Sunday, January 31, 2010

SQUIB KID CUSTOMS


so, i never thought i'd see a squib kid with this much gear on him, but i like it. dou did an amazing job on this guy. hopefully she continues helping us out.

we've sold quite a few of these guys so far. hopefully people will start sending in photos of the customs they do. dou gave this guy to linda and i as a x-mas present, and it only took me a month to take photos. not too bad.

CUSTOM SQUIBS

this is the first custom squib ever done. i spray mounted aluminum foil all over this bad boy about 2 years ago. i used a dremel to grind out the bite mark and printed out SKI strip to finish it off. it's super simple, but worked out really well.

Chito A-Word based this fella on his samurai squib postcard.

linda hong cranked out this little guy just before D-con. another cute panda from linda panda.

this guy was a rejected casting. the wall thickness were so thin at a couple of spots, that i could poke holes with my finger. this guy should have been thrown away, but i have a hard time throwing away anything. once i started making bigger holes, i could see some strands of resin inside that looked like guts or brains. that was enough to give a direction and way to save him.

jay and dave of mana studios worked this guy up for me. rivots, guns, metal, and tentacles. how can you go wrong?

irene medonis did a fancy candy skull type paint job on this one.

another one by linda hong. it's based on the postcard i did for our postcard pack.


soooooo, here's the first batch of custom squibs. most of them were on display at D-Con, but i wanted to post some better pics of them. these are the result of the trial and error period of casting up the squibs. the bottoms were too bubbly to sell, but of course we didn't want to waste anything. thanks to everyone that took the time to customize a squib. hopefully it's just the beginning. i plan on posting photos of as many customs that get done. sooo, please gets your hands on one and get creative.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

IN THE BEGINNING.......kinda?

all of these images are part of my original website. i had no idea what i was doing, so try not to laugh at the overall awesomeness of it.

i haven't read through all the text from these pages in well over 2 years. hopefully it's all correct.

so these little guys started way back in school and i just recently saw another deviled egg figure out there. of course the sculpts are different, but it is a similar concept. i guess that's what happens when you don't your ideas out there quick enough. i figure there is plenty of room in the world for all kinds of egg figures. it's not like mine was the first egg figure ever.

1st girl sculpt ever and still the only one. maybe someday i'll do another....maybe.

Mr. Freeze is still my favorite Batman villian. even after The Batman animated series totally butchered his story by making him some punk diamond thief. LAME. how can you go from a man willing to sacrifice the world to save his wife, to a simple thug that got in an accident? i did like the styling though.

these figures have been frustrating for a long time. i've tried at least 3 times to see if Mirage and Peter Laird would be interested in letting me license out and produce these figures as a vinyl toy. unfortunately, they weren't too fond of the idea. i think TMNT as a brand is more than strong enough to be seen in a variety of styles. they've allowed tons of comics artists put their spin on the Turtles. maybe i didn't have a big enough name as an artist, or maybe it was a money issue, or maybe they just didn't like the styling. at least NECA got was to do a collector toy line. it was good to be able to buy good TMNT toys again.

this sculpt also got in front of Mirage for a bit. they like it for the most part, but wanted me to change the gun. i guess my artistic interpretation strayed too much. it obviously didn't go anywhere. i wanted to continue sculpting the other 3 figures, but priorities change, and TMNT has never been a priority for me. i sculpted at least 5 different styles of TMNT figures. i even sculpted a preschool version. i did this because i grew up loving TMNT. i never officially worked on the TMNT toys. i helped out on a couple of products, but nothing i would want to claim. unfortunately, working for Playmates killed my love of TMNT for a while. hopefully, Nickelodeon will turn things around.

so this is what Squid Kids Ink used to be. i had a desire to sculpt and usually sculpted my version of other peoples characters. eventually i grew tired of this and started working on my own designs more. all of these sculpts were done in my spare time while working at Playmates Toys for a 2.5 year period. it wasn't the best place for me to work, so i'm glad that i was able to move on. we made molds and castings of all of these figures. i don't have them up on our web store, because we have a very limited supply, if any. the TMNT figures were never for sale, even though we had a lot of requests for them.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

SQUIB KID Development

i sketched these, rendered them up in Photoshop, and included in our postcard pack. they were intended to explain how and why the Squibs get their arms and legs. hopefully it makes some sense.

i sketched these up after Linda Hong drew up some space Squibs. the one on the left looked like he had legs and arms to me. so, i started developing that idea further.

these sketch were what i started sculpting from. it gave my a good idea of how i wanted him to turn out. like usual, i continued to develop and refine the look through out the sculpting process.

this figure was slightly different than most i do. different only in that i took an existing Squib and ground off all of the tentacles and used that to form the head. that way it was exactly the same as all of the Squibs. then all i had to do was sculpt a body. i used Castilene for the rough sculpt and refined it in wax.

so here he is all cleaned up, sanded, and primed. the head is rotocast and the body is solid resin.

these are some of the sketches i used for our postcard, print, and my custom Squib Kid.

here's one side of our postcard/flyer. we had them out at Anime Expo and we were running out, so we only give them out with a purchase now. it sucks, but even those cost money to make.

and this little bad boy was my first Squib Kid custom. the helmet is real leather with digitally created "S" logo. the headphone lookin pieces were acrylic half spheres that were molded and cast up. then i used coaxial cable on his back. i haven't done one since, but once we put a custom show together i plan to do another one.

i have high hopes for our Squibs and Squib Kids figures. currently we're only planning to continue making blank resin figures, because it's much cheaper than actually producing them in China. and just like with the regular Squibs, we plan on doing a custom show at some point and post photos of all the customs. So, we have blanks available in our web store. just like all of our products, we tried to price them so that we don't lose money and people can still afford them.

SQUIB Development

in the upper left hand corner is my original Squib sketch. there are times where i get inspired and have to start sculpting immediately, or at least within in a day or two. this was one of those times.

this is the cooked Sculpey sculpt. this guy was sculpted over a weekend just after drawing the sketch from above.

here's the refined wax sculpt.

way back when, i had to pay 500 bucks for a casting to scanned. it was high dollar, but necessary.


and now we have 3 sizes of squibs so far. custom size=4.75", stamp size=3.75", keychain size=1.125"

here is a blank casting that can be purchased at our wonderful webstore now!! we also have Glow in the dark versions available.

Chito A-word helped out with the logo and did some line art for people to use for deco call outs and custom exploration. i plan on posting photos of the customs that people do. so, please purchase one and do something fancy.

Soooo, this post shows a bit about how the Squib sculpt came to be. this has been a great character to develop and has grown into much more than i thought it would. it's pretty much become the icon/mascot for my company and more. we're working on the story and developing the Squibs world even further. of course i have a ton of other projects in the works so it's tough to focus only on Squibs during my limited free time.