|
| |
Design
Stages
Toy Fair
WorkWhen I was a kid, I used to create
these cool environments to put my army guys in. I spent hours setting up
buildings, tunnels, mountains and all sorts of accessories to enhance my play.
Little did I know back then that there is good money in making crappy toys look
really cool by building entire environments around them for wholesalers to buy.
Hence the Toy Fair every January in New York. The following are some of the
environments I helped create to "enhance the toy buying experience"
for various toy manufacturers and their clients.
|
 |
The primary construction method for most of the showrooms
was a gated table faced with carved Styrofoam coated with a clay &
flex-glue coating and then airbrushed. The background here is a UV
enhanced airbrush job on masonite panels. The special effects guys did the
laser effects on site. |
|
This haunted castle was a touring display carved from
urethane and epoxy coated to make it as durable as possible. |
 |
 |
The toy trucks are again displayed on a carved foam
landscape against an air-brushed background. We also incorporated may
props to enhance the whole "wasteland" look. |
|
Again, another carved foam and epoxy diorama to display
the action figures to maximum effect. Theatrical style lighting was used
to enhance all the environments to great effect. |
 |
 |
Epoxy coating over carved foam with an airbrushed
finish. |
|
The tree in this display is a steel frame armature with
carved Styrofoam covered with flex-glue soaked cheesecloth to simulate a
gnarly old tree. It was then coated with a caramel colored glaze with
glitter embedded within. The effect was a very "realistic"
fantasy tree over a pond. This is one of my favorite pieces. |
 |
 |
More carved foam and airbrush work. The underlying structure
was a simple gate and table structure that assembled very quickly. |
|
Tonka Toys were our biggest toy fair client before they
were bought out by Mattel. We created dozens of environments for their
trucks over the five years that I was there. Here we have more carved
work. The hard hat is carved urethane. Below is the front half of one of
their dump trucks enlarged and rendered in aluminum, foam, and other
materials.
More Design Stages Work...
|
 |
|
