Exhibition: Unboxed, A Custom Vinyl Toy Exhibition.

A few months ago I got talking to Joshua Smith, owner of 'Espionage Gallery' here in Adelaide, about art toys and he mentioned he was planing to put together an art toy show. To me, this was very exciting news as we haven't had any exhibitions locally featuring just vinyl toys. Furthermore, I was excited over the fact more people were getting into developing toys as art.

Josh had started to develop his own platform design for the show, I have seen the prototype and it is rad. Sadly, it wasn't completed in time for this exhibition but it will be ready with improvements for the next exhibition. Another art toy show in the works? Fantastic!

So, for this first event, Josh decided to use the 7" Munny platform by Kid Robot. The good thing about the Munny is it already has acceptance by the general community. As I generally work with Kaiju, a niche within a niche, the Munny is a perfect platform to ease the Adelaide public into the art toy world.

The exhibition is titled 'Unboxed, A Custom Vinyl Toy Exhibition.' and features 41 of the best artists from Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and Argentina that have modified, customised, painted and decorated 41 Blank Munny Vinyl Toys.

It was bound to happen eventually but this was my first time creating a custom Munny, the most customised toy platform in the world. I already owned a few Munnys but I haven't done more than poorly sketch on them.

Each exhibition piece I produce, I always attempt something new to push myself further. It is risky but it's for my personal enjoyment. This time, I really wanted to improve my sculpting skills in regards to blending, smoothing surfaces and keeping symmetry. I thought working with the Munny platform would be a perfect opportunity and I am happy with my results.

I will post a full reveal of my design tomorrow night. For now, here is some work in progress. I still wanted to focus on a monster, I did play around with a few Waniphant concepts but I kept coming back to the first idea that popped into my head of making a man in a suit.
 

DINOSAUR MAN

At this stage, I didn't know if I was going to make a fat kid or an old man - I decided to go for the old man. I was playing with the idea that the man in the suit was the 'real monster' but I thought it was a bit too much, so I kept it fun. 

Here you can see that I filled in the cut on top of his head. I required a larger hole to work with so the hair is actually completely removable. I really enjoy this head, I would like to come back and make some old man 4" Munnys in the future. 

Using plasticine I quickly created a 3D sketch of my concept.

Here, you can see my almost complete tail and filled-in arm sockets. There were many more hours of sanding and smoothing required after this photo was taken.

The hacking of the 7" begins! 

To complete the internal detail required for the 4" head, I had to chop the 7" head in half and then resemble afterwards and completely smooth it off - like nothing ever happened.

Final image for the WIP shots for this post. Here you can see some pieces with primer drying in the sun ready for painting.

If you are in Adelaide on the 18th of October, please head down to Espionage Gallery at 6pm for the opening night. I'll be there talking toys with anyone willing. 

Opening night: October 18th at 6:00pm
Till 27th of October.

Espionage Gallery
Suite 1, Level 2
93 Rundle Mall, Adelaide

More information: http://espionage-gallery.com/

Hope to see you there!