For anyone interested in see the work from the Munky King Omi Show, you can view it all here.

A lot of the work is available for purchase and what makes a better holiday gift than original art? Check out the up and coming talent as well as great customs from established folk like Steve Talkowski and Spanky Stokes.

Also available for purchase are my Om'phisto and HBr-1138 Omi customs (click the names to see the listings).

I'm involved in some exciting collab projects for next year and I'm really looking forward to seeing the end result and, of course, letting them loose on the world.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Munky King Omi Show TONIGHT!

Tonight is the Omi show at Munky King's Melrose location from 7-10 pm. I submitted two pieces, both of which are available for purchase. It was an open call for artists to customize Munky King's own platform toy, the Omi. Its an ingenious contribution to the platform designer market. It was a lot of fun to work with and definitely gets you thinking in different terms.

Visit the Omi Project site to see previews of a couple of the Omi's popping up tonight. Its going to be a fun show.

For more info on Munky King, check out there site here.

Here are my submissions (along with the shapes they started as):

Om'phisto


which started as:


And the HBr-1138


Which started out as:


I was lucky enough to have teaser shots of both featured in their show promo art:


So come out to the show and support all the established and emerging artists at the show! Its going to be a lot of fun to see how this new platform is interpreted by so many artists.



MUNKY KNG
7308 Melrose Ave. (x Poinsettia)
Los Angeles, CA 90046

Friday night I checked out the Sketchbot show at Munky King on Melrose. It was a fantastic show, there were so many great pieces from so many amazing artists. It was really inspiring.

At the show I found out that Munky King had actually developed their own designer figure called "Omi". Its a really unique system that allows for both hanging a piece on a wall or just displaying it standing as a full, 360 degree piece. They're a bit hard to explain. Check out Munky King's site for details and pics of the Omi. They're having an open call for artists to customize, paint and display their own Omi creations at a show they're hosting Saturday Dec 11th. Grab an Omi, go to town, and have it to their shop by Dec 1st to have your piece in the show.

I'm currently working on two. One is being turned into an Omi Mephisto and the other is getting turned into a (shocking shocking) robot. I've had some of my own pieces up at my shop throughout 2010, but am having a bit of an exposure issue due to the simple fact that I've never been in a show and nobody knows who the hell I am. With my job eating up ridiculous amounts of my time, I only have so much time left over to self promote. Besides being a really fun project on it's own merits, I'm hoping the Omi show can help get my work out there more.

As soon as they're done, I'll get them posted up. I just finished modding out the physical form today so I'll be painting em up every night this week so I have time to get it in before the Dec 11th deadline. Whether you participate or not, you should definitely check out the show December 11th as I'm sure it will be a great time. Munky King is a great shop and its really cool how they support new talent. Its important as artists (or as art lovers) to support places like Munky King, not just for our own work's sake but for artists everywhere.

New Sketches

A few new pieces to concept some bad guys from an upcoming collab comic (I'll be writing). Next layer will be armor variations. Right now its at the exploring shapes stage.

The idea will be cobbled together armor from a wide variety of sources, all very natural looking as a whole.











And one for fun. A co-worker makes this ridiculous sound (on purpose) to show disapproval and it sounds remarkably like a combination of a Predator and a bong so now this is happening:


Now I'm off to concept one of my web comics that I'm actually drawing.

9th Circle Relase Update!

9th Circle Robotics received their first review this week HERE from Battlegrip.com. Battle Grip is a great review site run by a guy who actually creates his own designer toys, games and customs. As an artist, the best reviews always come from people who have actually participated in their industry (whichever "industry" that happens to be). Obviously there are other great reviewers who are EXTREMELY knowledgeable fans (like pituvision.com), but nothing beats feedback of the 'artist on artists' variety.

So I want to extend my thanks to Battle Grip for the review, the praise was welcomed and the criticism even more so. I also liked that he thought my bot prototypes were metal, that would have been fun, but no, not one piece.

The one criticism I did receive was on price. I went all over the place trying to figure out how to price them. That's the most difficult aspect of art for me honestly.

So giving his suggestions consideration and some re-examined math, the 9th Circle Robotics bots singles are now only $36 (free shipping). However, buying a set of 4 will be $125 (set of 4 = 1xAldiss, 1xGibson, 1xUnderhill and 1xRAY in any paint scheme. Please wait for personalized invoice before paying when buying 4).

I've also dropped the Mephisto series 1 Mephisto's (the 3D version of my logo in various incarnations) to $25 each.

Art is for sharing and spreading around, not living out its life in a studio. Hit em up now at the shop!

Related Aside:
The other great issue battlegrip brought up regarding resin "toys" in general, is the lack of articulation. I've always considered resin pieces more in the mass produced art piece/statue category, which I'd honestly prefer as a label for my bots. Engineering articulation in general is extremely difficult and not something my just starting out self was going to be able to pull off under current conditions. Aside from that, resin is not really a material that lends itself to lasting and smooth articulation like vinyl or the other soft plastics. Someday I would very much like to see more toys of my creations, but I'll be leaving that up to full on professionals.

Because writing and illustration are, and always have been, my main passions, after the remaining 9th Circle Bots are painted and posted, I'll be focusing entirely on web comics (the collab I'm writing and the one I'm writing/illustrating) Hopefully one of those professionals out there will produce real toys based on them. We shall see!

Excited? Just a little.

Currently working on more 9th Circle sets to put up in the Mephsito Designs Shop (where a few are available now). I'm also putting together a Mephisto Designs media kit to send off to a couple whose work basically sparked my interest (and offered a bit of guidance) on how to do this sort of thing. I'll post pics after its complete and I know its in their possession. I also sent an exclusive set off to Pituvision, who's a fantastic toy reviewer and a great guy all around. If you're into toys at any level, you should be following his weekly show, its always entertaining no matter what he's covering. After he posts his review, I'll post it (or a link to it) here in the blog.

Other than 9CR, I'm actively working on 3 web comics. One will be more of what a web comic normally is. It will be very deranged (I'm fairly certain I've mentioned this before). A second will be a horror based story that, while released on the web, will be a continuing story line posted up as a couple pages per week. So... a web comic, but definitely not in the traditional trappings of what "web comic" means to most people. Its a pretty original concept and I'm looking forward to getting it posted up.

The third, which I'm incredibly excited about, is a collaboration piece with a friend who is DEFINITELY one of my favorite artists working today. He's been kicking around the concept for some time. Its a sci-fi adventure romp with a great scope and some very engaging characters/scenarios that I found really compelling to write about. I'm very excited to be working on it and I can't wait to let it loose on the world. Pretty sure we're shooting for a January release. We're really feeding each others idea flow and every new layer is just making the whole thing better and better. It will be something classic and something new all at once. I'm definitely excited about the whole thing (did I mention that already? Good, cuz I'm excited).

I'll be sketching a LOT this weekend between paint coats, locking down designs for my personal projects (especially since I have A LOT written for each of them) as well as a few of my concepts for the collab piece.

Keep an eye out!

ROBOTS FOR SALE!!!

9th Circle Robotics bots now available in the shop!

TK-421 edition


S-Fish II edition


EP-Zero edition


Alpha edition