Back in 2001, a very young DST was releasing the Dark Alliance action figure series.  The first assortment included the ever-popular Lady Death.  Now, here we are in modern times and a seasoned DST is once again pleased to announce that we are working with Brian Pulido .  Fans have been asking for a year if LD would ever be added to the Femme Fatales line, so here I am saying “Yes!”.  Steve Kiwis did an exceptional job of merging 3 different concept images into one 9″ PVC beauty.  Stay tuned to see her in color…

You heard me right! Yours truly, as part of her job at DST, got to create custom costumes for our models at San Diego Comic-Con!!

So to promote our newest line of Femme Fatales statues, we hired two models to hand out trading cards, lollipops and temporary tattoos. And I got to dress them!

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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.

…you’ll find a great AI.  Meet Cortana, the UNSC Artificial Intelligence that helped Master Chief throughout the Halo game series (although she did get herself into a spot of trouble for awhile there).  When DST first started looking at the Halo property, we thought of many of the normal categories, but I have to confess that my goal all along was to get Cortana for the Femme Fatales line of PVC statues.  I did it!  Microsoft had an image they called “Reaching to be Rescued” and I chose that for the basis of the pose.  I wanted something that showed the full form and strength of the character but also implied some vulnerability.  The base differs from that in the source image because, even though it is technically not game-accurate for the scene, I felt her chip was both the perfect setting for her AND the proportions are more in line with the rest of my Fatales.  Sadly, a lot of the tweaks that were done as this piece developed are not readily obvious unless you were in on every update, so trust me when I say that a HUGE pat on the back goes to sculptor Bill Mancuso for being so tolerant of all of my adjustments to the piece.  Painted images coming soon.

As the “odd-jobs” graphic design here at DST, I’m sometimes called in to do unusual projects!
(You know what I mean if you’ve seen the 360 animated spins of the Ultimate Quarter Scale Star Wars Figure and the Minimate Dioramas).

And today my random skills were called in again…and this time it was for our hot mamma Femme Fatale Little Red!

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Oh Little Red! What kind of trouble are you in today?
The alley is the PERFECT place for Wolves to hide! (more…)

And she’s Back… in Black… (more…)

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.

When Joe Linsner started Linsner.com, the first item released was the “Back In Black” print.  It is by far my favorite piece of artwork from Joe, so it was a lock for DST’s new line of PVC statues.  It probably should have come out before “School’s Out” but I’ve got this weakness for plaid and well, you understand.  Anyway, the minute Sam was free to start on another project for me, I gave him Back In Black.  Here is a work-in-progress look.

For your viewing pleasure I bring you Kat’s painted casting of the Dawn: Back In Black PVC statue.  I asked her to make sure the piece maintained the maturity and sexiness of the original art and she came through with flying colors (pardon the awful pun).