A Rake's Progress

Running late but running to the finish. More photos soon.

Garakutagigas Update

Thanks to Kirkland at Toybot Studios for the review found here.

Garakutagigas 2nd: Red Mercury — Order Info

SALES INFORMATION Soft vinyl Monster Garakutagigas 2nd 

A very limited number of Garakutagigas toys in RED vinyl have arrived and will be ready to ship in early October. The standard edition is called Red Mercury and will be painted in metallic green, silver, gold and purple. There will be only 15 pieces of the standard edition available, priced at $125 each,  one per customer please. In addition, 5 pieces will be painted as one-offs and available by lottery; the price is $250 each. 

Size: 8.5 inches vinyl color: Red

Limited production. $125.00 + postage

For the standard edition, please email with "Garakutagigas 2nd" in the subject header.  $125.00 + postage

For a chance at one of the 1-offs, please email with "Garakutagigas Lottery" in the subject header. $250.00 + postage. Lottery winners will be drawn Friday, Sept. 23 and notified by email.

Please supply the following in your email:

Name

Address

Country

Telephone number

PayPal address

I will reply with an invoice of total including postage to your location.

Payment  by PayPal please.

Orders open Sept. 19, midnight • Payment deadline Sept. 30 • Shipments begin October 15

Toy Karma 3 Garakutagigas Customs

Once all the Fire and Storm models from the first release were completed I found I had a few strays left over. And since I needed some pieces to put into Toy Karma 3 I got a chance to experiment with some variant color treatments. The Red model below is an advance sample; watch this blog for the announcement of Garakutagigas 2nd to be released in red vinyl. The other pieces are painted head to toe over the the first release gray vinyl. Check the Rotofugi blog to see Atelier G-1 sculptor Shigeki Okuda's two Garakutagigas customs.

Toy Karma 3 at Rotofugi

Mark Nagata and Yo Miyamoto, together once more with the unstoppable Whitney and Kirby Kerr, the Dynamic Duo that is Rotofugi, have another hit show that will shine as a beacon to vinyl madness. A very limited selection of highlights follow; you can view the entire show here. There were so many amazing pieces ---- my poor camera couldn't do justice to more than a few.

Pico Pico, Mecha School Girl, Custom Painted Resin Figure

Monster Worship Red Rub Greasebat flanked by Earth Altar Beasts

Karz Works / Kazumitsu Akamatsu, Baalzebub, Custom Painted Vinyl Figure

Garakutagigas takes flight!

All the boxes have been shipped and are on their way to new homes. Garakutagigas is in flight right now from Chicago to New York, Massachusetts, California, Hawaii, Netherlands, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan. There were a number of glitches and delays getting this baby out the door. Thanks to everyone for your patience! I 'm confident  that all the challenges that slowed down this first release have been resolved and the future for my little junk monster looks bright...even metallic. Look for the announcement of the release of Garakutagigas 2nd--a new vinyl color and paint colorway---in the next few weeks.

Alex Wald X Atelier G-1: Hyper Hobby interview

Garakutagigas visits San Diego Comic Con, Wonder Festival

Geof Darrow holds the two color demos of Astromonster no.1: Garakutagigas.

Itokin Park, Alex Wald meet at SDCC 2011. Photo courtesy Kirkland Jue

Garakutagigas, Atelier G-1 Wonder Festival 2011 release painted by Shigeki Okuda

Garakutagigas in process

I returned from San Diego Comic Con late Sunday night, totally exhausted. Monday, like clockwork, the shipment of unpainted gray Garakutagigas vinyls landed at Astromonster HQ in Chicago. Painting will proceed this week and continue as orders are filled. There are only 9 vinyls not yet spoken for in this first release---if you've been on the fence about ordering, don't wait! To all of you who ordered Storm or Fire, my sincere thanks! I'm very encouraged by your enthusiastic responses. I will post photos of the paints in progress after the weekend.

Sunday in Japan was Wonder Festival and Atelier G-1 sold  a short run of unpainted red Garakutagigas. I've requested an order of red vinyls too and waiting to learn from Mr. Okuda  how soon he can fulfill the next order.

Garakutagigas Order Info

July 20, 2011

Soft Vinyl Monster Garakutagigas SALES INFORMATION


Size: 8 inches Vinyl color: Gray

Limited production.  $125.00 + postage

Please email your order to: astromonster@sbcglobal.net

Please give the following info:


(1)  Name
(2)  Address
(3)  Country
(4)  Telephone number
(5)  Indicate color choice: STORM or FIRE. (Please see photos below)
(6)  Your PayPal address

I will reply with an email invoice of total and postage to your location.

Payment will be via PayPal.


Orders open July 20  •  Payment  deadline  August 1  •  Shipments begin August 12

Garakutagigas: Fire

Garakutagigas colorway no. 2 is gray vinyl with red, black, metallic green, silver and gold.

Garakutagigas Orders Open Tonight

Colorway no. 2 Fire was painted last night. Photos are still in preparation. I will post photos of both colorways and order info tonight at midnight, July 20.

Garakutagigas: Storm

Garakutagigas colorway no. 1 is"monster green" base with gold, silver, red and black.

Garakutagigas...Countdown to Birth

The test shots are here. Behold, Garakutagigas—naked came he into our world. Paint planning is in the works. Preorder announcement soon! Astromonster Garakutagigas brings the heat this summer.

Atelier G-1 X Astromonster Garakutagigas — First Color version

Okuda-san has posted a series of shots of Garakutagigas with a paint job that references the Kaiju Comrades 2 color print that started it all.

Astromonster Series Vol. 1 "Scrap Metal Destruction Monster Garakutagigas"
Sofubi test shot is expected to rise to much this weekend. Color version in early July the first phase pre-sale and if you can think. Sales method works, 7/1 SHOP start at the reservation. The tentative price is ¥9800.


Wonder Festival will be selling different versions of the goggles as in the early illustration.
Is close to the first color illustrations, is now quite flashy colors and usage of airbrush and brush painting. It looks like the parrot that lives in the tropics.

(Top to bottom: First release, Streamline Goggles; middle row: WonderFest release, Original Goggles; bottom row: side view, back 


Update from Astromonster:
Preorder announcement coming soon. There will be 10 each of two new color versions this summer from Astromonster. Then in the fall, the alternate eye sculpt will go on sale at Wonder Festival. The Astromonster editions for US sales will always have colorways different than the Atelier G-1 editions. Ballpark price for the US will be $125.


Ａｓｔｒｏｍｏｎｓｔｏｒ　シリーズＶｏｌ，１
「くず鉄破壊大怪獣　ガラクタギガス」
ソフビテストショットは、今週末くらいに上がる予定です。
問題なければ第一期カラー版７月初旬には先行販売出来ると思います。
販売方法は、７月１日に作品ＳＨＯＰにて予約開始します。
先行販売分は３０個で、１～５日までの応募受付で第２週くらいにリリースとします。予価は￥９８００です。
オリジナルだし、いつものような数は読めないのと、今回ご紹介の第一期カラーデコマスが最初なので気合入りすぎて塗装にかなりの手間がかかりそうなので、出来る範囲の数としました。もちろん先行分掃けてくれればよいのですが、予定個数に達しなかった場合は、ＷＦに回します。ＷＦではゴーグル違いの初期イラスト版も販売予定です。
一番最初のイラストカラーに近づけましたが、エアブラシと筆塗りの使い分けでかなり派手な色使いとなりました。熱帯に棲んでいるオウムのようですね。
普段は渋い塗装が多いのですが、こんなんも塗ってて楽しいものです。
ソフビ版もこれに準じた塗装となります。

楽しみにお待ち下さい。


via http://green.ap.teacup.com/g-1okuda/

How to Make a Mechanikong

Ultra Seven Makes Dreams Come True

Doctor becomes space superhero / Astronaut Furukawa had childhood dream of emulating Ultra Seven

Tatsuya Kimura / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan—Flying into space like the superhero Ultra Seven. It was a childhood daydream of Satoshi Furukawa, today a 47-year-old surgeon-cum-astronaut. He made this dream come true Wednesday after waiting for 12 years, when the Soyuz spacecraft carrying him and two others was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, bound for the International Space Station.

Family, friends and acquaintances in his hometown and at the launch base cheered at his successful flight and wished him fruitful days at the ISS.

“When he was a child, he always talked about Ultra Seven,” his mother, Hiroko Furukawa, 74, recalled while watching the launch at the base.

“Ultra Seven” is one of Tsuburaya Productions Co.’s famed “Ultra” science fiction TV series. “Ultra Seven” was the third series after “Ultra Q” and “Ultraman.” Ultra Seven, the title character, is a superhero from the imaginary Nebula M-78.

read more at Yomiuri Shimbun      illustration found at deroli

Come Together

These are the wax castings for Garakutagigas which go into the making of iron molds. Molten metal. . .

Alex Wald x Atelier G-1 Collaboration: GARAKUTAGIGAS — Interview by Kirkland Jue

I've been blown away by the enthusiastic reception for the announcement of my first toy design, a collaboration with premier kaiju sculptor Mr. Okuda Shigeki of Atelier G-1. Kirkland Jue of Toybot Studios did a fine interview with me about what makes Garakutagigas tick; it is reprinted here with his kind permission.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————

One of the toys revealed at Super Festival 56 this weekend that just blew me away is the GARAKUTAGIGAS which is a collaboration between Chicago Artist Alex Wald and Atelier G-1. I first met Alex a couple of years ago at Mark Nagata's Toy Karma 2 Custom Show at Rotofugi. Super nice guy. Obviously super talented as well. We sat down for a virtual interview on his latest venture:

pictures via:   Sofubi Blog Kadomiumtank    Garamania

 

TBS: You mentioned Garakutagigas is a Junk Giant, a golem of garbage and industrial waste. What is his relationship to Garamon if any? He looks like a junkyard version of mecha Garamon.

AW: There is a core element of Tilsonite in the composition of Garakutagigas--the element that composed the Garadama meteor that brought the original Garamon to Earth. This rare substance has a number of strange properties; it may house a living intelligence that can exert a creative or organizing force over its surroundings. So when a metal reclamation yard was built over an ancient Tilsonite impact crater... I have enough notes to make a fairly decent story. I started to rough it out, thinking it would be cool to have a mini-comic with the toy but soon realized I didn't have enough time to get one done for the first release. It will happen eventually...

TBS: Is there any social commentary related to your design? 

AW: Actually I'm very interested in the relationship between what we call art and what we call junk--dialectically opposite but really it's very much a matter of perspective. The lines are not at all fixed--what one culture considers junk, another calls art. Our society produces and venerates much that we condemn as "junk culture," we may know it's unworthy, mediocre or substandard but we love it just the same. And then there's the issues of salvaging the colossal waste our society produces as an unavoidable byproduct to progress. These concepts came flooding in to me as I drew the earliest pieces that evolved into Garakutagigas. I've been to a few junk yards, there's a pervasive atmosphere of doom to an auto graveyard. And I love the idea that all this waste, this useless garbage, is carefully guarded by men with guns and ferocious dogs. 

TBS: Is he related to Hedorah or Smogun in any way? 

AW: Yes, I think that (creator of Hedorah) Mr. Banno was prescient in some way; he was inspired by Rachel Carson's landmark book on ecology "Silent Spring." He conceived the pollution monster Hedorah in the early '70s when great debates raged about pollution and ecology. The following years have seen Hedorah resonate even more strongly in society. The collector's world we're familiar with is a tiny niche society with a million fragments--by now there must be nearly as many renditions of Hedorah as there have been of Godzilla. I don't know the statistics...it might be interesting for someone to take a census...

TBS: Was he shiny and brand new like Mecha Godzilla at one point and then fell into disrepair?

AW: Oh no, "baby, he was born this way!"

TBS: If you could pick another one of your illustrations to be made into a vinyl toy, which would it be?

AW: Mr. Okuda and I have discussed the possibility of another design. I'll decline from identifying it at the present out of deference to him. But I have a number of other designs on my astromonster blog and in my Flickr sets. I'd like to get back to sculpting some originals as well---I haven't made sculpture in a very long time....

TBS: Would you like to design more toys in the future?

AW: Oh yeah! That this is happening at all is totally a dream come true---I still can't believe it. In addition to my other drawings and images, I have many designs for specific toys. My sketchbooks have been full of them for years!

TBS: wow..! Thank You Alex... Looking forward to this toy. We can hardly wait. The response has been tremendous.

Alex would like to thank Mark Nagata who helped put the collaboration with Atelier G-1 in place. It also couldn't have happened without the aid of the omnipotent Yo Miyamoto..! 

Atelier G-1 x Astromonster = GARAKUTAGIGAS!

The prototype figure of GARAKUTAGIGAS debuted at Super Festival 56 in Tokyo,
April 29, 2011. Sculpted by Okuda Shigeki for Atelier G-1, design by Alex Wald. 
Special thanks to Miyamoto Yo and Mark Nagata! Watch for the official Atelier G-1
release this summer at World Characters Convention in Tokyo!

Have you seen Them?

I never get tired of painting...them. But what do they think about how I make them look?

Tura Satana RIP 1938—2011

The Hundred Monsters Game

Mizuki Shigeru's Yokai Hyaku Monogatari (Hundred Monsters) was, like much of his manga work, based on folk stories and traditions involving ghosts, spirits and monsters. Here is a sugoroku ---a paper board-game---depicting less than a hundred weird creatures from Japanese lore. This example may possibly be pre-War as the title across the top reads right to left "Hyaku Monogatari Bakemono." Along with the spider demon, rokuro-kubi and lantern ghost there is also a demon teakettle, a cracked pot and a walking phallus!

Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai (百物語怪談会 -- A Gathering of One Hundred Supernatural Tales) was a popular game during the Edo period. To play the game, one hundred candles were lit in a room at twilight. The players gathered around taking turns telling kaidan (weird tales). After each tale a single candle was extinguished and the room slowly grew darker and darker. The process was believed to summon a supernatural entity.