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!
Saturday, March 31, 2012
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
Thursday, March 22, 2012
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!
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
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!
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!
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.
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