We've made and shipped over 200 Critters in two weeks - working in the evenings, between getting home from work and bedtime.. They were very reasonably priced, well produced, and awesomely sculpted. We all worked our arses off and it felt great to know that what we did was worth doing. We didn't half-arse and waste time. No-one at any point pussied out and slacked off. We all kept in touch because we really wanted to do it. We wanted to see hundreds of different variants of this toy flying to excited collectors, like ourselves, around the world. A childhood dream come true.
It's too easy to get to a gym and be so happy you've made it there that you don't put the effort in to the actual work. It's true of so many things in life.
I used to pro-wrestle. I also did a little competitive bodybuilding when I was a teenager. I learned a lot about the value of accepting rules. Not being a sheep or being controlled - ACCEPTING rules.
When I first got interested in toymaking, I did that thing of getting rock solid advice and thinking "that's too hard, or expensive, or takes too much time - I'll find an easier way". The secret to everything worth doing is THERE IS NO EASIER WAY. It took me a lot of mails from Gold Dober before I accepted that if I do something half arsed, it will look like exactly that.
I hate Munnies. It'd be easy for me to slate peoples work in that format as it's not my kind of thing. The fact is, when people sell custom Munnies, it's because they accepted the workload that they knew it'd take, to get their vision realised.
I am not hot shit at all. This is just my thing i'm doing to make myself happy. Of all the things I do in my daily life, this is the thing that I love to build on. It's the art form I've always loved. I love reading about toymakers like Birnkrant, The Horsemen, Godbeast, Doughty, and learning all the different elements of the craft from people I write to like GoldDober and Ben Spencer. There's a lot that sucks about internet culture - but it's been great for getting to talk to people who I otherwise would never meet. I must say, the ratio of people who have a hard-on for themselves is refreshingly low. It's restored my faith in people quite a lot.
(Pictured right is the Diazombie being sent off by the last remaining legacy of the ACro-Zombie project. A bunch of imperfect parts that'll stay here with my Micronauts collection. Below are the last three one-off MicroKeshi I made. But certainly not the last ever!)Got a sackload of toys to ship off tomorrow. One particular box had a bunch of different keshi, my last Acro-zombie, and some other bits in and it's the proudest i've felt of my toymaking since I started. I looked in that box and saw a load of awesome stuff i'd made. Some I sculpted. Some I simply cast. But it was a box of stuff I myself would have been thrilled to open if i'd bought it from someone else. We fucking rocked this Critter project and i'm glad amongst all the fellow nerds of various social ability i've met online, i'm working with people that have a real spirit of fun, but also have high standards in what they do and have the discipline to be thorough with every element of toymaking/producing etc.
My past two projects have been a free education in the art I love. Now I get to do some sculpting again.
Treegarrs arms are a bitch. But everytime I'm not happy with them, I'm cutting down and rebuilding.
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