2012 New York Toy Fair

If you are like me, then you understand that the concept of toys is not something that was dismissed when our birthday candles started hitting double digits. Toys help us learn and grow as children, introduce us to sharing, and the understanding of ownership and value. Some people decide to put their toys away at a certain age, while others embrace them all their lives. I am one of the lucky, even spoiled, few who get to have toys be part of their everyday job.

In addition to the film work I do, I often have a side project that involves the designing and manufacturing of toys and collectibles. It is these projects that bring me to the New York Toy Fair each year. The annual convention is trade show for manufactures, developers, buyers, and press to meet and exhibit their wares. It is the largest toy industry trade show in the world, lasting for 5 days during the second week of February.

Photo 1: I am originally from New Jersey. I grew up on the opposite side of the Hudson River from New York, so close I could see the Statue of Liberty every day. But I left for California to pursue my dreams, and now I've lived in LA for majority of my life. There are many differences between the East and West coasts, but as I landed in JFK, I was suddenly reminded of the most obvious: weather! It had been a long time since I'd seen snow, and worse, since I had to wander around in temperatures lower than 56 degrees! It was 24 and snowing when I got in, and of course, you can't forget that wind chill factor. Damn you, Hudson Hawk! This is how my East coast trips go: land. Hey, it's New York!... What time's the flight back to LA?

Photo 2: I don't hate New York, I just don't belong there. I think cities are like flavors or music or anything else. Some people love chocolate, some people swear by vanilla. There is no reason why, or maybe there IS a reason that is so scientific that I would never be explaining it in my art blog, but everyone has a yes/no checklist, and cities are on it! I grew up in the Tri-State Area always feeling like an outsider, and it wasn't until I got to LA that I really felt like I belonged. I always hear people saying they were born in the wrong time period. I believe I was born on the wrong coast!

NYC is fun to visit, though. Where else in the world can you see Disney films and 80's classics reinvented as live theater!?!

Photo 3: It was finally time to go to Toy Fair to set up. In past years, the different companies I attended with introduced their products in different ways. My sculpture house, Legends in 3 Dimensions, used to have a private suite at a fancy hotel where I would set up a gallery, and offer wine and cheese to potential buyers. The economy was better back then! Art Asylum had a showroom in the Toy Building on 5th Ave, a skyscraper actually dedicated to toy manufacturer showrooms year round. One year I converted the space into the deck of the Enterprise to display the new line of Star Trek figures Digger created, and another year I made it into the Bat Cave. Need I say why?

This year marks the first time I officially set up camp on the floor at the Javits Center. Imagine San Diego Comic Con where every booth was represented by someone's favorite toy store in the world! As far as the eye can see, if there is a toy that will be available next Christmas, orders were being taken for it at Toy Fair!

Photo 4: Of course, I snuck away from the booth a few times to see as much as I could. There was no way you could see EVERYTHING unless you were a buyer or press, and even then, people were telling me they had to plan an exact route or they would miss whole sections in the time they were allotted. It was like a city of toys. Even the space above our heads was filled with spectacle, like this fifteen foot plush dragon!

Photo 5: Dinosaurs may not have ruled the Earth since million of years ago, but they sure ruled Toy Fair! There were dinosaur toys on display everywhere.

Photo 6: No, really, everywhere! I think as a kid I had the basic t-rex, stego, bronto, pterodactyl combo available. Now there are insanely accurate representations of every species know to have existed! Tiny die cast versions, giant PVC versions, plush, kits, full size wooden skeletons, animatronic versions, dig site recreations, even the newest Sea-Monkey craze that lets you hatch your own Trilobite, so you can have a real prehistoric creature as a pet!

Photo 7: Not all the giant lizard toys were based on science fact. The King of Science Fiction himself was well represented! As always, I took a fair share of pix to show my producing partner Sheri Bryant all of the new Godzilla stuff she will HAVE to have in the upcoming year!

Photo 8: The range of toys is fascinating, especially when you see everything in one space. There are toys for everyone, and then there is the competition between designers to capture the boys and girls markets. Some manufactures that tend to skew towards one group have branched out to appeal to the other. I believe Lego may have captured the Felicia Day demographic with this "bake set".

Photo 9: If you have no interest in building cup cakes that you can't eat, there is always things that shoot things! These bow and arrow sets by ZING! are super safe and super fun. Many of the manufacturers had working demos that buyers and press could play to get a feel for the toy. Getting people to try it isn't a problem. But when a toy is this cool, getting them to stop is!

Photo 10: Some designers decided to try and split the difference, putting things girls love into categories usually reserved for boys. By introducing us to the DAUGHTERS of the classic movie monsters, Mattel hit a home run with Monster High. I was particularly thrilled to see this modern "Groovey Ghoulies" type twist have such a presence at Toy Fair, because my good friend America Young does many of the voices on the show the dolls are based on. I was there the day she did her voice over audition recording for what she thought was "a little internet cartoon". It might have been at the time, but now the girls from Monster High have Barbie scared to death that she may no longer be the toy Queen!

Photo 11: Really, Spawn!?! 20 YEARS!?!?! That brings back memories. The very first Toy Fair I attended was with McFarlane Toys. I worked on the YoungBlood line, and Todd brought Rob Liefeld and I out to do press stuff for the launch. I made the giant BadRock walk-around suit and painted up an actor to look like Chapel. We walked the streets of NY and handed out McFarlane Toys promos, because nobody knew anything about it! Man, have times changed!

The big question is, and Rob, this ones for you, when are we doing the YoungBlood anniversary statue!?!? Those characters have always been favorites of mine. The designs were cool, the story was groundbreaking, and it will always have a nostalgic feeling for me since Extreme Studios was my first major parlay into comics. When I decided to start Legends in 3 Dimensions, Rob was also kind enough to give me YoungBlood as my first official license. That BadRock statue is still a favorite. Which begs the question again...Anniversary statue, anyone? Comment below if you think its a good idea!


Photo 12: Another big stir at this year's Toy Fair was the 20th anniversary of Power Rangers. Now that Saban has the franchise back, it's bigger and better than ever. (Although we all know it will never be BIGGER or BETTER than Power Rangers SPD!!!) Seriously.

Saban made a huge announcement about the future of the Power Rangers that week. My twitter feed was abuzz with rumors that I was at Toy Fair to be part of that announcement, but alas, it was not true.

Photo 13: I don't even know who these guys are! No, this year, I was at Toy Fair to introduce the new collectible company I started with my partners in Chicago.

Photo 14: And here it is! No, not Lego. In the back. to the right. Yeah, that's us! FLOPPETS!

Photo 15: I joke, but our little back aisle space actually worked out really well. We were at a major cross roads, so if you were cruising the floor from any direction, you HAD to pass us.

Photo 16: The trick was how to get people to stop as they passed by! Our method was simple: SWAG! I designed this commemorative 2012 Toy Fair Floppet specifically to give away at the show. We did a one time run of 1,500, and with the exception of the handful I had in my pocket when I got back to LA, we gave them all away!

The reaction was great, although it was not uncommon for people to reject the offer for a Toy Fair Floppet. Much to our joy, 9 out of 10 people turned back around and decided they wanted it. After hearing our pitch, many of those same buyers became our biggest customers!

We were just a small start up company buried in the midst of huge industry icons, but a lot of love and care went into our product, and our efforts were not overlooked. Even as a designer of Floppets, I couldn't tell you why people are so attracted to them, adults and kids alike, but people love them! We were chosen as one of the Top Ten Hottest New Toys at Toy Fair, and we were called the next craze in kid's toys on the national news!

Photo 17: The show days were long, and Team Floppets talk to hundreds of people per day, so when the floor closed, we were all anxious to explore the city and excitedly discuss all of the amazingly positive feedback we were getting for our product. Above, me, Gilly, Ron, Ilyse, and Rich warm up and get ready to eat non-convention center food!

Photo 18: If you know me well, you are aware that I am NOT a foodie. I dream of the day when meals will come in pill form so I can down them with a Pepsi and keep on working. But, despite the fact that I'm a California lifer, there are certain East coast foods that I miss on a daily basis. The first is probably the most cliche, but believe me, it's the truth! There is no better pizza than in New York. Granted, there are a few killer places in Jersey, and the best I've had in years is specifically in Brooklyn, but stray too far down the turnpike and it's all downhill from there.

I saw a line of people outside this pizza parlor on 47th street, so I figured it was worth a try as I made a supply run on my lunch break. I was shocked to find that they were only charging a dollar a slice! It also made me smile to see that the counter was lined with only cheese pizzas, and toppings needed to be requested. Anything other than pepperoni or mushroom would get you a weird look, too. As it should be!

Photo 19: Another favorite is Carvel Ice Cream. It's just one of those chains that, despite it's popularity, just never made it all the way across the country. Growing up, a birthday didn't count if you didn't get a Carvel ice cream cake. Luckily, a few stores actually carry Carvel cakes here in LA now, so that's one less thing to cringe about when my birthday rolls around. It still gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling to see actual Carvel shops, though.

Photo 20: I'm certain this is listed amongst the greatest mystery of the modern world, but why Dunkin' Donuts isn't on the West coast confounds me. I would not have survived my high school years with them. If anyone could get the corporate offices to open a few shops in LA, I would be eternally grateful!

Photo 21: New Yorkers may take this for granted, but being in LA for so long, I forget how tall everything is in Manhattan! I mean, like fall over backwards trying to see the top of the building tall. It really is spectacular.

Photo 22: On the complete opposite side of the spectrum, with all the looking up I did, I forgot about one of my childhood paranoia. The streets of New York are lined with grates, vents, subway entrances, and trap doors that lead to basements below the stores that are always left wide open for deliveries. I get knots in my stomach when I walk on them. I've never actually seen anyone fall down one of these, but I certainly don't want to be the first to do it! I'll just walk around that hundred year old rusty grating suspended twenty feet above an active subway track, thank you.

Photo 23: The beauty of New York is that everywhere you look, there is something to see. If you look around enough, you are guaranteed to see something weird. I've been a city boy all my life, so while a man washing his horse may not be unusual to most, it was totally bizarre to me. Especially on the west side!

Photo 24: Speaking of West Side, Manhattan is famous for that story along with countless other phenomenal musicals. It is an absolute must to take in a show while visiting the city. And what better hit for a group of geeks to see than Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark.

(crickets)

This blog is my forum for showing art techniques and sharing my adventures, and I tend to avoid any criticisms or opinions that may alienate my readers, because everyone has the right to an opinion, but you don't necessarily need to be subjugated to mine. I'll make an exception this time, because I just can't not warn everyone. No doubt you are also a Spiderman fan, and it would just be impossible to not go see this for yourself. But if you are expecting to be wowed by Broadway's finest musical theater, or can't wait to have Bono and the Edge's catchy songs hooked in your brain, well, honestly...you won't.

Having done all kinds of film work involving stunts, I have to give props for the utterly jaw dropping aerial work that takes place right above (and actually IN) the audience during the last 30 minutes of the play, but I'd be lying if I said that getting there was an enjoyable ride. There is no shame in a true comic book fan having this show on their bucket list, but I must implore you to reserve a second night out on Broadway to experience actual theater. West Side Story has to be on stage somewhere!

Photo 25: My partners and I were only in New York for 5 days, so there really was only so much ground we could cover. For selfish reasons, I dragged everyone out to what locals would consider "a tourist trap". But, it's a tourist trap I helped deign, so I wanted to see how the place was holding up! Jekyll & Hyde's, right across from Central Park, is a haunted theme restaurant where the dusty antiques come to life and talk to the patrons. There are live shows that happen every half hour, and the maze like venue has interesting artifacts to discover at every turn. I made a bunch of them, including sculpting parts of this giant Egyptian head that hangs in the main parlor.


Photo 26: After dinner, we cruised through Times Square. It's just like in the movies. It really is like no place else. You see things here you would never see in any other part of the world.

Photo 27: Like this guy. And they say LA is weird!

Photo 28: Toy Fair ended, and I was off to Newark to catch a plane home. The show was a huge success for us, and I am so excited about how much Floppets will grow in the next year. I'll keep you up to date as to where you can find them, and what new designs and licenses we will be shipping out. But do me a favor if you can: if your local stores aren't carrying them, ask if they could! Most retailers that don't have them just don't know about them, or aren't sure if anyone would be interested. Your interest could make the difference, and having product in those store will help us grow. The more we grow, the cooler the products we will be able to make. It will be worth it, I promise!

I have to go feed my Trilobite now, so, until next time...

Legends in 3 Dimensions

Last weekend, I attended my friend @geekyfanboy’s 40^th birthday party. There was great food, fun people, amazing cake, and a table of presents that could have just as well been for a 12 year old’s birthday! Tons of Firefly, Harry Potter, and Trek stuff. I wanted to give Kenny something personal, yet still fitting in the genres he loves. I chose to give him one of my last 1/2 scale Star Wars Greedo busts, as it is one of my favorite pieces I did under the Legends in 3D banner.

Everyone there liked the sculpture, and Kenny pointed out my picture on the box. Even the most in-the-know geeks, like Team Unicorn goddesses @micheleboyd and @thegamerchick, then asked me, “Did you work for Sideshow Collectibles? Or Gentle Giant?” Well, no. Actually, long before there was Sideshow or GG, I was helping convert the garage kit hobby business into a mass-market industry. No one seemed to know what I was talking about. So I came home and started writing this blog:

I have wanted to be an artist all my life. When other kids were playing sports or riding bikes, I was drawing or building models. I was told I could draw a glass of water when I was thirsty before I could actually speak the words to ask for one. I think I knew I wanted a career in art before I entered kindergarten.

But “artist” was not a popular life goal in New Jersey, where I grew up. It’s like Springsteen said his father told him, “You should be a lawyer. Make somethin’ of yourself”. Even if I had gone the rocker way like Bruce, Jersey would have been more accepting of my choice. But I can’t play guitar! So I had to prove that being an artist wasn’t just about pretty pictures. I started early, selling custom-made action figures in the schoolyard at 8 years old. By 10 I was painting holiday sale signs on local store windows, and by 14 I had expanded into doing illustrations for commercial firms and theater companies in Manhattan.

Of course, none of that satisfied my desire to work in film, but it did help me gather enough capitol to make my way to Los Angeles once I graduated high school. I found true happiness in Hollywood, getting to work on amazing projects, and with the people that inspired me to want to do this job in the first place.

I jumped around a lot early in my career, as previous blog entries will show, expanding outside of the film work I did. I spent some time prototyping for Mattel, made mass-production counter displays for retail chains, resin model kits for cult movie production companies. But I always loved working on the films the most. It was during the making of Batman Forever that I realized not only did the merchandise industry gain from the film business, it also molded it. I wasn’t surprised to have notes and input on Bat weapon designs from the film’s director or production designer, but I did find it interesting that companies like Nerf and McDonald’s had to have approval, and often changed things to suit their post-marketing needs. I also realized that anything I designed or built would later be mass-produced and gross an income beyond anything I originally got paid, or could imagine, for that matter.

I need to make it clear that I don’t do what I do for the money. If the film industry went belly up next week, I would still keep working on movies. If movies went away completely, I’d still work on web series! But, if there is a way to gain greater access to doing more of what I want to do, then I will seek that out. So I decided to get into merchandising. But not just as the designer. I wanted to actually start a merchandising company.

So I formed Legends in 3 Dimensions. This is the logo I designed. The actual art was done by my friend Matt Codd, who helped me a lot with the company. You’ve seen his work on movies such as Judge Dredd, Men in Black, and the above mentioned Batman Forever. I wanted something that inspired me the way Drew Struzan’s interpretation of the original ILM logo did. I chose the three Musketeers, each representing, well, a dimension, and holding one of the tools that would make the product they would grace possible. Originally the main guy had a pencil, but I ultimately changed it to a quill pen to fit the aesthetic better!

I started formulating the style of L3D while I was still doing garage kits. I write that as if everyone will now what that is, but I think the art of sculpting, casting, and selling un-official resin model kits out of the garage has been lost for 15 years! But in the early 90’s, mainstream pop-culture statues were pretty rare. There was an underground league of artists that immortalized dimensional versions of their favorite film, television, and comic icons. I did at least 30 kits myself, spending nights and weekends casting and packaging to sell at comic conventions, and yes, there used to be model kit conventions!

Almost all of the kits were fully body statues, action poses, scantily clad women, giant monsters. There was some amazingly cool stuff. But I felt that the one thing the market was missing was a category for the geek “professional”. I wanted to split the difference between snobby art and my nerd obsessions. My pitch was basically this: Everyone has the right to love sci-fi and fantasy. But if you walk into your lawyer’s office, and he has a desk full of Spiderman action figures, you might think twice about his professionalism. Not because it makes him any less of a lawyer, just because our culture has dictated a “place and time” for such things. But that’s not fair to fandom! I thought that if I represented Spiderman in the style of a classical bust, he might find a place among those leather bound law books and fit right in.

For my first experiment with this concept, around 1991, I chose General Urko from the Planet of the Apes series. I liked the expression John Chamber’s gorilla make up had, and the leather helmet and studded tunic reminded me of a Roman bust. I painted the original in a monochromatic brown scheme, which I though made it look more like a Llardo than a Kenner. This piece was intended to be a kit, so the design worked well in that it was only 3 parts: the solid head and shoulders, and the two helmet flaps.

I also incorporated the themed base, a column of coiled whip. This is something I would carry through all the L3D pieces, and something I smile at every time I see new companies doing.

Years later, I ran into director John Landis (The Blues Brothers, Animal House, American Werewolf in London, Coming to America) at a model kit show. He was a huge fan of the hobby, and as it turned out, a fan of mine! He told me he had purchased my Urko at a show a while back, and had it sitting on his desk. I have always loved his work, especially Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, so it was a great honor to hear that.

As I got L3D moving, I needed original product. I used my Planet of the Apes bust as a sample during my pitch meetings, but I didn’t OWN the license for it. I didn’t own the license for anything. And licenses are expensive. So I needed to create pieces that were original ideas, but not new characters that no one would be interested in. My first produced piece was a pirate skull wearing a leather bandana. It was generic, so I had the right to manufacture it, but it captured the essence of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean enough that the mouse agreed to sell it at the parks. This was a decade before the Johnny Depp blockbuster, so they were in need of interesting product for the “fresh off the ride” gift store.

That was a lucky break, though. What I didn’t want L3D to become was a cheesy novelty item manufacture. I didn’t want to do “generic spaceman” and “ cartoon rabbit” to sell to supermarkets and amusement parks. I wanted to pay homage to my favorite sci-fi heroes, and capture the frames of cartoons that made me happy as a child in sculpture form. But it wasn’t like that was an original idea, either. Merchandising was all around me. Star Wars is probably why I always assumed that everything was merchandised. Actually, it was so many of the horror stories I heard about early Star Wars product manufacturing, like sculpting action figures in the wrong proportions due to lack of reference, that made me want to start a company were the product we sold was created as close to the original source as possible. I wanted the designers of the subject I was sculpting to be involved, the actors to comment directly, I wanted to hold the props I was to recreate in my own hands. The studios told me I was crazy. The banks told me I was crazy. But it made sense to me. So I figured I better get a license from someone who knew I wasn’t crazy!

I went to my friend Rob Liefeld. Rob changed the comic book world by being the founding member of Image comics, and the first penciler to unbutton his jeans on national television. I worked with Rob previously to create full sized walk-around characters for the convention circuit, based on his comic Youngblood.

I also did a resin kit of the stone golem Badrock, along with a series of latex masks, which were very successful.

I had just finished a full figure kit of Youngblood’s team leader, Shaft, when I told Rob about my idea for a licensed line of busts. He decided to put Shaft on hold and gave me the rights to produce Youngblood as L3D product.

Rob also introduced me to Henry Unger, a licensing guru and manufacturing rep. Henry and his wife JoAnne saw the potential in my idea and signed on as my investors and partners. Henry took my Urko and the prototypes I made for Youngblood, like these DieHard busts, and began pitching potential licensors.

I needed to make multiple prototypes, because we would keep one in the workshop for reference, one to send out for approvals, and one or more to travel over seas for manufacturing bids.

And you though 3 Die Hards were a lot! I can honestly say there is no more awe-inspiring sight than an army of your own sculptures! L3D set up manufacturing in China, starting with Badrock. Our first runs were not limited edition, but we still manufactured limited amounts. I would fly back and forth between LA and Hong Kong regularly to make sure that each new batch matched the original prototype. Quality control was of the utmost importance.

Badrock was probably the best test to see how far I could push the mass production envelope. He was 6 separate pieces, 20 colors, had a length of real chain, and had to have his heavy shoulders solidly mounted onto his tiny base. I learned a lot from manufacturing this bust, and it helped me bridge the gap between garage kit making and overseas production.

I also wanted L3D to be more like fine art than commercial product. I put a lot of work into the originals, and at first I thought I could move on to the next sculpture once the prototype was shipped overseas. But I couldn’t help but to be actively involved with every piece on the assembly line. So the factory would set up all the finished product, and I would go through with arrow stickers and mark off all the blemished I wanted corrected. Fingerprints, paint overlap, bad seams. As I write this I realize I sound like a tyrant, but I was really trying to think like a consumer. If you are going to pay money for something, don’t you want it to be made really well?

From '94-'99, I ended up spending more time in China than at home! I learned a lot, gaining an appreciation for the culture as well as a greater understanding of how our culture affects the rest of the world. Things we take for granted everyday in the U.S. are amazing events in other parts of the world. I was there the night Hong Kong gained its independence from Britain. And the morning the HK stock market crashed. 16-year-old boys in uniforms were running through the city streets with M-16s, trying to keep the panicked crowds in check. But one of the craziest things I saw was this never-ending line to get into the newly opened McDonald’s. People actually camped out on the street for days to try a Big Mac…

Henry was able to work his magic, and the studios finally started taking the “pre-painted market” seriously. The first major studio to bite was Paramount. Henry was trying to wrangle the Star Trek franchise, but Paramount was more interested in selling us their MTV division. At first, they were pushing hard for me to sculpt Beavis and Butthead. I though the show was funny, but I felt strongly that the property strayed from my “lawyer’s office” philosophy. Although, now, I think Beethoven-like busts of those guys would be priceless. But at the time, I didn’t see people lining up to buy them. Then, MTV said they had a new cartoon coming based on Sam Keith’s “The Maxx”. That got my attention. I knew Sam from my Image stint, and I thought his work was some of the most creative and fresh stuff out there. There were several versions of the character, and I liked that I could be the first to draft off of the new animated series.

I also liked that I could call Sam directly and learn what he really wanted the end product to be. We would talk for hours about everything except the sculpture, but somehow knowing more of what was in his head helped me understand The Maxx more. The final design came out of one of those conversations, where something Sam said inspired the idea of an Izz attacking Maxx in the garbage. He responded to the concept immediately, and had very specific ideas of what he wanted my focus to be, right down to the items in the trash!

MTV paired The Maxx with a surreal cartoon called Aeon Flux. I think the time slot was called "Liquid Television". Aeon Flux was an experimental avant-garde collection of bizarre shorts starring an unnaturally thin female assassin wearing skin tight black latex.

I was going to create the ONLY licensed physical representation of Aeon Flux, so Paramount was not comfortable with the bust concept. I pushed as hard as I could, but they dangled the Star Trek franchise out there, and I opt to make them happy. I mean, it wasn’t going to kill me to sculpt a half naked woman…

Coming from a background in sculpting for animatronics, it is my instinct to make things as symmetrical as humanly possible. Aeon proved to be a challenge, as creator Peter Chung pointed out that she was supposed to be awkward and irregular. Luckily, he was all for hanging out at my studio and assisting me on the sculpt. Aeon Flux is a monumental piece in the L3D line, because she was the first to be created to the fullest standard of the company’s mission statement. I have to laugh when I read old reviews in collector’s magazines, saying, “The sculpture doesn’t quite capture the character.” It was practically sculpted by the creator himself!

Peter liked the final product so much, he was kind enough to make a rare appearance and be my special guest during L3D’s premier year at comicon. He signed our statue, along with t-shirts and animation cells. He hung out at my booth all weekend doing sketches for fans. We sold out of Aeons by Saturday afternoon, and they have been hard to get a hold of ever since.

Next on board was the Crypt Keeper from Tales from the Crypt. The show had been on for years, and Kevin Yagher’s puppet host was a staple of the horror genre. I wanted to do the character reading from a tome, with a tombstone base.

I happened to be working on an unrealized version of Speed Racer at the time, which was being produced by Richard Donner (Superman, Lady Hawke) and Joel Silver (The Matrix, Die Hard) who were the original producers of TFTC. Every time I went into their offices, I saw the Crypt Keeper sitting in the corner. When my contract for the license was finalized, I asked Richard if I could borrow the display piece for a few days. He was reluctant at first, because it was one of Yagher’s original puppets, but eventually he had a truck deliver it to my studio! I was able to study every tendril of rotting flesh to make it as perfect as I possibly could.

One key element to the Crypt Keeper’s ghoulishness is his fogged over eyes. He has a definite cataract effect, which I achieved in my prototype by not-fully-mixing a drop of translucent white acrylic into a clear gloss. Unfortunately, the artists at the factory had a difficult time recreating this. They were amazingly talented, and I even have a hard time telling my originals from final product. But the cataracts kept getting painted too opaque, spotty, or non-existent. So I decided to paint them myself. I think there were 2,500 Crypt Keepers made, which means 5,000 eyes to paint! It took me about a week, and hopefully I will never have to do that again! But if you own a L3D Crypt Keeper bust, I painted those eyes!

The Crypt Keeper was also the last of the “white box product”. When I first started the company, the goal was to keep costs as low as possible so that the maximum effort could go into the statue itself. One idea was low cost packaging. The factories offered generic white boxes for pennies a piece. We were already spending a fortune on custom made Styrofoam inserts to make sure the statues didn’t break in transport, and I was used to shipping garage kits in brown UPS boxes, so it seemed fine. Until the first batch of product got delivered to the shop. A stack of generic, white boxes. Nothing says, “Don’t buy me” like a blank white box.

So the first run of product got stickers slapped on it to try and make the box more enticing. Badrock had a halftone image of one of Liefeld’s comic panels, and production designer Sean Hargreaves recreated an environment for Aeon Flux. Matt Codd did several beautiful pen and marker drawings for me to use as backgrounds, including this cemetery for the Crypt Keeper. I photoshopped it into a cover of the original comic book.

At this point, executives started recognizing the L3D brand, and hotter properties were becoming available to us. One of the biggest heroes on TV was the Tick, and I was invited to give him the bust treatment.

Once again, I was fortunate enough to be able to get as close to the source material as possible. Tick creator Ben Edlund came by the studio often during the various processes and gave me input. During the sculpting phase, he was afraid to mess with my version, so he took spare clay and roughed out his own Tick, focusing on the areas he though we should address. I had his version in a display case next to my finished product for years, but I realized it was too valuable to be left out in the open! That was probably around the time Ben started producing a little show called Firefly!

Around the end of ’96, things really started shaping up for L3D. We were getting a lot of press, and larger retailers started carrying our product. A lot of independent creators where asking me to create product for them, and it was difficult to decide which pieces to chose. I didn’t want to “sell out” and only do big properties, but at the same time, I wasn’t trying to be a sculpture house for hire. I really only wanted to do characters that inspired me. If I wasn’t excited about a property, I was worried my heart wouldn’t be in it, and that would be cheating the end consumer. Henry asked me to make a wish list of the properties I wanted, and he would do his best to license “a few of them”. Remember the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for…?”

Put it this way: I wanted to be an artist who made some stuff that you could own. I never imagined that my sculpting studio would need a full staff to keep it on track. In the four years I helmed L3D, I did 50 sculptures for 33 licenses. I though the only paperwork I would need to be involved with would have drawings on it, but there were contracts, deal memos, inventory sheets, purchase orders, you name it. We were manufacturing in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Thailand, and Taiwan. The time zones were flopped, so my fax machine would go off at 4 in the morning, and we would have to have conference calls in the middle of the night. Luckily, I had Gigi, Brian, and Meika to keep all of that in line. They handled the accounts, vendors, timelines, everything they could to keep my hands in the clay!

So much more L3D to talk about, like that classical Spiderman Bust I dreamed about making! But I'll get into that in L3D Part II!