awesome Bitsumo figures (of which I had customized one for him), including some larger ones (XL) and a new figure – Pandit! His t-shirt wall display looked real cool too!

RAWRS

I feel Dai and I share many similarities – we both have little girls, we both like art and design, he wants to make it by doing his own thing, as well as I…plus he’s a really nice guy.  Thanks Dai for letting me custom your awesome Bitsumo figure and remember, you have to save me one for myself!!!

Swung by the Kidrobot booth to see what they had and saw the Rsin dunnys on display:

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They were not being released till the second day of the con, Friday, for Rsin’s signing from 12-2pm.  Very cool looking in person, think Kidrobot did a great job in translating Rsin’s art and work into a 3″ production dunny!

Dudebox had a large booth display showing off their vinyl art toys; gotta say their toys look impressive and the artwork very nicely translated to toy form.  I really like how their blind box figures had different shapes and forms and not restricted to one form.

Dudebox

Plus $30 for a large figure was a pretty good price for such detail.  I am kicking myself a bit for not buying one of the figures.  I also saw a series called Pete Fowler and Friends, where “the platform style project will feature 3 shapes, each with interchangeable heads + horns/ears.”  The other ‘friend’ in the series was done up by none other than my old boss, Tristan Eaton.  Working w/ Tris in the past, I know he’s the type of guy that if he likes something and adds his work to it, it must be good.

Dudebox 2

I’m excited to see what else comes out from the Dudebox camp!  I spoke to one of their reps (forgot which day that was) and he told me they were open to look for new and fresh talent and give those that never got a break a shot.  I gave him one of my business cards and they said they would take a look at my work – I know my chances are slim on making it onto a toy, but hey, you never know; got my fingers crossed!

As for me, I didn’t create anything new for the con besides Matt’s owl – just didn’t have the time and honestly just didn’t feel motivated.  I’ve been questioning my custom vinyl toy works and feel they haven’t been that good.  I asked Benny if he can re-display my two previous customs I made for him, the “Dragon vs. Tiger” custom 5″ mini Qees, perhaps someone at the con will buy them (no such luck):

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AW177 Display

Now is it me or does it seem like no one likes Qees for some reason? Hmm…

I also asked Benny to bring back my “Eyes of the Dragon” Mystery Machine from the Candy-Coated Custom Show – it’s a working gumball machine made from a 10″ Mad*L.  The mechanism that allowed a gumball to come out would only rotate if you put a quarter into it – however I think it was damaged from the Candy-Coated show and now it spins freely, which is fine since gumballs still came out of it.  Benny and I decided that anyone who purchased something from him would get a spin on the machine, and if anyone got a white gumball they would win a prize! I put enough white gumballs into it but was surprised that no one won anything, or at least I think no one won…?

Eyes of the Dragon

As always, props to Benny – I don’t know where I’d be if it wasn’t for him, I owe him a lot.

All of the artists works I saw at the Block make me realize that either I have to work that much harder on my own customs and art, or just quit entirely since they are just so cool!

At the end of the day, I had to lug all the stuff I muled for people back home, so had to say goodbye to my friends and head home on the subway.  It was a great first day of the con, not too crowded and great for me to see what I needed to see.

And finally, before I forget, I’d like to give props and say it was great to see the following people (no particular order):

Benny & Steph of Tenacious Toys
Kris Dulfer of Kid Ink Industries
Mr Munk
Matt Anderson
Rsin
Nemo & Osiris of Bad Applez, Inc.
Ian Ziobrowski
Miss Zukie
Dai Tran of RAWRS
Shawn Wigs
Cash Canon
Carson Catlin
Colin May
Rob Losito
Keith Poon
JC Riveria
J*RYU
Brian of Deadhand Toys
Lisa of Kidrobot NY

And many many others I may have forgot, you know who you are!!!

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