Saturday, March 31, 2012

Day 456


Day 456 March 31st

Spectral Winston Zedmore

            I love how DST even recoloured the proton streams to be the spectral green goo right out of the episode!  Winston is spot on again, just like the rest of the set!

Friday, March 30, 2012

Day 455


Day 455 March 30th

Spectral Egon Spengler

            Stepping right off the screen and out of my favourite episode of the Real Ghostbusters cartoon is this spectral Egon.  DST really did a great job with these guys!  I especially love the details in the eyes and mouth, such attention to details like that is what helps make Minimates so awesome!

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Day 454


Day 454 March 29th

Spectral Peter Venkman

            This box set is most likely one of my all time favorite Minimate box sets ever. Out of all the episodes of the Real Ghostbusters this is one that I have remembered since my childhood and when I got vol 1 of the dvds this was the first one I showed my kids!  I love how DST has captured the look for these guys; the green translucent heads, hear and hands are perfect!  Just like the rest of the Real Ghostbusters they have the jumpsuit tampo under the proton pack chest cap so they can be displayed with or with out it.  Killer job DST!

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Day 453


Day 453 March 28th

Stay Puft Marshmallow man

            In the second Real Ghostbusters box set we have another version of the Stay Puft Marshmallow man; this one being some what translucent…not totally translucent maybe more opaque.  None the less it is a fun Minimate to have and I love the colouring, very true to the source!

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Day 452


Day 452 March 27th

Louis Tully

            Coming out of the second Real Ghostbusters box set we have the civilian look for Louis.  A great looking minimate, I love his facial expression and overall look.  Great job DST!

Monday, March 26, 2012

Day 451


Don't mess with the master of magnetism!

Day 451 March 26th

Marvel vs Capcom 3 photo contest

              DST held a photo contest on their Facebook page that was based around their Marvel vs Capcom 3 line of Minimates.  Above is my entry and below are two other ones I came up with while working on my entry!
"Your armour is no match for me fool!"

"Your stealth technology cannot hide your METAL armour from the master of magnetism!!"

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Day 450


Day 450 March 25th

Sundays with my Son

            Here is the brave sir Arthur from the Marvel vs Capcom 3 minimates line.  I really like how Arthur looks and dad has a game that has Ghouls and Ghosts on it and it is lots of fun to play, but really hard too!

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Day 449





Day 449 March 24th

Video Review
Marvel Series 43
Variant Aunt May and SHIELD agent

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Day 448





Day 448 March 23rd

Video Review
Marvel Series 43
J. Jonah Jameson and SHIELD agent

Day 447





Day 447 March 22nd

Video Review
Marvel Series 43
Daredevil and Sin Eater

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Day 445





Day 445 March 20th

Video Review
Marvel vs Capcom 3 series 2
Toys R Us exclusive Taskmaster and Nathan Spencer

Monday, March 19, 2012

The Avengers teasers keep rolling in!


Hot on the heels of Thor and Loki from yesterday DST marketing director Zach releases the Avengers Minimates teasers of Nick Fury and the Incredible Hulk over on @minimates!  He also asks about maybe doing a ninth, make sure to tell him HELL YEAH!

Day 444





Day 444 March 19th

Video Review
Marvel vs Capcom 3 series 2
Toys R Us exclusive 1st Appearance Ryu and Sentinel

Sunday, March 18, 2012

The Avengers Teasers Continue



The mighty marketing director Zach continues with 2 more Avengers teaser reveals today, Thor and his twisted brother Loki!  Keep watch on the @minimates on twitter for the final reveals tomorrow!

Day 443



Day 443 March 18th

Sundays with my Son

            I was very excited to get this Thunderstrike minimate after dad let me read his Thunderstrike comic books.  I love that his mace looks so good but I wish the chain was more open and could fit around his wrist.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

More Avengers Teasers!


DST Marketing guru Zach has done it again, revealing two more teaser posters for the Avengers Minimates!  Up today are Hawkeye and Black Widow.  I am loving these so far and can't wait to see more!  Keep an eye on Twitter to see more as they come, as well as here on the blog!  https://twitter.com/#!/Minimates

Day 442


Day 442 March 17th

The Real Ghostbusters Winston Zedmore

            DST did such a great job with the Real Ghostbusters Minimates I love that they made these.  It has been so much fun to share the toys and the cartoon with my kids.  They really did a good job getting the uniform colours right to match the show, especially the blue here on Winston.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Avengers Teaser Posters!


DST Marketing Director Zach has released a couple teaser images for the Avengers movie Minimates, recreating some of the movie teaser posters.  Two have been posted so far and I am loving them!  Great job Zach!

Day 441


Day 441 March 16th

The Real Ghostbusters Peter Venkman

            I love Peter from the cartoon and the voice actor also did the voice for Garfield, another staple of my Saturday mornings.  DST did an amazing job with Peter, especially his crazy hair! He looks like he walked right off my T.V.!  Another great touch is the tampo under the chest cap so he can be displayed with or without the proton packs, especially since they are shown both ways in the show.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Day 440


Day 440 March 15th

Evil Slimer

            I love the fact that a ghost could get possessed!  DST did a great job getting the look down for Slimers evil version, I especially like how they got the tail/back part done.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Day 439


Day 439 March 14th

Sandman

            This is by far one of my most memorable episodes of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  The Sandman character was a very cool story and DST did and amazing job with the minimate, right down to his blow pipe for his magic sleep/dream dust!

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Day 438



Day 438 March 13th

Louis Tully - Ghostbuster

            Another great job by DST to get this Minimate to look like the source material, I loved that they brought Louis back in the cartoon and even had him in uniform!  The colours and details on this minimate are great, right down to the slightly worried expression on his face!

Monday, March 12, 2012

Day 437


Day 437 March 12th

Stay Puft Marshmallow Man

            I really have to give DST some huge props here.  Not only did they make some great Minimates based on the Ghostbusters movies but this line of Minimates based of the Real Ghostbusters cartoon is top notch!  For Stay Puft here they nail the cartoon colours perfectly; providing a definite difference between this and the movie versions!

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Day 436


Day 436 March 11th

Sundays with my Son

            The Red Skull and Hydra have a new jet for the pilot!  I bet the MAX team is not going to be happy about it!

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Day 435


Day 435 March 10th

10th Anniversary Interviews Series – Digger part 3

            Was it a hard decision to leave Art Asylum when the time came and to add to that are you happy with Diamond Select Toys taking it over?

Digger - Although Art Asylum was officially sold in 2006 I had already resigned in 2005. Years before I left NYC to move to Hong Kong in 2001. I didn't leave to pioneer our manufacturing like I generally told people at the time. I left because I was completely burnt out and needed get the #%$K out of dodge. Without all the personal details (more for other people's sakes than mine - I'm open to fault) we had internal problems. We rented out the NYC Hard Rock Cafe to celebrate our acquisition of the Star Trek license and had every fat cat from every major studio was there from Paramount to Marvel. 




A violent altercation kicked off at the show between me and a mess of other people. Why?  Doesn't matter anymore but we thrashed some of the upstairs, tables crashed over, guitars knocked off the walls, I lost my cool...not a good scene. The short story is that next morning I woke up in my car freezing to death outside Toy Fair and I realized I was DONE. My hair was literally falling out in clumps from stress for months after years of paying the guys with my credit cards, getting screwed over hard by more than one friend/ partner and ultimately trying to get us funded so we could be the Intellectual Property company that I envisioned us to be. We had major problems internally like many families do, I was tired, burnt out and I truly wanted to go live and work in Asia so I could find myself again. 






I was working on personal projects and film more and more over the next 4 years. In 2005 while my dad was terminally ill and I was going through my first divorce I wanted more freedom so I resigned and gave them my majority interest in the company to find new investment. It was all mutual really. When it's time to move on you should move on. Most of what we were doing, MINIMATES especially became turn key. We weren't innovating anything anymore, we were no longer the company I created and I wanted to direct films more than I wanted to breathe so I set out to make it happen. 


What have you been up to since departing from the toy scene?

Digger - I was still doing some design work and still working with AA for many of those years but I traveled all around Asia as much as I could. Japan, Thailand, China, Malaysia and the Philippines meeting people and getting into trouble on a pretty regular basis. I was studying Muy Thai fighting for a few years under Sifu Wong in Tai Kok Tsui. I had some independent and group art shows, acted in a few films ( Ultraviolet, Largo Winch, The Vampire Effect, The Counting House and more ), and then started directing music videos to cut my teeth in the whole process of film making. 

Largo Winch!




Ultraviolet 


The Vampire Effect / Twins Effect I got to play a vampire and be in a film with Jackie Chan at the same time. Good times.


The Counting House  

This is a really really bad Italian horror film I did in HK. Maggie Q ( Mission Impossible 3,Naked Gun,Nikita ) was among the many known faces that were in this film. As far as i know it was never released. I have a scene where I get ripped off the ground by demons and dragged into the trees Predator style. 


The first video I that wrote and directed ( Dead Air Space by Dan F ) was sort of personal story that was a toyetic nightmare. I told the story with a Chinese toy factory worker that goes insane but make no mistake he's supposed to be ME. I went to all the factories i knew in China trying to secure locations for us to shoot and it was more of a bitch than you might think. I had pumped a lot of work through some of these factories over the years with Art Asylum. They owed me this at least but everyone that owns a toy factory is afraid that your going to be doing a documentary on Chinese labour issues whether it's child labour or just plain abuse and half of them turned me down even though I told them straight up we were doing an art house music video they were paranoid! In the end 3 of them came through. A tooling factory, a factory that both McFarlane Toys and I used quite a bit and another one all of them a few hours north of the China border to Hong Kong. 







I teamed up with Victor Pena who's a master post production director among other things and Dan F is an extremely intelligent musician from the UK who started out as a geologist and found his way up to HK to open a very successful club that prints money while we does all his other creative stuff. Tobias Kohl did a great job shooting it and Darren Leung played the main character. Darren is an actor and big time wing chun'r.  The son of Duncan Leung who was the last student of Yip Man, Bruce Lee's teacher. I really had a great group and project for my first piece and everyone was chosen for a reason. The tone of the piece is very low tech, Nine Inch Nails meets Tetsuo's Iron Man. I placed Darren in a factory worker outfit and had him act and run through the factory with the real toy factory workers. We had 3 thousand factory workers being held at a gate that were officially off work and wanted to leave and they let me hold them at the gate for one shot until I yelled action for one shot. 










http://vimeo.com/1342580



One of the more most fun and challenging videos I did in HK was with Maitreya. He was coming off his European tour to fly back to New Zealand and he became connected through a common friend that insisted we work together. Jamie is an amazing talent. This was a ton of work that we all did with a very small budget and less time to do 2 videos but we pulled it off. LOTALUV and CHUR TO THE CHUR where the 2 songs we chose because of their commercial appeal but in truth there isn't one weak song on the album. One of the 2 major locations for LOTALUV is a place in Hong Kong called Mongkok. This is the most densely populated spot on the face of the Earth and I couldn't have asked for a better location. The bitch was that I didn't have a bullhorn and I needed to direct everyone live, second by second and my voice was gone for weeks afterwards. 

LOTALUV


CHUR TO THE CHUR  ( CHUR means CHEERS in New Zealand ) 


Behind the scenes







BLIND GENERATION was a song by an indie musician by the name of Gregory Moore. I met this crazy talented kid beat boxing and playing guitar on the street in Hong Kong and we became friends so when I took him into the studio at World Worm Studios to cut a track that we could do a video for. The women in the beginning of the video are both real blind beggars that I had been dying to shoot something with for years.  







I art directed, storyboarded and did all the props for this Cinematic Orchestra video / To Build a Home 













From the very first day I landed in Hong Kong I became close with Howard Lee (How 2 Work Toys) and legendary HK designer Eric So who was one of the earliest driving forces of the urban vinyl movement along with Michael Lau. We would share stories and views on the business which they were the best in Asia at without a doubt. They found me my first big studio in Tsim Sha Tsui which was right next to theirs. They were some of my very first good local friends that I could count on. Eric So included me in STAND BY ME , a life size painting exhibition he did with all of his famous friends from around the world and I was honoured.