New Site and Intro to Me

Hey there guys and gals and welcome to my new site. I have toyed with the idea of having a site for a long time. I needed a central place to point people towards. I am hoping this will be it. So come along with me on this fantastic ride. I am going to try to keep it updated with what is going on in my life from a creator stand point. Updates on projects, new toys of movies I have seen, or just my rants that I want you all to hear. So here it goes.

First off I wanted to give a little background about myself as a toy guy. I consider myself to be a Toy Designer. I take ideas and bring them to life. Some times I just copy what other people have done and make new versions. I alway give credit in those cases though. I think customizers do that more than we think. We see ideas that other people have done and think, "I could do that better" or different. Oh well. I just like to make toys.

My first figure I ever made was a Star Trek figure. In my small town there were not a lot of options when it came to toy hunting. I got most of my figures from Ben Franklin or the local pharmacy. GI Joes were $2.50 plus tax then. Wow how things have changed. Well back to my story. I really wanted to have a Star Trek figure but there were none in my area. I took a Michael Keaton Bruce Wayne figure and repainted him with my Mom's craft paint. That was it for me. I was hooked. I had found my new drug of choice. I dabbled in modifying or making new figures on and off for most of my childhood. Little things here and there. Maybe it was creating a more accurate weapon for a figure, or touch ups. I would also work to fix my broken figures. If I broke a toy, it was not a simple trip to the store to buy another one. We did not have money for that.

Fast forward a little bit. I was turned on to a little publication called ToyFare Magazine. This was the mecha to me. I love that tiny little mag. I waited for it every month. Seeing the new toys that were coming out and realizing that there was a whole community out there of people like me that really liked toys. I was getting to the age where toys were not as cool with a lot of my friends anymore. They were spending more time on sports, video games or other less interesteing activities. Not me. I was all about the toys. I loved seeing the new stuff that would be coming out. Seeing the coverage of Toy Fair in NY every year. And just reading the articles about the toy industry. ToyFare Mag also opened my eye to other customizers. Seeing features in a magazine on toys that PEOPLE, not companies, had made. Jin Saotome...Do I need to say any more. This was the man that really lit the fire under my ass to be more creative, and push the boundries of my action figures. Guys like Kyle Robinson and John Harmon were others that I really looked up to. These were my MVPs.

Along with ToyFare Magazine, was the internet of course. Finding sites like FigureRealm.com with all of the projects and tutorials just wet my whistle. See tips and trick of how to move to that next level. I loved it. I started doing more and more with my figures. I put a couple of them up on this site called eBay and made some money off of them. It was amazing to me that people actually were willing to pay for the crazy things that I was making. eBay was also where I recieved my first commission. A custom who had bought a couple of things had asked me to make something for him. That was a huge honor. I will never forget that customer, who I am still making figures for.

And the rest is history.

I hope you come back to my site and see what I am working on and give me ideas for projects or just share your thoughts on figures and comics and movies and whatever.

Thank you,

Chris