Sea-through

Testing out my new black background photo setup.

I know everyone really cares about this, but I'm slowly trying to standardize my image collection. For now, I'm going with mid-size, with watermarks and captions. The captions are more a way for me to keep track of what is what. I always hate finding photos of cool toys, but with no way to determine name, maker, origin, etc. I'm a guy who organizes my music files by arist, album and song title. What do you expect?

I'm still on the fence about all this text on my photos, but I figure this provides an easy way for people to link to the photos without having to credit/shout out/give mad propz to my blog and flickr account. So go ahead and link to my photos! Don't be shy.

If the load time is slow, you hate the captions, or whatever, leave a comment. I want to know about these things.

For comparison, here is the raw image from my camera of the above photo:



I also fooled around a bit (with protection, of course) in Photoshop to generate the below image... can you tell how I did it? It was mostly an accident. But I did think it gave Squirm the look of a free-floating bioluminescent critter. Unintentional science.



Item: [Super 7 x Brian Flynn - Squirm (unpainted clear blue prototype)]

[Super7] River Children

On August 9th, Koji Harmon finished the end of a very long trip in the Americas with a solo show at Super7 titled "River Children." Over 30 hand-painted customs were exhibited, encompassing not only the standard Gargamel fare of Zagorans, Hedorans and mini-Dethras, but a handful of Rumble Monsters sculpts as well. The show also debuted a limited edition Tokoji Seijin and a super-special surprise of the first Zombie Henchman from the Snakes of Infinity series!

Now for some photos and words.

Crazy GID Zago-tank. This Deathra was the one piece that I almost grabbed at the show (but buying Dream Rocket one-offs quickly depletes the wallet, hurr). I always think of that pastel blue color as "cartoon elephant blue." Why is that?


Megalo Tokoji... so cool. The little Zag is feelin' cheesy.


The two Cosmic toys done up by Koji really looked great up in person. I hope Gargamel uses this vinyl again in the future. And who wants some strawberry soft-serve?


This Tokoji is also a homage to another classic kaiju, but I can't remember which one... Zag and Mightin get desaturated.


Black with brown spray is quickly becoming Koji's signature style... the slight off-white and matte black give it a refined feel. It almost looks like old painted wood, where some of the paint has rubbed away with age. Very Japanese, very classy.


Awww... da cutest widdle guys dereeeRAAAND MOTHER EFFERS SOMEONE BOUGHT THEM.. AAARGH. EVERYTHING SOLD OUT.


There was a bunch of other goings-on that night, including a street pinata bash (featuring The Original San Francisco Street Candy) in celebration of Joe Bunny's bee-day. Beer and other refreshment provided by S7, ever the gracious hosts.

Photos of those things on Toybot's blog.

So I was a jerk and didn't buy any of Koji's wondrous wares, huh? Yeah I felt like an ass talking to him after the show and having him ask, "So, did you pick anything up?" Uh, no. Me too poor to buy $200 toys, but me likey very much.


I did buy something, though, so I didn't totally mooch off of S7 that night. I bought Brian Flynn's monster child, the Dokuwashi- direct from the floors of SDCC 2008. I don't usually go for these, but it glows and the colors are so, so nice. You could totally see this flying about in a Japanese festival in some seaside town where the sole agricultural produce consists of an exotic variety of potato. I think it is the spot where the deep blue hits the bright pink that makes my heart flutter. So good.