COMIC CON 2011 UPDATE

so, there was a mix up with our Comic Con booth for this year. we were supposed to have a corner booth in the Toy Growers Courtyard, but unfortunately that won't be happening. we'll be close to that area, but not quite in that area. we could have had a standard booth in there, but we felt we really needed a corner booth.

our new booth number is 5137. it's close to Artist's Alley and close to the dreaded Tshirt Tower of Terror that dwarfs everything that falls within its shadow. we shouldn't be too hard to find, so please stop by and see us.

10-Doh! CALL FOR ARTISTS "RESULTS"

the deadline came and went and here are the results. the artists only had 1 month to turn in their artwork, so i'm very happy with the turnout. we 17 entries and only 1 winner. even some artists from around the world took the time to participate. so, here are the entries in no particular order, except the last one.

Allison Revilla

Ashley Hay

Luis Alonso Arias Escobar

Bryan Bramley "Shez"

Bryan Bramley "Shez"

Bryan Bramley "Shez"

Bryan Bramley "Shez"

Aug

Abell Octovan

Dennis Coyle III

Chris Dobson [alto]

Chris Dobson [alto]

Chris Dobson [alto]

Catarina Carvalho

Alaina

Alaina






and the winner is......









Tom Katari Design & Illustration

and there you have it. Super Gaffiti Kid will be turned into a really real 10-Doh! figure later this year. i wanted thank all of the artists that took the time to participate in our little contest. hopefully, we'll be making plenty more 10-Doh! figures for many years, so i'd like to do another contest down the road. we should have some figures for sale at SDCC this year, so keep checking back for more updates.

WONDERCON 2011

it was our second year exhibiting at Wonder Con and setup took us a while. we arrived at 1 and move in went smoothly. but, we didn't get out of there until 7. i think we were just tired and we were movin really slow.

tons of people showed up all 3 days. friday was the slowest day, saturday was crazy busy, and sunday was short but steady.

we had our standard booth again, and had our new So Analog resin figures for sale. we also brought some of the customs from our Dcon custom show.


i love me some Captain America, i sure hope the movie is good. i tried the new game and it seemed decent. the other image of the Tshirt tower of terror. our booth was suck behind this monster. it made the show feel claustrophobic for us. we still got plenty of traffic, but that doesn't mean i didn't want to burn that ugly mess down.

we didn't get to see all of the costumes out there. they always get stuck up front taking photos for hours. these were some of my favorites. you gotta love Ax Cop, Adventure Time, and Bat Wolfman was pretty funny.

this M.O.D.O.K. was awesome. Galactus was pretty good too.

we always eat good up in SF. our friend Daisy made us fancy individual bread puddings with fakin bacon. we actually had ice cream for dinner one night. then we always end our trip with breakfast at the Millbrae Pancake house before we head home.

no convention blog update would be complete without some sleepy time photos. it's hard to see Jerome cuz of the glare, but he was snoozin away in there.

overall, Wonder Con was a great show. sales weren't quite as good as last year, but still ok. we had lots of repeat buyers which was encouraging, and hopefully we made some new fans. we plan on being back next year and hopefully in a better location away from the Tshirt tower.

10-DOH! CALL FOR ARTISTS

This is an open call to all artists. Squid Kids Ink is looking for some creative and clever labels for their new line of 10-Doh! figures. The selected submissions will become part of the 2011-2012 line of So Analog figures. All selected designs will be on display in the Squid Kids Ink booth at San Diego Comic Con 2011. The rules are down below, and the deadline is March 31st so get crackin.

download templates here
http://squidkidsink.com/soanalog10doh_template.zip

Rules-
-Open to the whole wide world.
-Multiple entries are welcome.
-Subject matter should be somewhat family friendly.
-All submissions must be original artwork. No copyrighted characters or artwork will be accepted.
-Both front and back labels must be submitted at the same time and both are required to be chosen.
-Files must be submitted by email on one of the templates provided at 300DPI in PSD, JPEG, or AI file format. Make sure they are CMYK for color correctness.

All entries grant Squid Kids Ink the right to reprint the artwork in future SKI books. All selected art will become sole property of SKI to be used on an actual 10-Doh! figure and a mini art print that may be included with the figure. No artwork will be reprinted to be sold as a stand alone item.

Artists whose artwork is selected will be notified by email no later than April 7th. They will also receive 5 production pieces of their design.

Please send all submissions or questions to nate.squidkidsink@gmail.com. Make sure to put "10-Doh! Call For Artists" as the subject of the email.

SO ANALOG IN GERMANY????

sooooo, way back when i first posted the So Analog custom show announcement on SpankyStokes.com, a lot of websites picked up on it and re-posted the images all over the place. it was pretty exciting to see the great reception of the figures were getting.

i was contacted by GEE magazine from Germany. they asked if it was cool to print some photos in an issue of their magazine, and of course i said yes. i'd never heard of the magazine, but then again, i haven't been to Germany, yet.

they were kind enough to send me a copy of the magazine and that arrived this week. below is the translation that my magical iPhone did for me and makes sense, mostly.

Audio cassettes, NES modules and disks are yesterday's technology? Not for Nate Mitchell. In his "So Analog" figure includes the collection of the artist let Datentragern inspiration from the past. These heroes of our childhood, say modern silver discs in the fight - dusty and forgotten is different.

i'm currently working on doing a small production run of the 10-Doh! figure. i'll post a real update once plans are finalized.

WAY BACK WHEN

i started sculpting when i was 19 or so. and it's been at least 10 years since these images were published. i used to send images of my sculpts into all the toy magazines. some magazines had contests and others were just to showcase fan work.

i think this is the first magazine that published one of my sculpts. the sculpt was based on a friend of mine that wanted to be a pro wrestler. it was sculpted out of the original white Sculpey in Kemmerer WY. this guy fell in the oven and smashed his face. i did my best to repair the damage, because i already learned the lesson of not finishing things. apparently i hadn't learned how to keep a figure stable while cooking.

so, i have a terrible memory and i can't remember which order i sculpted these figures in. most of the photos were taken all at once. Darkness was sculpted while i was living in Tempe AZ. the only reference i had was the movie, so i just had it play constantly while i was sculpting.


i sent the same photos to several magazines, so there are a lot of repeats. i lived in Moab UT for about 3 months, so that's why it says i'm from Moab. all sculpts were done in AZ and WY.

i was a big Predator fan for a long time. i based this off the cover of Predator: Big Game issue #1. of course it doesn't look anything like that. this was the first time i ever used Super Sculpey. he was sculpted in WY and has removable armor.

these 2 figures were both sculpted in AZ. i was a huge fan of Alex Ross at the time, and Earth X was his current work back then. Oink is based on a comic a friend gave me.

this was the big contest i won. the Abe figure was one of my first sculpts and was supposed to be for a Toyfare video game contest. he was made of regular Sculpey and fell over in the oven. i didn't get around to fixing and finishing him until after the due date. i later saw the results and another Abe won that contest. lesson learned.

another reprint, but this page also included an image of some of Hot Toys early products.


it feels like these were sculpted several lifetimes ago. these aren't my first sculpts, but they show the 2nd stage in my sculpting life, maybe stage 1.5. as you can see, i used to sculpt figures that weren't available to buy. McFarlane toys eventually made real toys out of Darkness and Predator, but i never bought them. now i try to create my own characters and sculpt those instead of existing characters.

SKI WILL BE AT COMIC CON 2011 WOOHOO!!!

we got this letter a week or so before D-Con in November. i have to say it was a big surprise. we stood in line at Comic Con and turned in an application with a couple postcards, but didn't expect to get a booth for 2011.

we kept hearing that there is a 6 year waiting list, but some how we only had to wait 6 months. i'm sure that exhibiting at Wonder Con, APE, Anime Expo, and all of the others shows helped out a bit. we're hopin to have some cool stuff ready for the show.