Kookycraft Paper Action Figures That ALMOST Were!

Hi gang! Been a good long while since I did a good old fashioned blog post and a Facebook conversation from this morning got me thinking about the Mixo Kookycraft paper figures I designed a while back.

Some of you may remember these from a couple of years ago, before I got hired on at Funko.

They were a cool idea, but never really caught on, despite our pushing them as hard as we could at SDCC 2012. Oh well. They led to me landing my dream job, so all's well that ends well, I guess.

In total, we released 4 different DC superheroes...

And 2 Masters of the Universe figures...

But what I thought would be a hoot is to look at the ones that got designed, but never put into production! So here we go...

For the DC series, we had planned to start getting into villains and I actually designed a Joker and Riddler...

For MOTU, Beastman and Teela were next on the list...

We were planning a foray into the world of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers...

 And for you music fans, we even looked into having KISS figures made, as seen here in my hand-built mock-ups...

And I olny got as far as making a John Lennon one for our Beatles Yellow Submarine pitch...

And that's about as far as we got.

Looking back, this was a trying time for me, but also very exciting as I daily faced a new adventure in the worlds of licensing and design.

I sort of wish these had taken off better, but if that had happened, I may not have ended up where I am now, so it's probably all for the best.

Given the choice between paper or plastic, I'll take plastic any day. :)

Check back soon, when I'll take a look back at our Boxos line of mini stylized papercraft figures that almost were!

Big Announcement: A New Job for the Lord of the Dork Horde!

Well, this has been a crazy few years for me. I went from being a broke art school student (back in the Geek Orthodox days), to a full-time t-shirt designer (When I started Hey! Look at My Toys!), to an art director for a start-up collectibles company, which allowed me to attend San Diego Comic Con twice, and now it looks like I'm taking another big step.

As of this posting (Monday, Aug. 20th, 2012) I will be starting my first day as the newest designer for Funko Toys!

You probably know them best for there vast array of Wacky Wobbler bobble-heads, vinyl Pop! figures and much more.

Well, in a deal that went down a couple of weeks ago, in short, Funko bought out Mixo and I basically came along with the deal.

So now I'll be commuting to the Funko offices every morning (no more all-day chillin' in the Nerdatorium for me) and heading up their new papercraft and tin collectibles lines, and chipping in on other design duties for their other lines as needed.

It goes without saying that I am mega-ultra-super-excited-times-a-gazillion about this. I have always loved Funko's products (I'm in love with their Vinyl Invaders series) so it's pretty much a dream come true to be working for them.

I will miss Mixo more than I can say. I was there from the very first day me and my buddy Mike thought of making tin can characters and filling them with ground coffee (ha!), all the way up to our stellar reception at this year's SDCC. Now it's time to take those ideas to a much bigger scale.

So, in case you're wondering, the Kookycans, Kookycraft 9" papercrat figures and Boxos 4" papercraft figures will still be coming out, but they will all say Funko on the packages now and will probably be somewhat redesigned to fit the Funko look. I know that we're already talking about turning the tins into even more figural pieces (with arms and legs and whatnot). But time will tell on how all of this plays out.

However, all that having been said, I'd like to assure readers of my blog and fellow Dork Horde members that this in no way means that my blog is going away! Don't worry, I'm not going to pull another Geek Orthodox. ;)

No, the Lair is forever! And I still have major plans for the Horde as a group and can't wait to take things further.

But while I'm getting used to the new gig, posting may be a little sparse here. But I promise I'll try not to have too much fun designing all those DC, Marvel, Star Wars and other toys and get back to a regular blogging schedule soon.

Thanks, gang! Wish me luck on my first day!

Original Mixo Concept Sketches!

As some of you may know, I'm the art director and designer for a company called Mixo. Right now, we produce a series of collectible figural tins called Kookycans, but we're about about to launch a whole slew of other products starting this July (with a big launch coinciding with SDCC).

Now, many of you have seen our Kookycans before, some of you may even own a few, but for those of you who don't know what they are, this is what they look like...

They come with crunchy fruit tart candy stars inside along with a bonus sheet (or three) of punch-out papercraft accessories for your Kookycan.

But not that long ago, the original idea was to fill these with ground coffee and sell them to adults. When I think back on this, I can't believe how much has changed. Not only were they going to be filled with coffee, but the head/cap was going to act as a cup and the designs were going to be all un-licensed (at first) Big Daddy Roth style monsters and weirdos.

The only reason I'm writing about all of this is because I came across my original sketches from what feels like 10 years ago, but is really only about a year and a half ago, and I was shocked at how different it all turned out!

Anyway, I just thought it'd be fun to share these sketches. Enjoy...

Guess Who's Coming to Mixoville from Gotham City?

 

Batman has been our biggest seller from our Mixo kookycans series, so we had to do Gotham proud in the next series of Mixo Kookycans!

Just wanted to show off a bit! :)

You can see more on our Facebook Page!

Mixo Ghostbusters! The Kookycans That Will Never Be :(

As soon as we get close to signing a deal with a license at my job, we start mocking up artwork. I was super stoked when we were on the verge of making Ghostbusters Kookycans, bust sadly, the deal went sour and I guess they will never be. Oh well, at least now I can show off how they might have looked. Enjoy...

New Mixo DC Concepts!

I made some new concepts for series 2 & 3 of our DC Superheroes Mixo Kookycans and since we already posted the sneak peeks on our Facebook page, i thought it would be cool to post them here as well.

These are just concepts and have not been approved, but we are trying to keep our burgeoning collector base excited about upcoming releases.

Dig 'em...

Let me know what you all think! Cool? Not cool? Any other characters you'd rather see?

And for the record, the fist series of DC heroes will be in stores in about two weeks! Just $9.99 filled with candy and papercraft accessories inside! (Pluggity plug plug)

The Many Faces of Mixo's Batman!

As some of you may know, Mixo (the company I art direct for) launched our first wave of DC Comics Kookycans at SDCC 2011. The one that sold out the quickest (on the very first night, as a matter of fact) was the one and only Batman. But fear not, all the DC Kookycans should be hitting stores in a couple of weeks.

And since everyone seems to dig the Dark Knight, I thought it would be cool to show off some Batman variations I mocked up a few months ago when we first got the DC license. Check 'em out...

I still hope to release more Batman variations at some point, but I can promise that Bat-fans will LOVE the 2nd wave of DC Kookycans. They're a regular "rogue's gallery". ;) Stay tuned!

The Birth of an Ad Character!

I've now worked for my new company, Mixo, long enough and enough of the artwork is finally out there that I can start talking about the creative process and showing off some of the behind the scenes stuff. And I thought that I'd kick it all off with some pics on how our company mascot, Mr. Mixo, came to be!

Mr. Mixo is our Snap, Crackle and Pop, our Twinkie the Kid, our Kool-aid Man. And we really wanted something that aesthetically paid homage to the great ad characters of yesteryear.

Mr.Mixo started out as a drawing done by another artist, and as cute as he was, it didn't quite capture "our look and feel" and once I was hired on full time, I took the character under my wing, or in this case, under my Bic ball point pen.

You can see the original Mr. Mixo taped down in the lower right hand corner. I took that character and ran him through my cartoon filters and worked him out with some pen sketches (anyone else out there sketch in ball-point ink?). Note my boss' sketch just above the card. It's a Mike Becker original! You can also see where I was highly enamored by the old "My Three Sons" shoes. Weird stuff sticks in my head.

Next up came a more finished sketch (still in pen) that would be my guide once I took him into Illustrator. Note his obvious "soda jerk/ice cream man" look, which was originally how we wanted him, back when our collectible tins were going to contain ice-cream flavored drink mixes (they're now filled with sweet-tart candy and papercraft prizes).

Then it was time to build him digitally...

 

 We even had planed to make an exclusive Mr. Mixo Kookycan (the name of our first product) for San Diego Comic Con, but it never happened. Maybe next year...

Mr. Mixo would eventually go through one more makeover, when we wanted our focus to be more on the designs of the collectible tins and the creative, "artsy" papercraft accessories inside. With a few changes here and there, we ended up with our current (but probably not final) version of Mr. Mixo...

And that, kids, is how I make an ad character!