Dragon-Con Disappointment

It looks like we won't be having a table at this year's Dragon-Con. Long story short, a number of factors needed to come together in order for the project to move forward...and they didn't. I'm disappointed, but what can you do. Hopefully, we'll be able to put something together for next year's ACE.

Custom Munny Mobile Pics

A friend of mine in San Francisco, the up and coming customizer Puppetbrain, did upa custom Munny Mobile for Kidrobot's custom contest. He didn't win, but his piece was pretty cool:

Munny Mobile Project

Kidrobot released their new Munny Mobile DIY figures this month. What I like about this piece is the 4" Munny figure. It will be interesting to work at that scale. I'm looking forward to customizing one of these as soon as I get a chance to hit one of my local retailers and pick one up.

Warrior Munny Project

My latest custom project is my Warrior Munny. This is the first 8" munny I've customized, so it was interesting working in this scale. In addition, instead of using a painted basecoat, I actually took a hint from the Kidrobot forums and dyed the vinyl. I'm not sure I like the dyed effect as well as a good painted base, but I liked the opportunity to try a new technique.



For the eyes and mouth, I used some metal forming mesh sandwiched between super sculpey. This gave a little depth to eyes and mouth, as well as contributing to the "mechanical" feel. I added some random scorch marks to simulate battle damage.



I kept the rear simple, except for the wingpack. I wanted something on the back of the figure to suggest flight capability, and came up with the winged jetpack you see here. I'm not as happy with it as I hought I would be, mainly because by this time I was losing steam on the project and just wanted to get it finished. That's why I skipped adding a lot of detail to the wings to make it look more metallic and less like a pair of silver painted cardboard wings the likes of which I used to play with as a kid.

Oh well.

A Blue Monday is Coming

Some friends and I are taking another small step towards developing an urban vinyl presence in Atlanta. We're forming an online company called Blue Monday, through which we hope to build enough of a presence in the industry (as well as raise enough capital) that we can eventually open a brick and mortar location here in Atlanta.

We're planning to man a booth at this year's Dragon-Con over Labor Day weekend. Between now and then, we'll be developing a website as well as establishing accounts with major wholesalers.

I'll post more updates as they become available.

The Vader Project

Starting today and going through Memorial Day, Star Wars Celebration IV is a huge fan show being held in Los Angeles. One of the highlights of the show is The Vader Project, an art exhibit featuring 70 1:1 replicas of Darth Vader's helmet, customized by some of today's hottest artists. There's a good write-up of the exhibit here at Vinyl Pulse, complete with pictures:

One of the artists participating in the exhibit is Atlanta's own Derick from Urban Medium:

I had occasion to meet Derick and check out his studio last year. He was a nice guy, obviously very talented.

Atlanta Comics Expo

There was a small comics book convention in town this past weekend. Atlanta Comics Expo is being billed as a sister convention to Dragon-Con, the huge con held in town every Labor Day weekend.

It was a pretty good time. Rosario Dawson was there promoting her new comic book. So was John Wesley Shipp, from the old Flash t.v. series. Tara McPherson was also there, promoting her new figure. A couple of friends of mine from out west had a booth and were selling vinyl figures, apparel and books. The booth did a fair amount of business, which was good, as we were hoping to create a presence for urban vinyl at these cons. Until this year, there hasn't been any presence whatsoever. Hopefully, these initial efforts will grow into something larger.