I’ve had a really good week (or so) for toys. It started on our anniversary – as a gift, my wife got me the Wal-Mart exclusive Avengers Hulk that has been eluding me for some time. And she didn’t even blink when I told her that I was planning to Frankenstein him with some other Hulks to make the best Hulk ever (maybe some day). And it’s kept going since then:
Hasbro Return of Marvel Legends – BigBadToyStore let me know that my pre-order of Wave 3 was in.
3A Toys Action Portable – My most-anticipated figure, the Fighting JC, was announced in 1/12 scale, and on order day I also scored an AP blue-suited Zomb for a great price on eBay and the secret Dark Sarge Zomb on bambalandstore.com, right as the JC sale was closing up.
Hot Toys The Dark Knight – I missed out on the pre-order window for the SWAT version of Jim Gordon, but Sideshow just let me know that they found one for me (I had put myself on the wait list).
With all this good stuff happening to me (aside from now being completely broke :)), I figured I should spread the good toy karma around with a Free Stuff giveaway. Here’s what’s up for grabs and how to get up to three chances to win.
If you’re looking for some eye candy this weekend, Diamond Select Toys is willing to oblige, and even send some your way, if you’re lucky – with their Femme Fatales Giveaway! It’s easy, pick your favorite pic of a Femme Fatales statue and post it on pretty much any of the social media networks, send the link to collectdst@gmail, and if they pick you, you’ll get some Femme Fatales goodies so you won’t have to scour the interwebs anymore.
Mark Nagata is a Renaissance man. He just might have the largest Ultraman collection in the world. As a designer and artist, he’s worked for the likes of DC Comics, LucasArts, and Hasbro. For several years, he published Super 7, a magazine focused on Japanese vinyl toys, before going on to start the Max Toy Company, designing and manufacturing vinyl art toys. On top of all this, he’s a tremendously nice guy!
Jedd-the-Jedi had a chance to sit down with Mark at STGCC. In the first part of their conversation, they spanned toy collecting, the differences between working for the big guys vs. running your own show, and if it’s alright to play with your art toys. It’s really a fantastic interview. Read on!
Jedd: Hi Mark, great to be talking to a fellow lover of toys. First off, what got you into collecting toys? You wrote on your site “I think it’s safe to say that most of us collect because of our childhoods,” so do you have any childhood memories of a particular toy or action figure that you want to share?
Mark Nagata: Oh boy, for sure. Well I think the first impression I had for Japanese toys is when I was about 9 years old, and I had an aunt who was living in Japan, and for Christmas she sent a very big box to me, and inside were about 20 different Japanese toys. So Henshen cyborgs, Bullmark figures, kaiju toys… but at the time, I didn’t know that’s what they were called. To sort of back up a little, I’m third generation Japanese American, so my parents were born in America and my grandparents came from Japan to America, but me being third generation, actually I don’t understand Japanese and I don’t speak Japanese, so when I got this box of toys, I couldn’t read anything except for the company name Bullmark, ‘cause it was printed in English. I didn’t know the names of the characters, I didn’t know that they had TV shows; I just thought they were toys.
So, from that point, it was really… I fell in love with the visual part of the toys. The way it looked, the packaging, because all the packaging had like very dynamic artwork and colours, very crazy colours, and all the kaiju for me… were just… I couldn’t even put into words what it did to my imagination. Because at that point, my toys in America were GI JOE 12 inch, Major Matt Mason, so very… 60s, 70s types of toys, but um very plain, based on like a real astronaut, or an army man. No imagination, right?
So when I opened that box, and I saw these crazy colours, and these kaiju and these spacemen, I was like… you know, what is this? I haven’t seen this before. So when I look back all these years, that’s the point that started me on this journey to this day, which is being able to make actual kaiju toys in Japan.
I promise – this is the last shot of Akuma and Ryu! I mentioned yesterday that I wanted Ryu’s head framed by the fireball, so I made that minor adjustment plus repositioned his left hand so the palm would catch some of the reflection off of the fireball too. And while I liked how in the second shot it looked like Akuma was appearing out of the darkness, I wanted to see what it would be like with some lighting on his sides, so you can make out his entire silhouette. For this I used the LED book lights, as the flexible necks let me position the lights exactly where I wanted them.
I noticed too that the straps from Ryu’s headband had fallen out in the previous pics, so this gave me an opportunity to add it back in. And finally, tilting the camera allowed me to fill a rectangular image instead of having some unnecessary blank spots in a square. The added benefit – drama! At this point, I don’t think there’s anything other changes to make (hence my promise) – but if you have suggestions, let me know.
Although this was not intended, you’ve have now sort of been through my process of composing shots – snap pics, see how they look, and make incremental adjustments… and repeat. But instead of this being in one sitting, because of time limits the past few nights, it’s gone over a few days instead. If you want to see the progression, here’s the first shot of Akuma vs. Ryu and here’s take two of Akuma vs. Ryu. Thanks for looking!
After I posted the quick pic of Akuma and Ryu yesterday, I realized that although I liked the shot, I was stuck in the two dimensional mindset of two Street Fighters on the video game screen. I hadn’t yet dismantled the setup from the day before, so I rotated the scene a little and lowered the vantage point of my camera.
I raised Ryu’s hands up so there’d be a few more spots for the purple light to shine. In hindsight I should have shifted Ryu to his right a little so that the left side of his head would have gotten some light.
