toy

"It seems to have life ... organic life" • ALIEN

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I love toys and action figures. I love Ridley Scott’s 1979 science-fiction masterpiece “ALIEN”. I especially love toymaker NECA and their toys based off of that film.

I took a week and sat down with some of these figures and created some small “moving stills” vignettes so that I could play with composition and moving the camera and smoke and lasers and all kinds of stuff.

Over the next three days I’ll be posting the three videos I created from that week of playing and experimenting. Some of these use audio and music from the 1979 film.

This is the 2nd of 3 posts.

Sh*t Got Real JC: Part 2

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Wander • Shit Got Real JC

Last week a post about my ThreeA figure "Sh*t Got Real JC" was published.  He rules.  Over the weekend I brought him over to Clough State Park, which I have done with my other ThreeA figures in the past, and spent a lovely afternoon making images with him.

Intimidation • Shit Got Real JC

A word of advice to other ThreeA collectors out there that like to take photographs of their figures:  BE CAREFUL WITH THE WRIST PEGS!  While trying to remove that awesomesauce Mad Max jacket I have for him, I pulled on the sleeve too hard and his wrist peg snapped.  This is the second time I've had a wrist peg snap - the first time was back at the start of 2017 when changing hands for my Blind Cowboy and his peg snapped.  Replacements can be found on eBay, but they are stupid expensive.  So be extra careful when doing anything with the hands or wrists.  I've since cut that long leather sleeve off the jacket, so now it's more of a badass leather vest.  Still looks excellent.

You can see a few more example images I made over on my Flickr page.

Annie Are You Okay?

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Michael Jackson S.H. Figuarts

As y'all probably know by now, I love action figures and toys.  I've always had an action figure in my hand since I was a little kid.  I'm a bit of a pop-culture junkie, and when I was in college, I started photographing some of my toys as portraits, and over the years I've done a few series' and lots of individual images.

toys hanging on studio wall and displayed on shelf

toys hanging on studio wall and displayed on shelf

For Christmas, Sara got me a few figures that had me really excited.  One was a Michael Jackson figure dressed in his "Smooth Criminal" video outfit, and the second was a Freddie Mercury figure, both by Japanese toy makers BanDai & Tamashii Nations, who also made the totally awesome Daft Punk figures I got years ago.

I spent a little time with Michael Jackson at the studio one afternoon.  It also gave me a chance to try out a can of Atmosphere Aerosol.  I've been using and having terrible luck with Fog Machines for years.  I've bought three different brands of fog machine and every time I've tried to follow the directions exactly as listed in the manuals and these machines would always bind or gunk up after my very first use.  It got so frustrating when these stupid things wouldn't work any longer.

I was poking around the Interwebz and saw a wedding photographer using this Atmosphere Aerosol for a portrait in a barn.  It was small and portable, unlike those big fog machines, and you could use it over and over without it gunking up.  Cool.

So I ordered a can from B&H and it arrived and I sat down with Micheal and we started taking some images.  For the record, I also had MJ playing on the stereo at the studio.  Just 'cuz.

Michael comes with a bunch of extra hands in different poses, a 2nd face with a different expression, and he also comes with a second torso (seen in the photo above) in his "Michael-Jackson-arms-stretched-straight-up" pose. Totally awesome.

Eventually I got him posed in the image above and the lighting looked good and I set the timer on my camera, locked in focus and then sprayed a few sprays of the aerosol as the shutter clicked - and I was totally in love with the result.  The aerosol is so awesome and works amazing with small-scale figures; you hardly need any of the spray at all, and it is so much easier to use and store and have on hand.  It's a tad expensive for a can, but I think it's worth it in the end for simplicity and it should last me a good amount of time since I've only been using it for toy photography.

Here is a behind-the-scenes shot of the image up above:

S.H. Figuarts setup shot

I had three lights set up: one directly above him, like a stage-light, with a grid on it to control the beam and to create a circle of light at his feet.  I had two gridded strobes off to his left and right; gridded yellow and blue, to give some accent colors.  I had him standing on a clear piece of plastic with a piece of black backdrop paper underneath that, to make it look like a glossy stage floor. Not shown is the Atmosphere Aerosol, but I just sprayed it directly down from over his head at the right moment.

I like photographing toys because they don't really take up a ton of space and you can mostly shoot them anywhere. If I ever had to just work out of my house and not have a studio, I could continue to shoot toys with no issues, as long as I had enough space for lighting and grip.

I've spent my whole life appreciating figures and little tiny human-being models.  It allows me to still connect to my childhood joys while being able to create and totally art-direct the action and situations of the toys - exactly the same way I work with real-life clients; in controlled settings where I'm setting up lights and directing them for the sessions.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask!  I love sharing the stuff that I'm passionate about.

Toys rule! :D

The Dead Equine

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A while back I had posted some images I created of The Blind Cowboy; a fantastic 1/6th scale figure by ThreeA Toys.  He was originally what got me thinking non-stop about ThreeA figures.  He usually comes packaged with the Dead Equine; a giant 2o-pound horse sculpted out of polystone, and it was only available for an extremely limited time and a very expensive price.  Some people, however, like to buy ThreeA items, split up the contents, and then resell them; this was how I ended up purchasing the Blind Cowboy.  I didn't think I'd ever be able to purchase a Dead Equine, but the image of that horse was burned in my brain. A short while ago, I actually found someone that was selling just the Dead Equine without the Blind Cowboy.

...and now my Blind Cowboy/Dead Equine set is complete.

It was actually fortuitous, as the Dead Equine I purchased was literally everything that comes with the retail version *except* the Blind Cowboy.  So it's a complete set!  How awesome!

The box that the Equine comes in is HUGE.  You can't see it by this picture, but it's massively large.  I bet Sara could sit inside the box it comes it.  It also comes with a gorgeous fold-out poster featuring the artwork from the cover.

I'll be doing more formal photographs once it gets warmer outside, but right after I got him I broke out the fog machine and played around a little bit.

This is the one toy/collectible where Sara supported my purchase 100%.  When it finally arrived, she said "This is a work of art.  This is a sculpture."

It's so amazing.  Prints of my Blind Cowboy portraits are available on my Society6 page starting at $20.