As I have said many times we are always working ahead, you have seen art for 2014 characters and we have shown you the figures that run through all of 2013 (sans a surprise or two along the way)
Well we are just about ready to reveal the first sculpt for 2014; a sculpt that is very unique for several reasons
But for now enjoy a tease of the unfinished WIP sculpt…
We took a trip down to the True Cast studio to check up on our latest release Leo Corazon
You can see the full album here but some of the highlights will appear below
True Cast Studio’s Adam Smith, me, and Marty “THEGODBEAST” Hansen horsing around after a brainstorming session
Mixing metallic orange urethane up for a gang mold of Leo
Metallic Orange Gang Mold of Leo, we can get 4 done in this one!
Thermal Color Change Orange to Yellow Leos!
The most important news coming out of this weekend is the release date: 7/12/2013
The young son of our prototyper Marty “THEGODBEAST” Hansen, MJ, had a fascinating idea for a wrestler when we first started this up. He envisioned a wrestling Rhino. We took to it instantly and started the development process based on MJ’s original sketch.
With the bulk of Goliath, Cero charges into the ring taking down any and all who stand in his way. He is no ordinary Rhino, born and raised near a Volcano in Hawaii he has adapted to the heat thus changing the color of his skin.
Look for him to be released in late 2014!
As we mentioned in our artist profile of Lee Burbridge, a collaboration between our Universe and theirs was coming.
We do not collaborate often, but when we do we want to make it memorable and up to the same standards as everything else we do.
So to give you a taste of whats to come we leave you with this, a small tease of the awesome that is coming
We are beginning to put together the July War Games release featuring Leo Corazon
Included in this $25.00 set will be
We will be posting more pictures next weekend to showcase the colorways that will be available and final packaging shots
A lot of you liked the profile we did on Lee, so we will now introduce you to Simon Grell. Some of you may be familiar with his work if you have ever spent any time on he-man.org
Hailing from Port of Spain, Trinidad; Simon has spent his career dabbling in a wide variety of projects. He has worked as an animator on the 1992 Film “Freddy the frog”
He has worked with Argonaut entertainment on several video games as well as WMS gaming (manufacturer of slot machines, video lottery terminals and software to help casinos manage their gaming operations).
When we approached him to sculpt our wrestlers he was more then receptive, with his years of experience and incredible mastery over the digital arts, he has been able to take our concept art and bring it to life. Besides being just one heck of a nice guy, he works tirelessly to make sure we are satisfied with the end result.
He also has an insane ability to add the tiniest details, this has fastly become one of the hallmarks of our figures that tends to set them apart from your standard small scale minifigure.
If you have not visited Simon’s site you should give it a look, a lot of the other freelance work he has done is there.
He also has a Shapeway Digital Printing store open if you want to own any of his personal creations
We look forward to our 2014 lineup and what Simon’s sculpting will do for our Tag Team Division!!
Last month we teased with a concept/idea drawing of our 2014 Giant Elephant Tembo Jiwe, the brainchild of our friend in Canada Garry Hess
Well as promised here is his fully realized concept art as done by the always masterful Jazyl Homavazir
We are proud to reveal the Nemesis and life long enemy of Kayin Kungaa, there is a great deal between them which will come out over the next 12 months. With no designs to be champion, Tembo can dedicate himself to hunting Kayin down…
His figure will stand taller than any who have come before, at around 2.6″ and his size will be between Goliath and Kayin in terms of bulk.
From time to time we will feature one of our team to let you get to know them as we know them.
Lee Burbridge is the owner of BigManToys, a indie toy company out of the UK. Most notable (to me anyway) is his line of Treegarr figures and the miniature Treegarr Saplings. However, that is hardly his only creation. He also spends time working with other talented individuals, for instance he makes up 1/3 of the indie toy group The Disarticulators.
His talent extends far past sculpting, he is also a great artist. He is our resident Comic artist and will be providing much more work over the coming year(s). Every comic panel you will see is a loving tribute to the B&W Kinnikuman series.
But even with all that artistic talent, its Lee’s wrestling experience and mind that we cherish most here.
We love professional wrestling, and part of that love is making sure that the moves we talk about and the stories we craft are a true love letter to the sport.
Lee has put time in Japan with the 666 Organization , and has wrestled independently in Europe.
Some might wonder how that would come in useful for wrestling toys, but having him on the team allows me to bounce ideas off of him for poses, sculpts, and designs.
For example, in the C2E2 Comic Goliath is just a massive figure and people just have no clue how Ulric could even challenge him. With Lee on board we were able to illustrate a panel that clearly shows how to take down a Giant using technical skills to overcome size. It’s little gems like that which excite us and I think make our product stronger.
We look forward to the work Lee has coming and for our future collaboration that we will announce soon.
If you are into custom toys you may have seen some of the insane work done by Charles Marsh (also known as Monsterforge). He is also the creator of Multiskull (Wave 1 O.M.F.G.), designer of Grimm Gourd (Wave 2 O.M.F.G.), and creator of Barbarianaut (Wave 3 O.M.F.G.)
He has graciously agreed to paint up each one of our master figures for a touring convention display. After C2E2 we realized that at first glace lots of people miss the insane amount of details each figure has, so what better way then to have it painted up to truly make it shine.
This weekend he provided us a glimpse into the awesome display that is coming
If you want to check out more of Charles awesome work you can check out his Blog and check out his incredible customs that go on sale frequently and sell out instantly
Over the next 30 days we will be working on some new site upgrades as well as providing new updates.
Before the end of June we should have
Things are constantly being worked on behind the scenes, in terms of character design and story we are knee deep in 2014’s schedule and looking towards 2015 at this point.
