Wanderlei Silva is by far my favorite fighter of all time. There was a point in his career while at Pride where he seemed virtually immortal. When I first started watching MMA, his super aggressive Muay Thai, pre-fight wrist roll and deadly stare-down was hard to not be a fan of.
I have seen a few of the videos that Kahleem Poole / KahL-One has put together of various MMA fighters and I have to say, this one is by far one of his best. It has great footage of Wandy from Pride, UFC and training in Las Vegas and Chute Boxe. A great highlight of a legendary career that still has a lot of life in it.
I am always looking forward to his future fights, he isn’t exactly what he was while in Pride, but he never disappoints and I will be rooting for him no matter what. I hope to have the privilege of meeting in the future as well. MMA fighter are my celebrities!
So I have been working on the droppixel redesign and decided that when it is all finished the blog will have a fresh start. There are going to be a few posts that I am going to go back and keep, but for the most part the new launch will be a clean one.
So, I have been a little quiet on the custom/blog scene as of late. I had been working on a Dunny recently on and off whenever I can get some time/motivation together to get downstairs and paint without the boys needing my attention. Well, last night I was finally able to finish this guy up.
This Dunny is for a KR board member that hooked me up with a sweet deal … a stash of Dunnys for a custom in return! I couldn’t have been more excited to have had that deal work itself out, considering some of the other artists, I wasn’t the only one to receive said deal, on the forums that were inquiring about this as well … I was honored that he accepted.
We had a little discussion about what he would like to see or if something out of my current stable of work would do. He offered up some suggestions on things that he really like and also said that my current pieces would be nice as well. So I decided to take his suggestions and throw my style at it and this is what I landed on, the Cheshire. There is something about that character that has always been really fun. I wanted to try to do something very different from what I have normally been doing lately, so I started doing some visual research and came across a pretty fun image of the Cheshire cat. Boom! It hit me, that is what I had to do … just had to figure out how to do it and if it would work properly with the position I wanted to have it displayed in.
After a little trial and error, I was able to find a solution. So I got working … I sculpted the arms in place to mimic the image I was using for inspiration and sculpted a tail out of Super Sculpey. I hadn’t done any major sculpting on my previous Dunnys, except for my current series – so I found this as a nice chance to really work at something like this and do a little experimenting. The painting went pretty smooth, did have a minor scare with a Deco marker … I ended up stripping the head and starting over basically after all was said and done. This was also the first time I had used a gloss finish, again another chance to try something new. This is what the end result turned into.
A few other shots can be found on my flickr. You can also vote on this piece at Delicious Drips.
Banksy is one of those graffiti artists that I truly appreciate. I wrote a post not too long ago about ABOVE and how I really enjoy his work. Banksy’s work is right up there in my book! There is something about Banksy I really admire, his “unknown” factor. By that I mean, he is a ghost… How in the world he manages to do what he does and not get caught or not have his true identity revealed is astonishing to me!
While on vacation last summer, we stopped in New Orleans and I was speaking with an artist in the French Quarter. Oddly enough I happened to spot an ABOVE stencil on a drop-cloth hanging from a building behind him and that got us talking about Banksy. I knew he had hit NOLA a few years after Katrina, but didn’t know where and that most of the pieces have since been stolen or buffed… The artist I was talking to said the same thing I was thinking about him, “He is a ghost…” He went on to say “I don’t know how he did it, but he hit areas that you could get your throat slit during the day!” He then told me that he thinks all of the pieces are either gone or had been buffed but one, the Rain Girl, which I had not known prior to the conversation.
That got me very curious about his NOLA tour and I wanted to track it down and catch a look at it on our way out of the city. I did some searching around on some forums and found out roughly where it was. No exact address was listed so I talked with one of the doormen at the hotel we were staying at and asked him about the Drop-In Center. He looked at me like I was crazy and told me where it was. So with heavy convincing, I got my wife to swing by there with me on the way out of town.
Needless to say, when I saw this trailer for his movie “Exit Through The Gift Shop” I got really excited…
For anyone that has seen it, I have a pretty good (at least I am very happy with it) start to a MAD collection building at my house (some shots on my flickr, might not be 100% up to date). Yet I kick myself in the rear quite often lately for not listening a little closer to what a friend of mine had to say about designer vinyl back in late 2007. Had I listened, I would have gotten into the scene at a much better time. I have missed out on so many awesome things, that I hope to eventually be able to track down and own. A few of those things I wish I had been around for were the various goods that MAD had been putting up on the KR forums.
I didn’t get into collecting until late 2008, very early 2009 and at that point I didn’t really know a whole lot about some of the artists. I was first introduced to Dunnys, as most people are, and was immediately drawn to the Modern Hero Dunny MAD had done for Series 4. Turns out, that was the first Dunny I bought as well, thanks to eBay. Then got lucky enough in my first real blind box pull to have landed a Series 5 MAD Detective. I started to look more into his work and found that I really enjoyed what he was doing. So one day I sifted through all 160+ pages of his thread on the boards one day and saw a ton of awesome pieces he put out through his packages. There were some really awesome doodles and customs on his signature MAD*L platform that now I would kill to have!
Lately MAD has been putting together some custom pieces for solo shows and other various events that I have been completely blown away by, mainly his Guardian figure. There is something about it, it is a simple yet intricate design, that just speaks to me. One of these days, one of these days … I will be able to put together the funds and put one of these in my house.
Used this little guy as a “test” for some ideas I have for some future projects. Just a simple 2″ Domo Qee and acrylics. I hadn’t really done any weathering yet in my brief time doing customs and this turned out to be a lot more fun than I had expected. This is something I could see myself taking quite a ways. It brings back memories of my undergrad days, slaving away in the metals studio! As a graphic design major, some people thought I was a bit of an odd ball because I had such an obsession for 3D media in that form. What can I say, I love metals! There is nothing like working with copper, bronze and other non-precious metals. Something about those materials just hits the spot.
Got started last night on a new piece. I am using it as a test run for some future custom ideas. I haven’t done anything like this yet in my brief time working on custom toys, so it is a learning process for me and so far I feel like it is going well. Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of my progress last night. I will get a shot uploaded tonight, if I get a chance to work on it some more.
Other pieces that are coming down the line are: more of my blind box series, still total run and release date/price tbd and a custom for a KR member that hooked me up with a stash of Dunnys. I know what I want to do for him/her, it is just a matter of gathering a few more reference pieces, ironing out a sketch and sitting down at my workspace to get it going. I am really excited to see how this idea turns out, it should be a fun one!
I have been working on these custom Dunnys recently for my first blind box Dunny series. A lot of the details are to be determined and will be finalized in the near future. When I am ready to launch these guys, I will be doing a contest with Spankystokes.com in which the readers will vote on their favorite design and leave a comment so that a winner can be selected. The design that comes out on top from the poll will be the one that is set aside prior to the rest being boxed up and made available for sale.
This character just developed one day while I was sitting in an office meeting. I began doodling on my project list…faces and expressions started to appear and I decided to get the paints out and get one of these down on a Dunny. The first one was Green with Envy. It was fun seeing that develop from paper to vinyl and the rest are just starting to fall into place. So far a lot of the designs are floating around in my head, but I have a pretty good idea of what I would like to do. More color combination’s, expressions and potential accessories are on the way. I haven’t determined what the final run size will be, but might keep the first run small and then launch a series 2 later on down the line.
Keep in touch on my twitter and here ( I will try to blog much more than I have been lately ) for the details and information.
Came across this today while looking for some inspiration to spark some creativity for an upcoming brochure at the office. This is one of those images that I found to be absolutely hilarious and needed to share, or at least catalog it for future reference. Enjoy.
