After resisting temptation for months on the toy front, I think I’m going to open my wallet again this summer. From Ashley Wood’s 3A company, who else?
Toys
I absolutely love these ads from 1981, they’ve been doing the rounds on the web for some time now, I think they originate from a Lego Flickr group but I can’t find the source. Anyway, before Lego Friends designated a pink and purple world for girls only, it was resolutely unisex, and hang the cheap brown background, it was all about the bricks.
Nearly a year after it was first teased to the public comes Pete Fowler‘s take on 2000ad‘s Nemesis The Warlock from Unbox Industries. There are various finishes and colours from wooden to a chrome ‘Blitzspear’ edition. Available from 2000ad (wood) for £11 or Unbox (chrome + other colours to come) at $28.50 plus postage.
Bidding ended today on a collection of Star Wars figures on eBay, rather a LARGE collection by anyone’s standards, in fact this is supposed to be over 85% of all Star Wars figures of this scale ever produced since 1978. The collection of nearly 2,000 figures was sold for $11,500 and were donated by one-time ILM model maker Fon Davis to benefit the Rancho Obi-Wan charity.
I’ve taken these images from the eBay listing, each shelf is a large jpeg which you can zoom into by clicking. SW figures aren’t personally my thing save for a few of the older ones from my childhood but that is a collection and a half.
That’s right, a Blade Runner Police Spinner vehicle made from Lego, custom designed and completely unauthorised. It’s not big, it’s not clever and it’s certainly not cheap when they don’t pay all the postage and you have to pick up the bill. If you fancy it for Xmas then there’s the URLs to follow in the photo and they do all sorts of other vehicles from other sci-fi franchises.
Felt Mistress aka Louise Evans has a book coming out of her creature designs from the last 18 years. 400-pages feature over 1,650 photographs, previously unseen drawings of her partner Jonathan Edwards’ original design ideas, details of every Felt Mistress collaboration with other artists and more. With in-depth interviews with Loiuse, Jonathan, Jon Burgerman, Pete Fowler, Ben Newman, John Knox, Nobrow and more, it looks like the definitive article.
If you pre-order the book from the publishers Blank Slate you’re in with a chance to win an actual Creature made by Louise which is featured in the book. One book will come with a felt ‘You Win’ ticket as seen below and details of how to claim your prize.
There are also versions of the book with Mr Tippy characters in regular and gold editions and, if you still can’t get enough creature love, you can hear Louise and Jonathan talk about the book at Foyles on Charing Cross Rd. on Dec 11th at 8.30pm. The talk is free but you have to book a place online and Jonathan will be doing creature portraits on a first come first served basis.
I know, what the hell does that even mean?
Ma.K (aka Maschinen Krueger or SF3D) = Vintage line of Japanese toys by Kow Yokoyama and was one of (if not THE) originators of the weathered, realistic looking mechs and vehicles.
3A = Ashley Wood and Kim Fung Wong‘s toy company who have taken inspiration from Kow amongst others and raised the level of toy making higher than most in recent years.
Don’t ask when these will be available or how much they will cost because I don’t know, you just have to keep an eye on the 3A blog or sign up to their newsletter.
Loving these Shogun / Samurai figures that are forthcoming from 3A.
Lego is a very big deal in our house with my boys making new things all the time and new figures or sets high on the birthday and Xmas list. I found this Enter The Dragon pastiche on the web and photographed the Star Wars poster on the tube back in March.
The Cabaret Mechanical Theatre are the guest exhibitors this summer at Space Station 65‘s gallery in North Cross Road, East Dulwuch, London. More than 20 mechanical artworks, or Automata if you prefer, are on display for free and fantastic for adults and kids alike. The CMT website has more info about what they do as well as lots to read and learn if you want to get into making automata. They also have various papercraft models on sale at the exhibition so you can make your own.
The gallery is open every day except Mondays 11-6pm and it’s free, also if you’re in the area, the East Dulwich Picture Gallery is a short bus ride up the hill and they have an Andy Warhol screenprint exhibition on.
The uber-talented Felt Mistress has some of her creations on show at the NoBrow shop for a final week before they move to Foyles bookshop in the west end to accompany her partner Jonathan Edwards‘ exhibition as part of the sketching the city season. She will also be giving a monster-making workshop in Foyles on July 30th, details and tickets are here.
Now up for pre-order from Ashley Wood’s 3A company – a 1/12th scale Mongrol from the ABC Warriors, the 1/6th version was way too expensive for me but this clocks in at $55 plus postage.
I visited Eric San yesterday (aka Kid Koala) and got co-opted into drawing a piece of artwork for his new album (I didn’t mind a bit). While I was there I took these shots around his ridiculously packed studio.
Eric loves anything odd or kooky that makes a noise, he owns a cutting lathe to cut his own tour records, a vintage rhythm machine that plays drum beats on 8-track cartridges and a customised jukebox that plays cassettes!
Further to the 2000ad-related posts this week to mark the comic’s 35th birthday here’s a nicely timed gem that turned up recently on Pete Fowler‘s blog. In 2005 I took part in an exhibition in London curated by Playlounge called ‘Zarjaz’, the brief being for artists who were fans of the comic to reinterpret any character in their own way. I chose to do a fantasy cover that never was featuring Torquemada, a Terminator and the many tunnels of Termight, a homage to Kevin O’Neill and very influenced by this cover, which I later managed to acquire from him. In hindsight it’s a bit overworked but I included it as an oddity in the current exhibition at the Pure Evil Gallery as the timing seemed good.
Anyway, another artist in the ‘Zarjaz’ exhibition was Pete Fowler, who did a gorgeous T-shirt design featuring Nemesis as one of his wood sprites, which I love and still wear to this day. Amazingly he’s just unveiled a toy version of the same design (maybe as a tie-in to the anniversary?) that he’s done with Togetherplus. I’ll be wanting one of them then.
The sequel is here (you know, the one everyone loves the most), new SW-themed 2 track 7″ with attached vintage figure. Also, if you missed it last time, they’ve repressed the first Rave Wars. Be quick, 200 copies of each only, more pics when I get mine in the post.
On sale Jan 6th 9.00 Hong Kong time from 3A Toys. Might have to be an early birthday present to myself. I’m told he’s doing a version of Mazinger and possibly Gundam too if this goes well.
This just has my name written all over it – coming soon from 3A and Bandai
The boys and I had a little spacecraft build-off the other day – each person has to make a ship out of the parts contained in one tray of Lego.
No cheating and dibbing into other boxes for parts and it’s first come first served on who gets what, you go until you’ve finished your ship or all the parts are used up.
The I Am Legion custom toy show featuring bastardised versions of 3A toys opened yesterday at the 1:AM gallery in San Francisco, It’s at 1000 Howard St. SF, ca 94103 and is open until Dec 4th. See some of the amazing customizations in the gallery below and my previous post. All photos grabbed from posters on the 3A forum, especially RmOS1.0. Love the Hellboy one 
Regular blog readers will have noticed a love for Ashley Wood‘s 3A toy company and its works and his legion of fans are putting on a custom show in the 1:AM gallery in San Francisco in two weeks time. A blank severed Bot head was given to each participant, to customise as they wish but it seems a few have gone outside the brief too with amazing results. Over at the 3A forum there has been a slow reveal of some of the custom creations set to appear and the overall quality and ingenuity of some of the pieces is staggering. Wish I could see some of these in the, er… plastic. More to come once the show opens hopefully.
