Meet your fellow monster

[Josh Barton]

This thread is to act like a virtual party where everyone can get to know everyone. Ascii drinks and 300 dpi cheese cubes are served in abundance. More fun than an AA meeting.

So who are you? What brought you to the hobby? What part of the hobby do you partake in? Fave toys? Etc. Leave the egg shells at the door. If this thread stays alive, it could be a nice way to learn something you didn't know and generally make new friends. Potential, kids. Potential. Since I don't see any hands I'll start.

My name is Josh and I live in Kentucky. Right this very second I am listening to Type O Negative. I like battling my dog, Wolf and eating Thai food. I want to be a Kamen Rider when I grow up.

I've been 'into' toys since I was a kid. I grew up on Transformers and Voltron. I had a Bumblebee cake on my 4th birthday. I have an intense love of robot toys. Growing up, I tried to get a hold of anything robot related. Seriously. The only TMNT fig I owned was Metalhead because he was a robot. I had Robotech underwear when I was real young and I didn't even see Robotech until I was in High School. When Transformers died I graduated to Power Rangers and then back to TF when Beast Wars began airing.

Two particular events brought me to the Japanese scene. Before I graduated HS, my mom came back from a flea market with a robot lion toy. I had no idea what it was at the time. I just knew it wasn't voltron. Later on I did research and discovered it was the lion from Daltanious. This little bit of digging opened up a whole world of Chogokin/ Godaikin. The second event came about because someone on a TF board posted a link to the (new at the time) GaoGaiGar figures. I immediately fell in love with the designs and again with the research, discovered the sweet sweet satisfaction that is Yuusha or the Brave Robot series.

If robot toys are my foundation in this hobby, then Godzilla is the first floor. Another big part of my childhood was the big G. One of my favourite movies growing up was Godzilla VS Megalon. In the late 90's I was introduced to Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. Gamera has been my fave kaiju ever since. I even have a big plushie of the guy.

I have since grown to love kaiju of all shapes and found a deep appreciation for the 'modern vinyl' scene and its sub-groups. Bottom line, I love toys. And this love is what drives me to make figures of my own. Well more like 'try', but we all start somewhere. I don't have a specific focus as I am too ADD to decide on what I want to do. I want to hit it all; robots, kaiju, yokai, super heroes, everything.

With all that said, I look forward to this community growing and making new friends. I think what Matt Walker has here is something special and it'd be foolish not to get involved.

[Sanjeev]

Bryan, that sounds fucking awesome! I'm not a huge board gamer...but I've painted a few wargaming mini's in my time (not so much to take part in games...but just because I loved the look of the models). And, of course, I love kaiju...so I can't wait to see what you come up with.

 

In the meantime, and certainly not to steal any thunder from you, but this game from Toy Vault has me REAL anxious! 

[Bryan K Borgman]

I too am very excited about that new Godzilla game from Toy Vault. It'll be a nice "board game". The figures look great and I love the building terrain idea.

 

All that said - my game is more like 40K or Necromunda than the Toy Vault Godzilla game or Monsterpocalypse.

Sanjeev said:

Bryan, that sounds fucking awesome! I'm not a huge board gamer...but I've painted a few wargaming mini's in my time (not so much to take part in games...but just because I loved the look of the models). And, of course, I love kaiju...so I can't wait to see what you come up with.

 

In the meantime, and certainly not to steal any thunder from you, but this game from Toy Vault has me REAL anxious! 

[Sanjeev]

Sounds like I could totally get behind that, Bryan. I'm a fan of tactic-heavy dungeon crawler games (like Space Hulk, if we're going with Games Workshop analogies). Look forward to its development!

[Dead Presidents]

Really looking forward to playing your game soon Bryan !

[Bryan K Borgman]

Thanks Sanjeev, Dead Pres, and everyone for the welcoming support.

[Jim Shea]

Hello,

 

Recently moved back to Western Mass from Baltimore to open FOE with my lovely wife Nicole.  Loved dinosaurs, nature and the creature double feature as a kid and quickly moved on to a diet of heavy metal and horror movies.  Started collecting vinyl (eps and lps) in the early  90's and then some vinyl toys around 2004 but once I saw Marnon I was totally hooked.  Love the passion and creativity of the current indy producers and am very glad to be in a profession where I can support them.  I know a few of you already and look forward to meeting more of you and talking toys.  And I think it's awesome that we have Dead Presidents and Monster Kolor coming out of MA.

 

Prost!

[Sanjeev]

Nice to see you around here, Jim. I really need to get out there to meet you guys...

[Jim Shea]

Thanks, Sanjeev!  Hope you do get a chance to make it out here.  It would be good to meet you, you helped me out with Dream Rocket Gilmos when I was living in Baltimore.  Northampton is a nice day trip from eastern mass.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Hello,

My name is Robert Rodriguez, but I did not direct Machete.  I'm from Sacramento CA, and  was raised by middle class Mexicans who wanted to spoil their first child with a healthy supply of action figures.  G.I. Joe and WWF figures were my religion as a kid, as were Marvel comics and pro-wrestling in general.  Somewhere along the way I discovered lucha libre (mexican wrestling) and have been thoroughly obsessed with the modern product and culture since.
Got heavy into stenciling in the last decade and have really started making progress with my art.  I rapped under the moniker Rip Sexington with a hiphop group called From Parts Unknown for the last few years and maintain Sexington.com as a blog for my art, raps, and writing, although it's primarily focused on the art lately.
I had been picking up Kubricks and Dunny's here and there but seeing Sucklord's Chinatown Warrior in the awesome Dragatomi store here in Sac made me realize I wasn't paying close enough attention to the custom toy scene.  The more I learned, the more I wanted to try making my own toys and am expecting my first batch of resin and silicone to arrive any day now.

[Dead Presidents]

Very nice to know more about you. Thanks for sharing. Sucklord "sucks" many of us in around here. FYI- The sucklord himself is rumored to be spraying Monster Kolor !

Robert Rodriguez said:

Hello,

My name is Robert Rodriguez, but I did not direct Machete.  I'm from Sacramento CA, and  was raised by middle class Mexicans who wanted to spoil their first child with a healthy supply of action figures.  G.I. Joe and WWF figures were my religion as a kid, as were Marvel comics and pro-wrestling in general.  Somewhere along the way I discovered lucha libre (mexican wrestling) and have been thoroughly obsessed with the modern product and culture since.
Got heavy into stenciling in the last decade and have really started making progress with my art.  I rapped under the moniker Rip Sexington with a hiphop group called From Parts Unknown for the last few years and maintain Sexington.com as a blog for my art, raps, and writing, although it's primarily focused on the art lately.
I had been picking up Kubricks and Dunny's here and there but seeing Sucklord's Chinatown Warrior in the awesome Dragatomi store here in Sac made me realize I wasn't paying close enough attention to the custom toy scene.  The more I learned, the more I wanted to try making my own toys and am expecting my first batch of resin and silicone to arrive any day now.

[dogmeatsausage]

Hi everyone.

My name is Paul Harmon, I'm a storyboard artist in tv animation, I do some comic work as well.

I've been obsessed with toys since childhood, probably starting collecting in high school, trying to get toys I used to own, toys I could never afford at the time. I'm into too many types of toys, from captain action, stretch monster, vintage star wars, transformers, weird 80's cartoon toys, vintage popy and bandai, too many combining robots, henshin cyborg, microman, and a lot of really cool vintage character based vinyl. Any really cool character toy action/figure fascinates me. Anyhow I'm moving into actually making my first toy, based off of a sci-fi yakuza story I planned/plan to do as some form of graphic novel or short. I've just ordered my first airbrush and will get some paints and learn how to paint figures. I was looking through the novice airbrush section but feel free to offer me some advice. Also Mark Nagata has been a HUGE help in getting toy production advice! Thanks Mark. 

[Ben Mininberg]

Holy wow!  Lots of dudes have lots of lavish plans for stuff they hope to do, but you come out of nowhere with an AWESOME idea and awesome stuff to actually show.  Definitely keep us in the look, because this guy looks great.

dogmeatsausage said:

Hi everyone.

My name is Paul Harmon, I'm a storyboard artist in tv animation, I do some comic work as well.

I've been obsessed with toys since childhood, probably starting collecting in high school, trying to get toys I used to own, toys I could never afford at the time. I'm into too many types of toys, from captain action, stretch monster, vintage star wars, transformers, weird 80's cartoon toys, vintage popy and bandai, too many combining robots, henshin cyborg, microman, and a lot of really cool vintage character based vinyl. Any really cool character toy action/figure fascinates me. Anyhow I'm moving into actually making my first toy, based off of a sci-fi yakuza story I planned/plan to do as some form of graphic novel or short. I've just ordered my first airbrush and will get some paints and learn how to paint figures. I was looking through the novice airbrush section but feel free to offer me some advice. Also Mark Nagata has been a HUGE help in getting toy production advice! Thanks Mark.