JOYENGINE: cause sharing is cool

I really like Noferin’s work.  Their Natural Wood Pecanpals series is limited to 300 friends, made from 100% sustainably harvested Rubber tree wood and each of the 300 toys is individually hand crafted.

Jeremy Brautman dives deep and takes a good hard look at the designer toy industry in his 5-part exclusive for Toycyte, “Blindsided.”  Jeremy is super great guy, exceptional writer, and takes his toys very seriously.  He’s been working round the clock on “Blindsided,” what just may be considered his magnum opus.  For those of us that have played in the toy scene, continue to participate, and choose to attempt to cling to childhood through designer vinyl, Jeremy’s latest is a must read:

http://www.toycyte.com/blindsided-a-toycyte-investigation-part-2-toy-fans
http://www.toycyte.com/blindsided-a-toycyte-investigation-part-1-toy-companies

Everyone’s favorite Aussie illustrator, Ashley Wood, has been spending time in Hong Kong expanding his line of limited-edition toys. OYABUN TK, I believe his first figurative toy, is about to go on preorder next week. There’s a countdown to the preorder on his blog, looks like it’ll run out sometime early Tuesday. How awesome are those little jackets?!

Phu!, one of our most favorite toy customizers in the whole wide world just wrapped up his latest project.  A ridiculously modified Illazilla.  Most radical.

It’s been a while since we’ve dropped any of our pal Phu!’s custom creations.  But, Phu! just wrapped up a new custom Qee from Toy2R for a private collector, and snuck in his signature 2″ Rebel Pilot.  In typical Phu! style he created this custom from a pretty amazing array of everyday materials including, Bamboo sticks, beads, brass rivets, broken toy parts, cable ties, cotton fabrics, disposable spoons, Gashapon acrylic spheres, wire… and some other crazy stuff you can probably only find in Singapore.

Back from three days of shredding Aspin, CA…

I was up there with my friends at Futuristic Films, who showed their new film ‘The Ripple Effect‘ at the Wheeler Opera House on Friday night.

We rode Snowmass and Buttermilk. Snow was all over the place, soft, firm, and crusty are words I’d use to describe the conditions. It’s been at least a week since the last storm. As always though, it was fun to be out there…

The weekend illustrated for me the ‘tightrope of choice’ we all walk in these times of economic and social change. It feels like we can go in one of two directions right now, and in a hurry. Now is the time to aim higher and get it “right”.

I met abstract artist Gino Hollander yesterday. The experience reminded me that it takes an elemental faith for life and its creative processes to navigate all the bull shit. This man was a walking history book, with a command for embracing change throughout his life… I feel fortunate to have been in his home - Hollander Art.

Faith is Elemental — Paulo Coehlo

Everyday we hear people bumming on things. Yeah, its hard, no doubt. As a business owner, I can attest. But there’s a personal responsibility for each of us to tune out the negativity associated with the doom and gloom vibe.

Most of us are waking up everyday for a reason. Even though it seems like we have little to work with in terms of building blocks, what we, as individuals, do with that finite amount will make all the difference towards finding solutions to our current predicament.

The Obama stimulus package is an absurdly large sum of money, but how it filters into society is up to us. We ultimately decide what our society looks like…We are the ones who will doing the heavy lifting.

Now is the time to maintain faith in where things can go versus where things could go.

“Constructing” means not only producing something that is not yet at hand but also setting up and erecting, rising to the heights — more precisely, first gaining a height, securing it, and thus positing a “right direction”. Thus “constructing” is a commanding that first raises the claim to command and creates a realm of command. - Martin Heidegger

Kid Robot at it again….KIDPUNK limited release video teaser.

Kidrobot 16: KidPunk! from Kidrobot on Vimeo.

According to Dutch artist Sander Reijgers maybe you can have both with this mash-up windbreaker made out of an inflatable doll.

inflatable doll jacket

c13 recently teamed up with AMG to create a series of custom Munny’s for some industry heavies.  The Munny’s all shipped as holiday gifts and are serving to copromote AMG’s Munny Contest.  You can see our process over at our flickr account.

Our pal Stevesy from AMG rolled into the studio with a mini MUNNY on Sunday and some crazy ideas involving Plasti Dip.  Here’s some of what happened…

Saw this sweet clay model of an upcoming Treeson (by Bubi Au Yeung) blind box series titled “Treeson and Other Stories” over on Andy Woo’s (of Crazy Label) Flickr.  It’s a beautiful sculpt and I’m sure will make for an amazing series (currently scheduled to drop Q1 2009).

For those of you who have not been to the Paper Critters site yet, take a look… it is pretty cool. With Paper Critters, you can design your own paper toy online; then view it as a 3D rendered toy. If you’d like, you can print it out and put it together. You can even upload photos to completely customize your paper toy.