It was a super tough decision, but we were able to somehow find a winner out of the heap of great suggestions that were submitted. It was really difficult to turn away such great names such as Purple Papi, The Great Raymundo, Felipe Flex, among many others, but in the end we went with a name that complimented and depicted the character pretty well. So your winner of the first ever Blockhead Brigade contest is . . . drum roll please . . . .

DangerDave!!!

Congrats DangerDave and thank you for providing us with your creative and original suggestion. It was truly a difficult decision, but you squeaked out on top!!! Hope you enjoy the prize we worked so hard on! And now, without further ado, we are all very excited to introduce you all to . . .

Fair warning to all luchadors out there. El Underbito (pronounced: el under-by-toe) is now full of confidence and is ready to take all of you out - one chomp at a time. >:(

Thanks to everyone who participated and thanks for all of your support. This was a super fun experience and we hope that you all enjoyed the contest craziness as much as we did. There will be more things to come from us in the near future and we hope to get these things manufactured in the coming months, so keep your fingers crossed and your eyes peeled. Thanks again everyone!!!

- [o_o] BRIGADE

Hey Guys,
We’ve just landed in NYC and it is flippin’ beyond freezing.  I have no idea how people survive during this time of year over here, so please forgive me if my words start sounding like a big hot mess – or should I say, a big COLD mess. ?
It’s always a good time when visiting the Big Apple, so this time will be no different especially since we are hitting up the NYCC. There are going to be a lot of great signings and new releases, so it should be a super awesome time. As always, the Luchadorks are ready to rumble, but this time around they’ve brought a new friend along or should I say enemy. Let us be the first to introduce you guys to . . .
THE LUCHADARKS!!!!

The Luchadorks are obviously the good guys and it wouldn’t make much sense to have them fight eachother, so what better way than to give them enemies that are darker and more devious? No worries everyone. We will fill you in with more details of the story soon. ?

Anyway, if you’re at the NYCC and run into us, let us know what you think or just leave us a comment below. Keep it locked though everybody. We’ll let you all know how our adventures go at the con.

-PV

Hey Guys,
I’m very excited to announce that the Luchadork naming contest has begun over at spankystokes.com.  The naming contest is to name a Luchadork that’s near and dear to all of our hearts, the purple guy.  If you’ve never seen him before check him out below or at Spanky’s site.  Also, check out the new arm designs and let us know what you think.

Spanky was also awesome enough to include an interview with Pete at his site, so be sure to check that out too.  Pete wants to make sure if you don’t read anything else, at least read the snippet about his obsession with a little known movie called Gymkata, then add it to your netflix queue and be amazed.

Alright, enough chatter, here are the details about the contest.

The contest will be running until Sunday, Feb. 8, the last day of the New York Comic Con.
The rules are pretty simple:
1) All you’ll need to do is come up with a name for this guy.

2) Then submit your name in the comments section over at spankystokes.com.

And that’s it.

If the name you submit is chosen, you’ll win this MAD*L custom painted by our very own Pete.

So submit your ideas, submit multiple ideas if you’d like, just don’t spam spanky’s site with the same names.  We’re just trying to find the name that will best suit this guy.

Lastly, all of us at BHB would like to thank Spanky for all of his help. He’s one of the more well known guys in the business and it’s really cool that he was willing to help out a group just starting off like us.

And as always if you haven’t done so already, we’d love you to join our facebook group or let us know what you think in our comments section below.

-joe

What’s up everyone,

Joe here.  This is my first post, so let me start off by saying that I am very excited to join the Brigade and thanks to Pete for the introduction and for holding it down while the rest of us have been away.  Now that we’ve gotten the formalities out of the way, let’s get down to business.

We’re all expecting 2009 to be a very exciting year for BHB. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the bigger events that will be coming our way:

In mid-January we’ll be running a naming contest with John “Spanky” Stokes over at spankystokes.com to name one of our Luchadorks. Which Luchadork will it be? You’ll have to come back later to find out. The winner of the naming contest will receive a 5 inch custom MAD*L, painted by BHB’s own Pete. So toss on your thinking caps and visit Spanky’s site to submit your names. Also, during the contest, we’ll be unveiling some changes we’ve made to our Luchadorks prototype. We hope you’ll like them.

We will also continue working on our Yokaira line. So far, Khoa has sketched some new designs and once we finalize a few details we’ll begin modeling them. We’ll be sure to take some pictures of the process and will post them here, so you guys can keep track of our progress.

In February, as Pete mentioned earlier, we’ll be heading to the NYCC. After a few hassles with a certain airline, which will not be named, we’ve finally booked our tickets and hotel room. So if, you’re planning to be there let us know and maybe we can grab some drinks after the convention, chill in Time Square, or you can catch a broadway show with Annie, so the rest of us can get out of doing so. Or if you want to just say hi and get a sticker, we’ll be walking around.

Lastly, if you haven’t done so already, come join our facebook group. We’re always looking for more Blockheads to join the Brigade.

-joe

Happy New Year Everyone!

Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays as much as we did. Now that the fun is over, it’s time to DO WORK! It’s going to be a busy beginning of the year for us. We have decided to make the trip to the frigid compounds of the New York Comic Con on the weekend of February 6th. I never have been in NYC during these crappy months and I have no idea why the NYCC was moved from last year’s date in April to February, but I am anticipating nothing less than super crummy weather. We have quite a bit of work to complete before the show though. As of now, we are currently experimenting with new arm designs and are planning on completing two additional new characters. Please do check back. Hopefully we will be able to unveil the characters here before we head out to the show.

A few weeks after the NYCC, we are planning on attending the more local Wondercon in San Francisco held on the weekend of February 27th. Should be a lot of fun. It’s closer to home. It’s a lot easier on our wallets. Weather is chilly, but not sub-zero temperatures. Should be a good time.

So far, all of you have only heard my voice throughout this experience, so I’d like to take the opportunity to introduce the rest of the Brigade. Aside from myself, the Brigade is comprised of Khoa, Joe, and Annie. All  of them play a crucial part to this team and are vital to the future success of the Brigade. We are all very excited to start this year out on the right foot and are looking forward to accomplishing some great things. Khoa, Joe, and Annie will also be contributing to the blog, so please do not hesitate to welcome them with open arms.

Here’s to 2009!

- PV

Hey everyone. We finally got the gallery section up and running! We are using the WP Photo Album plugin. So far, we just uploaded the Nocturnal event. More coming soon, so stay tuned!!!

- PV

Last Friday, the brigade decided to check out the Nocturnal gallery hosted by Cardboard Spaceship. It was our first time making it out there and we were really impressed with the set up. The turn out was great and a lot of the people had to preregister to ensure that they’d get a guaranteed spot to receive an autograph and a sketch from both artists.

When we got there, Kathie and Brandt were in the middle of their meet and greet and people were beginning to file outside. This event was sooo packed that we didn’t make it in time to get a spot for an autograph/sketch Not a big surprise because both these artists are greatly in demand right now. It seemed like mostly all the work displayed was by Kathie, but I think that Brandt is getting ready to for his upcoming release of his Serv-O-Matic toy series. Oh well, we snapped some pictures anyway. Enjoy!

-  PV

Hey Everybody,

Just got back from the VTN and it was an awesome experience! Coming into this event, I was expecting more of a chaotic scene with people fighting tooth and nail over all the free vinyl giveaways, but I was pleasantly surprised at how calm the whole 2-day event went. As promised, many popular artists and designers were on hand and the show went by smoothly without a hitch. There were tons, and I mean TONS, of giveaways and it seemed like everyone was walking out of there with a free toy.

A big thanks goes out to John “Spanky” Stokes. He organized a great booth and had traffic around his booth all day long. It was probably due to all those raffles and free giveaways that he and his collaborators were forcing upon people. Seriously, these guys were practically putting toys in your pockets when they weren’t looking. On top of that, he was cool enough to introduce us to a few people who could help us out. Be sure to check out www.spankystokes.com! It’s one of my favorite sites and I’m sure you’ll bookmark it too once you visit. Keep up the good work Spanky!

Over the two day event, we met a lot of cool people and got a lot of great feedback about our prototypes. Most people were really receptive to the designs. I committed a bonehead move just 15 minutes after getting to the show though. I accidentally snapped the left leg off of the Yokaira prototype while pulling it out to show Spanky and his live online audience via a live stream. Sorry team. We also had the opportunity to speak to George Gaspar from Toy Break/October Toys and reknown artist DrilOne. They were really informative and awesome enough to put in their two cents on how to improve our designs. Thanks guys. Be sure to check out their work that I linked up above.

We expected more people to bring in prototype work and we felt all alone until we ran into the Plastic Booty guys. That didn’t sound right did it? Haha. It’s booty as in “arrrrgh treasure” and not of the perverted variety. Get it straight people. These guys had prototypes that put ours to shame. They are pretty talented and I just wanted to give a little love to some guys on the same boat as ours. Good work fellas.

Here are some photos from this past weekend:

Luchadorks unite!!!

Yokaira Prototype

Warming up for the show with a sweet moonsault!

Eagle eye view of the VTN.

Emergency surgery.

George and DrilOne checkin

So the wheels are officially turning now turning folks. We are excited to begin the refining process and make some of the suggested improvements to our designs. A gallery of the VTN will hopefully be up later this week. Keep it locked everybody because we will be updating our progress.

What’s next on our schedule? We are going to check out the Kathie Olivias and Brandt Peters gallery at Cardboard Spaceship in Santa Cruz this weekend. Also, we are considering to attend the New York Comic Con in February. It’s tentatively penciled in at the moment. If anyone experienced the NYCC last year, please let us know how it went in comparison to the SDCC.

Thanks for stopping by everybody!

- PV

It’s official people. The Blockhead Brigade is locked, loaded, and ready for action.

It took a little while, but we have managed to come together long enough to begin phase I of the Blockhead Brigade project. After kicking around ideas and even paying a visit to the super crowded SDCC to check out the scene, we have decided to take the plunge and try our hand at designing our very own designer toy.

So right after attending the SDCC and being inspired by the work of all the super talented artists in attendance, I grabbed my very first Magic Sculp kit and went to work. We set out to complete a working prototype by December 6th - the Vinyl Toy Network event. So far, we have completed one painted prototype with three more to come hopefully. As of this point we have decided to go with two lines of toys. One being the fearsome yet cuddly “Luchadorks” and the other being the more mysterious and dark “Yokaira”. At some point, I would like to share the process of creating the prototype from sculpting to molding to casting.

If any of you are attending this event, be on the look out because the Brigade will be out in full force. Well, more like hanging around trying to get some feedback on our prototypes. So if you see us around, don’t hesitate to stop by and say hello. We will be more than glad to accommodate you with interesting conversation or at least an awkward moment. Hopefully it will be the latter. You’ll also get a chance to meet the Luchadorks or Yokaira in person so you’d be the envy of all your friends.

Thanks to all of you that are giving us the time of day and visiting this site. Any feedback on our designs will be greatly appreciated. You can be as honest as you want. Just don’t tell us that we suck. We are have fragile egos.

This is going to be a fun ride, so everyone stay tuned!

- PV

Vinyl Toy Network flyer:

Blockhead Brigade “Luchadorks” flyers for the VTN:

Blockhead Brigade “Yokaira” flyer for the VTN: