Miscellaneous toy design
Over the years, and especially since I started digitally sculpting after Covid hit, I’ve done a whole bunch of one-off projects. Many were designed to expand my skill set and challenge me to do different styles. I’m including them here just to show my current range.
Right about when I started digitally sculpting, I created a big custom action figure project just for fun: an extensive line of 6-inch figures based on the two Tim Burton Batman movies. And then I kind of went nuts and extended that to four more films as if Tim Burton continued to make Batman movies for the next decade. It was a fun thought experiment, and I created plots and cast known actors in all the different roles to go along with each film. You’ll see some of the package design and posters in other sections of this portfolio.
The majority of this work was done by hand, kitbashing existing figures from all sorts of toy lines, along with digitally sculpting, most of the portraits of the actors, and 3-D printing them. These are some of my very first attempts at digitally sculpting, ever so the lightness quality varies – at the time I didn’t even know you could put reference into Z-Brush!
I made group shots of each wave in the style of the old Kenner toy catalogs that used to come with playsets and vehicles.
Another thing I did for fun a couple of years ago was sculpt an Indiana Jones figure in the style of mid-80s Kenner 4.5-inch movie lines. One thing led to another, and I found myself sculpting a small 1970s-style playset of the Temple of Doom altar area. Once I was pretty happy with that, I went ahead and made a massive playset that the smaller place it could fit inside; this one was filled with all sorts of play features like a classic mountain-type playset, such as Castle Grayskull or the Sectaur’s Hive. I also did some concept art for other playsets that would reuse existing Star Wars bases and just add additional pieces or cardboard backdrops.
