The softlines portion of Raiders Indy is 100% approved and in my hands (except for the copy for the orient). Progress!!!

Indiana Jones has 2 left hands. Wait, no he doesn’t. Uh-oh, time to have a chat with the sculptors. Someone’s got some mixed-up parts.

UPDATED!

Good News: Indy’s hands are normal once again! There was a second box with the rest of the pieces needed for the figural bank and it turns out the 2^nd left hand was a leftover part that was sent in the hopes we could identify it. (We couldn’t, so it is in my Box of Doom)

Now I’m a huge Battlestar Galactica fan, but even I had to go back to the DVD’s for this one… Before I get ahead of myself, take a look at the hottest promo figure to come out of this year’s San Diego Comic Con – the Downloaded Cylon Centurion. We’re giving these beauties away at our Battlestar Galactica-themed invite-only party, making these pretty rare as far as action figures go. Hopefully we’ll be able to post some pictures that show off the fantastic decorations created by our very own DSTEsti (with a special shout out to our friends at Quantum Mechanix for some of their awesome BSG retro posters!)

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Preparation for the upcoming SDCC is almost done. I had to work on the large banners that will hang above the snack bar. They are huge. Working on files that big can be a little difficult since opening and saving the files take up a lot of time even if the changes are very small. Fortunately there were not too many big changes. We should be in good shape with the graphics for SDCC this year. The party stuff is mostly done as well. It seems like there was not as much as in previous years and we got it in a more timely fashion.

Man, packing all of these prototypes for San Diego has been a joy! I’ll need to remember to bring a little extra glue this year for the prototypes…can’t have anyone losing their head!

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Reviewed the first factory sample of Darth Maul’s outfit. Not bad for a first pass. It looks like a few of the clasps need to be repositioned, but 3 minor changes is a small amount given how complex this outfit is.

Factory now has paint and tooling for the entire Darth Maul figure. They also now have the complete outfit, accessories (double sided lightsaber of course), and sounds files….the Sith of few words. Factory is working reviewing what we have sent them and will proceed to the sample stage. We are doing everything we can to get these Star Wars figures to look awesome……you wouldn’t believe how emails go back a forward with the factory just to make sure that Hans Solo’s binoculars look accurate to the movie.

I’m not sure how many of you are fans of “The Ace of Cakes” on Food Network, but if you love cake and your into art you should be watching it, plus it all goes down a few blocks from my old apartment. Baltimore caters to a special breed of cake consumers and Duff is there to hook them up with the wild, the wacky, and the wonderful! Ok, so enough about cake, a pool of drool is forming on my desk.

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I have come to realize that Back to the Future is still one of the most popular licenses out there, you guys love the BTTF. The first thing we decided to make with our newly acquired license was minimates. I was given the task of getting together a style guide (concept art for the ads and boxes) for this little puppy.

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One of our painters reports receipt of the paint copies for Marvel Select Captain Marvel. Good ole Irish Joe – I knew he wouldn’t let me down. Sadly there aren’t enough words to thank Eddie for all the work he’s doing to make SDCC perfect for me. I wonder if he is sleeping at all?

Hit a minor snag with the Hulk movie Minimates. Turns out that actors and actresses are more sensitive about their likenesses on block figures than you would think. Oh well, I fixed the pictures on the boxes so that they were acceptable and sent them on their way.