I rarely share any behind-the-scenes things with you prior to completed (and usually approved) sculpts.  But then I realized that it wasn’t really fair to the creative team that brings my insanity to life, plus I’ve had a few of you come to me in San Diego wondering what (if any) logic was behind my development choices.  So, here’s a look into what ultimately becomes the Femme Fatales Alice PVC.

To begin with, I have NO artistic ability whatsoever, outside of being able to draw some mean stick-figures (no, literally, I draw stick figures with mean expressions and that’s about it).  That being said, it really isn’t important if my piece is going to be based on a specific piece of art or a comic cover.  The problem comes when I need an interpretation of something.  Thank goodness for the interwebz.  Once I have an idea, I comb the web looking for images that contain the elements I need to convey.  What you see here is a collage of less than 1/3 of what I sent to the sculptor and painter for Alice.

I’ll spare you the tedium, but not only do they get bombarded with jpegs, but for each image there is a chunk of text to explain what I saw in the picture that I want incorporated (or what should be avoided) in my product.  I’m not sure if the finished items are a credit to my ability to convey what I need or to the freelancers’ ability to translate Schaff to English.  Let’s just call it a team effort and move on.

About 6 years ago, DSTChuck wanted to design a house brand focusing on the popularity of ‘goth’ products.  The plan was to take some of the public domain fairy tale characters and give them a more modern look and feel.  A lot of people spent a lot of time at DST working on proposals for buyers, package concepts, category options, and marketing strategies.  Unfortunately, unavoidable circumstances caused the project to go to the backburner.  Now that the Femme Fatales line has taken off, DSTChuck is looking to reinvent some of the reinventions and use them in this PVC line.  Kicking things off is the new Little Red Riding Hood (Li’l Red, for short).  The images I’ve included show you how we went from the original concept sketch to Sam Greenwell’s sculpt and finished with Kat Sapene’s paint.

I recently told you all about the new variant I’d be doing for the Marvel Select Wolverine figure.  Sure, it’s going to look like the Frank Miller cover to Wolverine #1, but I thought I’d show you what I thought about when I heard about the project. (more…)

Yeah, if the title of this post is suitable for all ages it means DSTChuck edited me. That’s The Man keepin’ me down. Anyway, look what we’ve got in the works kiddies! Governor Arnold on his way to a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a new LA shopping mall. Heh, just kidding. Yup, we’re going after the T2 license and we’re using this as our calling card. Don’t worry if a few details seem off, he’s a work-in-progress. This guy came together in record time, thanks to the dedicated work of my freelance crew, so we could debut him at the Dallas Toy Fair in early October. Stay tuned for more updates!

OK, so you all know about the Flux Capacitor and you all know how awesome it is (or should I say “was” seeing as how it sold out so quickly). (more…)

Hi there! I’m Barry Bradfield — the other of the two artists who works on the artwork for Minimates. Along with helping create the 2-D control art, I also choose out appropriate colours and apply them to the black and white artwork. Once the artwork is finalized and approved, I then create tampo files that will be used to print elements of the artwork onto the final figures (such as faces and chest details).
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The design and development team are wrapping up the last couple of Transformers busts for 2008 and without revealing who they are, all I can say is that these 2 are leaders in the fan favorites category. This final piece for the year marks the 31^st bust in the series and we at DST would like to thank all the fans and retailers for your support of the line. Thirty one pieces is definitely a milestone for any product line, let alone high end collectible busts.

To mark this milestone we would like to take time to discuss some of the design decisions in designing the Transformers busts and some features we incorporated in up in coming busts.

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If you’re like me than you are a big fan of war movies, the list is too long but let me tell you that Platoon is at the top somewhere. I can’t tell you how excited I was to hear we would be making MGM Platoon Minimates. When I used to think of minimates the first thing that came to my mind was Marvel Minimates, but I have come to learn that that just isn’t the case. We are knee deep in tons of movie minimates and I couldn’t be happier to have been working on the Platoon line. I just finished up the boxes for these guys a while ago, expect to see some cool movie poster inspired designs. Also pick these little soldiers up for yourself; they have character accurate helmets, little machine guns (so cute!).

Saddle up! Lock and load!