Gizmodo interviews action figure customizer Sillof

He's a history teacher. Interview.

Interview: Todd McFarlane explains how the Halo action figures were made

Link.

Interview with Winston Acosta

I've previously featured two of Winston "Scavenjer33" Acosta's fabulous customized Munnys. He was kind enough to answer a few questions.

Q: What kind of art/crafting education do you have?
A: I have always been into art, in middle school I attended one of the first magnet schools in Miami, then for High school I was accepted to a visual arts program and went to college for commercial arts.



Q: What type of tools, paint, sculpture medium do you use to customize Munnys? Do you use any products to seal the paint?
A: It's funny, I just started using Sculpey and customizing toys literally a couple of weeks ago. I had taken sculpture classes in high school but never was into it until now. I've used acrylics all the time for my art and am very comfortable with them. I am still learning Sculpey and use a wooden chop stick that I found as a tool. What ever works! I do seal the customs with Krylon clear acrylic coating.



Q: Do you take commissions?
A: Not at this moment. I would like to in the future.



Thanks Winston! You can visit his Flickr gallery here, and his official site here.


*Previously:

Interview with Tom Torrey of Gamma Ray Bots

Interview with Pete of The Builder's Studio.

Interview with Tom Torrey of Gamma Ray Bots

I recently discovered Tom Torrey's Etsy store, Gamma Ray Bots. It's full of...robots and other neat stuff. Tom was gracious enough to answer a few questions.

Q: What kind of art/crafting education do you have?

I have a B.F.A. in illustration from Mass College of Art in Boston Ma. I also spent a couple of years at a State College getting a sculpture and metals/clay education before switching to Mass art.



Q: How do you design your creations - - do you plan them out, or just dump out your bits box and see what falls out?

Yes,sometimes! I spent a long time without focus in my artwork. I could paint and draw I just didn't know what i wanted to make art about. Being trained as an illustrator did a lot of damage to my creative process. For a long time I couldn't look at a blank canvas without wanting to paint a businessman on it with a fishing pole surrounded by an ocean of dollar bills. It is a kind of brainwashing. When i was an editorial illustrator I didn't feel like a "real" artist. No offense to editorial illustrators you are real artists. It wasn't until I quit freelance illustration and concentrated on the more fine art side of things that this whole new world of possibilities opened up. This is just a long way of saying I love scifi and when I was free of the regimented illustrative training these pictures started to appear in my sketchbook.



Q: What tools/glue do you use?

I use lots of tools. Hand tools mostly. I share a basement with my father-in-law so what ever tool i don't have i can probably find it in his stuff. I try to make at least my robot sculptures as permanent as I can. It can get tricky sometimes. I find myself rejecting a cool looking detail on a robot that I just know would fall off or break in a couple of years. Making an object to pass on to someone else is important to me. My sculpture professor,whom I learned a lot from, always pushed the importance of permanence in art. He said why create this wonderful object just to have it fall apart in a few years. I guess it just stuck with me.

Q: Your robots seem to have very similar legs and feet - - what do you make them out of?

The most common material I use is metal. I also use a common robot body type. This didn't happen overnight. It has come from trial and error. I find what is easily available to me. When I find some food tins i can use for the body lets say i find out just how many are available. I get weird looks from cashiers when I bring 10 coffee tins to the register. I have learned if you like it buy in when you see it because containers disappear and change often. The fun is in the details. My favorite hangouts are dollar stores and thrift shops. This is when the looks get weirder. I often think about what is running through peoples minds when they ring up old silverware, broken tools, lunch boxes,jars of rusty nuts and bolts. I mean to most people this stuff is garbage and should be thrown away. I rescue it and it sits on a shelf in my studio until I find the perfect place for it.



Q: What techniques do you use to promote your store?

Flickr is a great way to generate sales at my etsy.com store. I have gotten commission work based on people looking at my old work. It can be great tool just to show what I am capable of. Word of mouth is good to but it is hard to find my audience. They are out there but can be hard to find. I do some art shows in the Boston area. Another good resource I am gearing up for is magazine ads. I have my eye on doing a couple of spots this summer to push some sales. A small piece of advice to anyone before you advertise yourself, have the stock on hand. Make as much art as you can prior to any sales push. When your name gets out, there is no sales killer like having three pieces in your store front because you didn't get the work done on time. A nice full inventory makes for good sales and keep generating new art. People who like your art will come back and check you out for new stuff. If there is no new stuff they are going to move on.

Thanks, Tom. Visit his Etsy store here, his official site here, and his Flickr gallery here.

*Previously: Interview with The Builder's Studio.

Interview: Freelance toy sculptor Michael Locasio

Figures.com: What type of education do you have and what type of education would you recommend for a person trying become a toy sculptor?

ML: I had an apprenticeship with a bronze monument maker in NYC for years. It’s important to really nail down fundamentals like anatomy and proportions before jumping into fine detail work, so the training I got in traditional sculpting - working from models and cadaver dissections - was very valuable.

I did not study art in college mainly because I was able to continue this apprenticeship as an independent study. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend my education path; I’ve seen such diverse backgrounds from artists in the (toy) industry it’s clear there are many ways to get to the same point.

The most important aspect of it is your education never stops; there are always new techniques and skills to learn, new reference materials to study…even if you are an accomplished artist.

Read the whole thing.

Interview: Pete of The Builder's Studio

I recently stumbled across The Builder's Studio Etsy store. It's full of ray guns, robots, and other neat creations like Robot Santa. Pete was kind enough to answer a few questions.

Q: What kind of art/crafting education do you have?

While in college (where I got my degree in English and creative writing) I also took a few art courses when I could, one photography and a couple for painting (you know, canvas work). Besides that nothing formal (couple in high school, nothing outlandish).

I've been artistic since my earliest days, drawing mostly, but always loved the scifi, always also loved the "bits and pieces" that went along with it, did collecting, including pieces of things that I thought looked neat and maybe I could make something with... as I got older I got into model kit building, starting with the tech stuff like space ships. The first days of the FIRST (read real) Star Wars trilogy were great! Then some figure kits, all that.

In recent years real life got in the way of doing much for fun OR profit in this regard. I wanted to spend more time doing something creative. But I had to try to make it at least pay SOME bills. One day I sat down and started playing around with some wood and other things, had robots on the mind. I had been making some unusual walking stick canes and something snapped, in a good way!

No I was never MUCH of a traditional woodworker, but my father in his day had done some carpentry professionally and was always making something for the house, a stool, a spice rack, a toy for us when we were younger when he could. I didn't latch on to it in any formal way ... but I believe some of that mentally and creatively soaked in naturally!

All that boiled down to technically not much formal or informal training or education. Self taught a lot and a lot of being around it...



Q: How do you design your creations?

The best answer might be: I don't. Despite my early days of drawing (and desire to do more if I ever make the time) I'm not a big planner. In many things I'm a stickler for details but in this (and most) of my creative endeavors I like to work naturally and not take all the piss and vinegar out of an idea by talking about it or "planning."

I often work from a single shape or curve... and it's "hey, that reminds me of a radar dish on a robot head" or something, and I start building. Add a piece here and there.

Or maybe a general idea of "wouldn't this be cool" ... like recently I did a miniature, steampunk inspired bipedal war vehicle to fight off the invading Martian tripods ... been looking at a lot of steampunk stuff on flickr lately. More and more people have been telling me my stuff fits that arena ... more so than I originally thought. So I found some starting point, in this case a few tiny miniature people figures I had around and imagined one standing in ... something.

Listen, one of the best things is the "funnest:" like when you were a kid with a favorite toy or action figure, imagine playing with your items in a setting... you know the ones. That giant alien cliff (your living room couch), the horrible monsters are chasing you... what would your ray gun look like? What kind of vehicle would help you escape?



Q: I know very little about woodworking. What sorts of tools do you use, and what resources/references would you recommend someone use to learn?

That's tough as in some ways my workshop in under equipped so I make do. I'd tell anyone making things in any format THAT ... you can always find another way!

I mainly use hand tools, especially since I work in a small (and lately often tiny) format of a couple of inches for jewelry and mini dioramas so no need for power tools, occasional a Dremel tool.

I personally own no reference materials for working in this area ... well, from many years ago model kit building but I read that stuff long ago and I guess it's all internalized now. Yes, model kit building books and magazines and videos (if they still make them) especially in the fantasy and scifi areas although I am sure ANY (like auto) will help with certain techniques. But for woodworking I don't know. I do use the internet from time to time.



Q: What techniques do you use to promote your store?

Even though I read a lot online about how tough it was... and believed it... I still had no real idea how tough. I'm still looking for a wider audience. Things really have started to pop surprisingly this last holiday season but I think the economy and gas prices are crunching everyone ... great timing right! I post pictures everywhere (like flickr), join groups, look for new venues in my fields ... answer questions for blogs like yours!

And I try to answer everyone who contacts me; be nice, it never hurts. Why be any other way in any case? TO me this is a LOT of fun and I love getting reactions from people on my work... and I want to keep doing this for a long time! I still haven't scratched the surface of ideas I want to do ... my notebook gets more entries added than I can check off!

That's the last tip, a big one I'll leave you with... when you get an idea, a vision of even a PART of an object, a technigue you HOPE MIGHT POSSIBLE work, an experiment you want to try ... write it down. NOW! No matter how great your memory you WILL forget a lot of these over time. You can't help it. So write them down!

(OK, insert commercial here ... check out my store: buildersstudio.etsy.com -- 'nough said). Thanks to everyone for their support. Hope you got an idea or two.

Thanks, Pete!