Kidrobot x Staple Pigeon!

It’s been awhile since I last updated my blog, actually I haven’t updated my blog since NYCC! I decided to take a small break from custom toy work and finish some of my other pending projects, plus I just got Batman Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, so wanted to play them! It’s been so long since I last played video games!

Kidrobot and Staple came out with a collaboration project of a vinyl Staple pigeon. For those that don’t know Staple Design, they are a clothing collection, a creative agency and a retail store founded by the one and only Jeffstaple. You can watch a short video of the man here:

Staple from Eighteen Eighty on Vimeo.

Anyway, I wasn’t sure if I wanted the pigeon since it was a little ‘puffy’ for me and the price was a bit high. At the last minute, I decided I wanted one but I was busy the day Jeff was doing his signing at Kidrobot NY, so I missed it. I wanted one but wanted one signed by Jeff; so on Twitter, I contacted @reedspace (Staple’s store) and @jeffstaple if he can sign a bird for me for pickup at the store. Jeff and Reed Space responded saying they could probably hook it up for me and last Friday, on my way to Chinatown, I stopped by the store (dope) and picked up my brand new SILVER signed pigeon (most of the pics I’ve seen of the signing, the regular pigeon was signed in black ink and the white pigeon signed in gold ink). The silver signature is dope since it doesn’t stick out and conforms to the colors of the pigeon. So it’s like it’s there, but not really there. Love it – this is the first vinyl toy I have no intention of selling/giving/modifying/etc!!!

Click on the image to enlarge!

I also wanted to cop a black OG pigeon cap, but they didn’t have my size! Bummer!

Props goes out to Jeffstaple and Reed Space for hooking me up! Jeff is an inspiration to me, to go and do your own thing and make your own clothes, I’d love to be like him one day. I really wished I made it out to the signing so I can meet the man in person, but maybe another day!

AW177 New York Comic Con 2011 Day 4!

Day 4 you say? What happened to day 3? Well I didn’t attend the con on Saturday, had to take my wife and daughter to see Yo Gabba Gabba Live! which was quite fun! Sometimes you have to make that sacrifice to make those you love happy, but it was a really cool show!

Yo Gabba Gabba Live! (click on pics to make them larger)

I totally missed all the happenings on Saturday and most of the signings on Sunday at the Tenacious Toys/Toy2R booth, so can’t really report on that. I did see some new customs at the booth, one was from Ian Ziobrowski titled “Crook ED the Cop”; how awesome it was, it seemed almost lifelike! That’s taking custom work to a whole new level! Also saw OsirisOrion’s custom 16″ Qee, now it’s one thing to see pictures of it on the web, but it’s another to see these in person and notice all the small details and intricate paint work and lines. Very impressive work from both these two great artists!

Ian and Osiris Qees

Osiris Qee

Next I stopped by the Art Whino booth, didn’t really get a chance to check out all the great artwork they had there, and there were plenty! Some of the cool things I saw:

Yoskay Yamamoto’s “Screaming for the Sunrise”

Various J*RYU customs – awesome in person

Kano’s live painting of Iron Man and Spider Man; dope work!

But really liked the Iron Man one the best!

J*RYU & Woe’s “Rucky Bam Boo”

Angry Woebots painting (you have to see the details to notice the great skill involved)

Saw this steel dumpster at the booth and thought it would be awesome to customize; metal and very large as well! But at $200 it was too expensive for me and I really didn’t want to lug it back home on the subway!

One day…one day…

Next went by the Trampt booth and saw this awesome custom from Sergio Mancini (winner of this year’s Munnyworld)

Also met Keegan from Trampt who showed and told me all about his site, which includes a library of customs that you can update and put information into it, basically a wiki for designer/custom toys. I thought it was awesome and created an account as soon as I got home. Go check it out at trampt.com – thanks Keegan!

Saw Simone of tokidoki fame (as usual a ton of fans waiting to get ish signed by him)!

Simone Legno

Now I saw this guy and there were people wanting to take pics with him, but for some reason, I can’t seem to figure out who he is; anyone out there have an answer for me??

Who is this guy???

Why didn’t anyone try to stop this guy??

He kicked the sh*t outta him!

I also met up w/ my little cousins who I haven’t seen in awhile, but by the time I got there, they were about to leave, but it was great to see them! Bought the smallest one a Square Enix green Master Chief figure!

At the closing of the con, I hung around the Tenacious Toys/Toy2R booth and chilled w/ Benny, Steph, Kris (Kid Ink), and Nemo (1/2 of the Bad Applez crew). Packing up some of my left over “Circuit Death” t-shirts, I decided to hook up Nemo and Steph with shirts. Nemo’s always been way cool w/ me, so glad he liked the shirt. Check him out looking ballin’!

Nemo loving the shirt!

Gotta say, Steph looks like a model in my shirt – can’t ask for better promotion!!!

YOWZA!!!

Nemo sketched this dope artwork for me:

“Kreepy Kidz”!

I think my shirt gave Nemo some extra ‘mack’ powers!

Daaaaaamn Nemo!!!

I wish I could have stayed to help them tear down the booth, but I had to get home to my daughter. For some reason, I could never really find anything to buy at these cons, I don’t have the space for vinyl toys and just got things that caught my eye. Here are my swag from this year’s con:

AW177 NYCC 2011 Swag

Got the tokidoki Captain America NYCC exclusive cap; thought it was funky w/ the little wings on the side! Not sure if I’m ballsy enough to walk down the street w/ it, but for now, I think it’s kinda cool!

You like??

Blank Unicornos; thought they’d be interested to customize one day:

tokidoki blank Unicornos

Midtown Comics’ “Good Ol Steve” Captain America exclusive t-shirt:

Love that it’s not exactly like Captain America and has a real cool style to it! Yea I’m on a Captain America kick for some reason…

Tyo Toy’s Chinatown Dream Truck; saw this at the Art Whino booth, and when I saw it online, I thought it was pretty cool. I got it at a great price (price went up online) and will use it to explore my graffiti side one day (yea I used to dabble in graf a while back). I love how it really looks like a Chinatown truck (I’m so used to seeing those things), and it weighs and feels heavy! Great details and qualities, I’m really happy with this purchase!!!

Maybe a “Circuit Death” logo on the side?? Hmmm…

Well that about wraps it up for my recaps at NYCC 2011! I kinda played it low key this year and had a really awesome time and glad to meet and chat w/ so many great people! Shout outs to go Benny & Steph of Tenacious Toys, Kevin Winnik from Toy2R, Kris Dulfer, Mr Munk, OsirisOrion, Nemo, JC Rivera, Matt Anderson, Rsin Art, Keith Poon, Keegan from Trampt, John “Spanky” Stokes, Zam Art and anyone else I may have missed! Hope to do this again next year and do it even bigger!!!

AW177 New York Comic Con 2011 Day 2!

Day 2 of NYCC for me was much more tiring than day 1. I pretty much walked most of the floor and took a few snaps of things I thought were interesting. For some reason, I can never seem to get too much into the video games and comic booths of that nature; also from some of the newer booths to appear this year, I was a bit disappointed in what I saw. Anyway let me explain more and in no particular order, here are some pics and random thought tibits of my day (click on the pics to enlarge)!

These were some of the things I thought were cool; this Grimlock poster from Transformers: Fall of Cybertron was pretty awesome. I love Grimlock and needed a pic of this!

From there, I arrived at the Cultyard and caught up to the Tenacious Toys/Toy2R booth where Matt Anderson and Rsin Art was doing their signing. Both guys are pretty awesome in person and it was really good to meet them face to face. Rsin is a monster of a fellow and from what he told me, he lacked sleep all day yet was ready to sign and sketch for the fans! Their 16″ Qees are very impressive in person, from what you see in pics online is one thing, but to get up close and see the details in person is another. Matt’s resin skull Qee that lights up was really detailed and their combo resin mini Qees were beautifully done (should have took a pic of it). They sold 3 of the 4 when I got there so congrats to those that bought one!

Matt Anderson Qee

Rsin Qee

Of course I needed a shot of my little guys as well!

Also at the booth I met and chatted with JC Rivera, Mr Munk, Zam Art, Robert Ingellis (OsirisOrion), John “Spanky” Stokes, Keithing (ToyQube), Benny & Steph of Tenacious Toys and Kevin Winnik of Toy2R. I met and spoke with Dai Tran of Rawrs and saw his Bitsumo resin figure – really clean and really cool, I wanted one pretty badly but just didn’t have the money to drop on one! However, we worked out a t-shirt trade where he got one of my “Circuit Death” tees and I got one of his. We may do a collabo custom on a Bitsumo too soon, which I’m pretty stoked about!

Other things I saw:

Matty Collector 12″ Ghostbusters set (I already have these)

Matty Collector 12″ Ghostbusters 2 set (coming December 2011)

Details on these figures are pretty lifelike and includes the slime spray cans used in the movie!

Ghostbusters Trap

Voltron set with figures: now this is awesome! You can get the lions and their pilots and the lions are large! Combined together, this Voltron is about 2-3 feet tall! I think the black lion w/ Keith cost about $60 and the rest were $50 or $55; you can get Sven if you got all of them or something. If I had the space and money, this would be mine!

Passing by the Bandai booth, I love Gundams but just haven’t had time to build any, so wanted to pass but this caught my eye…

All the perfect grade Gundam Astrays, gold, red, blue and green! What an awesome display! I am always tempted to get the PG red astray, but hate having to spend so much time to build it. I still have the MG one and never can devote the time to build it!

Red Astray

Gold Astray

Another booth had on display props used in the movies, forgot the name of the booth, but saw the Batman suit:

And Tumbler:

Some Lego or other building block Optimus Prime:

The Marvel booth where they have it set up for the Avengers:

And Captain America’s suit:

Tons and tons of cosplayers, saw this one that I really liked:

“GET OVER HERE!!!”

I really wanted to see either Yaya Han or Linda Le, aka Vampybitme, but it was so large and tons of people, either I walked right by them or totally missed seeing them! You know how you see their online pics, you want to see how they are in person. Plus Linda was in her Black Widow gear today so it was disappointing not to see her. Plus tomorrow she’s going as Psylocke and I’m totally going to miss that since I can’t make it to the con! Ah well.

Now some more disappointments:

Johnny Cupcakes makes their 1st appearance at NYCC and they only had a tiny booth w/ about 3 t-shirts, some of their new Big Guy figures, pins and other small assortments. I was hoping they would have a larger selection of t-shirts to choose from and their vinyl figure was not very appealing to me. I wanted to get a tee from them since I never had one and now I guess I never will.

My wife loves some Threadless Tees (http://www.threadless.com/) so I heard they had a booth and went to check them out. When I got there, I saw this:

They were not selling tees but you can sketch on some paper ideas and if they choose yours, it can become a tee. WTF? No tees to buy? Lame! Totally disappointed!

As for my thoughts on the Cultyard, I thought there were many booths that were just awesome this year. Art Whino had many live paintings and it was fun to see how they did their thing up close. Gotta give props to Tenacious Toys/Toy2R – now I know how I’m constantly blowing them up, but you have to see how they promoted the hell out of some of us ‘unknown’ artists; Benny and Kevin gave opportunities to those that are not as popular as others and gave them a spotlight for signings, sketches, custom toy displaying, etc. They also pushed out other items from the artists involved, for example, let me sell my “Circuit Death” tees at their booth. Sure they were working w/ Toy2R and pushing their products, but it’s a great toy platform to work on and Toy2R have been getting new artists out on their products for quite some time now. I hope to continue to work with them in the future.

Let me ask you – would you take a chance at an unknown artist, buy a 16″ Qee and give it to them w/ the hope it may sell to get your money back? It’s a big chance and one that Benny & Steph was willing to take and I will be forever grateful to them.

There were some of the usual booths at comic con that gave signings to the usual big names, which is great but I am glad to know that one booth looked out for the little guy.

Oh and I saw Andrew Bell from a friend and told me that he can create a picture out of a few scribblings you do on paper. So I challenged him by making a wu-tang logo and see what he can do to complete the picture. This is what he did:

Great huh?

So again, props to the artists I met and re-met today, also met some people who supported artists in any way they can and it was just a great experience. Tired and hungry, I left a bit before closing.

I hope to have another NYCC update on Sunday! Thanks for reading this! Oh and remember, save $5 off “Circuit Death” t-shirts w/ discount code ALLENBDAY! AW177 Store

AW177 New York Comic Con 2011 Day 1!

What a day today was and it was all very exciting and so much fun! Here’s a recap of how my day went down for those that are interested!

I received an email from Benny from Tenacious Toys saying that I needed to get my Qee down to the con as soon as I can, since there was someone interested in buying my 16″ Qee around 4:30pm! I called Benny back and told him I was on my way down and should arrive around 6pm. He emailed the potential buyer and told him to come back around 6ish if he’s still interested in buying the Qee. I took the bus/train down and rushed over to the con and made it there around 6:15, but the guy didn’t show up yet. But it was really great to see Benny & Steph from Tenacious Toys again and nice to meet Kevin Winnik from Toy2R! Also props to Keithing from ToyQube, Mr. Munk, Nemo, and a whole bunch of other people!

L-R: Kevin, Steph, Benny, me (click on pic to make it bigger)

There are a lot of great customs in the Tenacious Toys/Toy2R booth; I think that makes it stand out from the rest, they were promoting more of the artists and their art rather than to just sell production toys. I am really honored and appreciative of Tenacious Toys always supporting my work!

My 5″ Qees on display

My 16″ Qee on display

The potential buyer came back later and bought the 16″ Qee!

This is the fine French gentleman who graciously purchased my custom 16″ Qee on the first preview day of NYCC 2011! I am truly humbled that he liked my work that much to buy it right away! Thank you so much!

And on top of that, someone came and bought one of my limited edition “Circuit Death” t-shirts!

This is the fine gentleman who was kind enough to buy one of my limited edition “Circuit Death” t-shirts and had me sign the shirt + some stickers! Thank you so much!

By the time this was all done, it was 7pm and the con was closed! I am happy that my custom 16″ Qee sold so quickly, but wished it couldn’t have been displayed longer for others to view, but it’s all good, as long as the buyer(s) enjoy my work, it makes me truly happy to continue to create art. Thank you to all for your support and I’ll make another update of the con tomorrow!

What to do, what to do…

Say hello to my big friend. What to do, what to do…

Aftermath of Hurricane Irene 2011!!!

Hurricane Irene came down upon my area over the weekend and with heavy rains and wind, we were lucky to be able to make it out ok. Only a few branches fell here and there. However, down my block here in Queens, NYC, a few trees fell and I took some pics to document what happened.

I know this isn’t my usual blog entry, but thought this was interesting to show!

Hope everyone else who went through the hurricane is fine!!!

AW177 + New York Comic Con 2011!

Um…should I go? Not sure…?

Gripes about being an artist at times!

For those that catch up on my work and read up on my blog about my latest news, I thank you for that. It’s definitely an honor that you come to my blog and take time to read about my news. So to those that like my art and work and support me, I thank you very much. Please do not hesitate to contact me just to talk, chat, ask for advice/help, etc., whatever you need, I’m more than willing to be here for you!

Aside from that, I don’t usually gripe on my blog but lately being an artist can be quite annoying. Sometimes you’ll have streaks of really cool stuff to work on, then you can get nothing, then back up again, then nothing, it’s like a roller coaster ride. At times I’ll get asked to design a toy and be really excited about it and throw my all into it, only to either have to wait and wait and HOPE it’ll be made one day or used at all. Or get rejected by just saying ‘it was not chosen’. Art is so subjective at times who knows what these companies want? I just keep doing my thing and if they ask me to submit designs, I’ll do so but if they don’t pick them, well it is what it is. But it just gets really frustrating.

Read more…

Question to You Folks – Copyrighting

Hey all,

For those that read my blog (appreciate it!) I wanted to throw out a question to you all: copyrighting. How many of you have logos, symbols, characters, etc. that you created, and afraid to put them online due to theft? Do you actually go about the process of copyrighting your creations? And if so, how do you actually go about doing so?

I have currently 2 copyrights; 1 for my 2D “Circuit Death” logo and another for my 3D “Circuit Death 3D” logo. I submitted my copyrights to the US Copyright Office and almost a year and half later, after some pestering and emailing for statuses, I finally received my copyrights for both images. However, if I changed a detail of the image, let’s say I wanted a different color, would I need to submit another copyright? Or would one copyright suffice?

Or let’s say I created a character(s) and wanted to put them on t-shirts, website, etc; would it be a good idea to copyright the characters first and then show them to the world? Doing so may take a year and half to get the copyright; by then I would have moved on to another project! And if you submitted a character copyright, would you have to show a graphic of the front, back, side, top, below, etc?

Now I read that once you put something up, you automatically have a ‘copyright’ for it, however if someone copies it, it’ll be harder for you to fight it w/o an official copyright. Or I heard about the DIY copyright, about sending you a letter w/ the graphic in it to get the date/time stamp, but that doesn’t hold up anymore. Or if I put up something on my own personal website, would it be a good idea to copyright my entire website to protect my property??

Lots and lots of questions and I would love to hear some answers from those that have any experience in it. Please place some comments/info/help if you have any and appreciate the responses – maybe this info can help those that have the same question(s) out there. Thanks!

AW

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all my peeps out there who supported me and wishing you all the best of love, luck, health and happiness for the upcoming year!