The IC toy elves have been busy. Meet this summer's dynamic duo: Salvatore and George - the lovable mascots we created for Sasquatch! Music Festival's 10 year anniversary. Salvatore stands 4" tall while George packs a TON of detail into an impressive 2". The two characters come as a set and will be available in person (along with a few limited-edition prints) on May 19th at Velocity Art & Design here in Seattle. Can't make it on the 19th? Don't fret - you can pre-order NOW. Sorry, you're on your own for miniature marshmallows.

Extra special thanks to our beloved clients Adam & Lynn for making this happen. And a round of applause for Frank at Super7 for bringing these guys to life.

A mighty big thanks to everyone who came out to our Full Circle show/Leroy C. launch party at Super7 on Saturday night. We had a blast. And as you can see above, Leroy did too.

If you find yourself in SF anytime soon, the show will be up for a few more weeks.

Photos courtesy of Zac Schwiet, Kaiju Chronicle and Toybot Studios.

Get him while you can ...

He's alive! Metallic silver, white and dark red spray on red vinyl. Available at 6PM on 4/23 at Super7 in conjunction with our Full Circle show. Come on out!

Available online the following Monday, 4/25.

We're excited to announce that we'll be showing a collection of work at the Super7 store in San Francisco, opening on April 23rd at 6PM. We'll also be debuting the first colorway of Leroy C., the newest member of the IC family! Super7 will have a limited amount on hand to take home.

We'll be sharing a collection of 20+ posters and prints, including a number of illustrations from our late grandfather, Alfred Paulsen. As someone who influenced our work tremendously and spent much of his young adult life in the bay area, we thought it would be fitting to include some of his work in the show.

We'll also have a few new limited Leroy C. prints available. Come out and say hi!

Here's a great little interview with Brian Flynn of Super7 at the 17:50 mark. A nice introduction to the world of Super7 and Japanese Kaiju toy collecting for those of you not familiar.

We're excited to announce more collaborations with Mr. Flynn + crew this year. Stay tuned ...

Awesome custom Leroy C. by D-Lux.

Well, he departs tomorrow AM. Big thanks to everyone who picked up an unpainted Leroy C. Adios!

We often get asked what our process is like. While we have multiple ways of conceptualizing and pitching ideas, the 3-step process that I'm going to outline below is pretty standard fare for us, as I'm sure it is with many illustrators. Sketch, sketch some more, sketch again, then on to final. 'Final' for us, usually means we hop into Illustrator and block out shapes. Once we have our shapes dialed and approved, we move on to lining and shading in Photoshop. There are many times when we start and finish in Photoshop as well, but a typical project like this will begin as vector art. I thought it might be fun to break down the evolution of an illustrated project, specifically a Gift Card for Target. Let us begin ...

With the majority of art direction already fleshed out by the wonderful team at Target, we're given the project and asked to create sketches based on their initial ideas. Since their initial ideas are always completely awesome, it's a joy to build off of them. The name of this particular card is 'Glow-In-The Dark Space Maze'. In this case, it's a card that doubles as a glow-in-the-dark space maze that doubles as a spaceship. Wait, is that triples as? ... Nevermind.

The first task is the game itself. The manufacturer needs to get started on producing these suckers, so the game dieline is first priority. After a few sketches, we dial it down and come up with our shape.

After the basic game shape is a wrap, we get to the fun part - figuring out the maze! After heading to the store to pick up a few similar maze games, we play, throw down to the floor and curse at said maze games. Once we think we know what we're doing, we start to sketch out our walls. To make it easier, we're given the ball diameter and wall thickness before we begin. After a zillion attempts, the sketch below is the winning configuration - which means anyone under the age of 5 can conquer the game in under 1 minute while the rest of us need about an hour.

After the sketch is approved (and tweaked a little), we move to final vector art for the manufacturer. Bada-bing:

After the game material is off being made, it's time to move into final art. With the nature of this card being glow-in-the-dark, the client asks that we use bright colors. Done. Here are a few colors we pitched:

... as well as this color scheme, which ultimately gets chosen.

So now that the game itself is done, time to start sketching the actual card backer - which is always a big chunk of the fun. We sent the client a few options, with this particular idea taking home the trophy ...

So now what's next? You guessed it. A few tweaks, then on to Illustrator. That's when we start blocking out shapes and finalizing color schemes. After a few rounds of small revisions, we have our final ready for shading ...

And there you have it ... a finished Gift Card. That was fun, right? Now it's your turn.

See it a bit larger in our portfolio. Now go grab one and keep the cursing to a minimum please.

Well, that was fast. Our unpainted Leroy C. figure sold out in 24 minutes. If you weren't able to grab one today, have no fear: we'll have plenty of the colored version in April. Thanks to everyone for grabbing them today.

Could there be more IC toys in the future? We'll have to wait and see ...

Meet Leroy C. He's 4.25" tall, extremely friendly, loves children and is 100% house trained. Before he arrives in full color, we've got 30 all-black prototype's ready for adoption. In the shop (complete with photos) on Monday, February 7th at 10:00PST. $30 + shipping.

We'll never forget that day in 1983 that our mom brought home a bag of Legos the size of a small car. She had picked it up at a garage sale (who sells Legos?) for $8. From that point on, we were hooked. For obvious reasons, Legos ended up being our favorite toy for years to come  - and as with most things in parenting life, it's come full circle and is now my son's favorite toy. Like many folks, those bricks have been a big part of our family.

So as you can imagine, I wish I could hop in one of these to go back and tell my 8-year-old self about our newest project for Target, the Lego Build A Bullseye! Gift Card. We've been fortunate to work on many cool projects over the years, but this one was sorta special. We actually wrapped this up in May, so it's fun to finally see it in stores for the holidays.

Below are some shots of the carrier on press a few months back:

And here is the endcap fixture at the store. They were sold out at noon today, so I'm guessing there are other human beings that like Lego as well.

Thanks to our (always) amazing art director Ted for the brains behind this project, and the fine folks at LEGO for giving us the green light.

Oh, and check out the cool little animation below:

It's official. We're dropping our first toy through the mighty Super 7 in December. Just in time for those stockings. Join our mailing list or follow us on Twitter for updates and shipping info. More to come ...

Charles and Ray just moved in. Thanks House.

I gotta be honest, apparently I've been living under a gigantic rock and hadn't heard of the awesome NOTCOT until today when they posted a really cool write-up titled Art Of The Gift Card showcasing some of the new holiday Gift Cards at Target. They even went above and beyond and devoted a special something to our 'Winter Fishing Hole' Gift Card/Game. We've actually been getting reports that they are selling out at stores (that's a good thing, right?) but you can find them online through 12/31.

Oh, and yes I'm multi-tasking by kicking myself while adding the NOTCOT RSS feed to my daily visits.

Holy smokes! I can't decide on whether I'd like to be Morpheus or John Lasseter at this moment. So good.

Thanks Rob.

Growing up, Ryan and I were Lego FANATICS. I vividly remember the massive room-sized bag of Legos that my mom found at a garage sale for $8 - and the day she brought it home. Our jaws dropped. We dabbled in Transformers, G.I. Joe and He-Man, but the Legos got the most love - for years and years. Naturally, my own kids love them (what kid doesn't?!) and those days in the 80's of creating airplanes and robots out of blocks are ever-present in our house 20+ some years later. I still think it might be the best toy to actually spawn creativity and imagination. All that to say - I just love Jason Freeny's anatomy of the lego man. Brilliant.

And yes, we are going to Legoland next summer. Anyone been?

Via Likecool

Anna-Maria Sviatko from Canberra, Australia may have created a dollhouse or two that my daughter and I would actually have to arm wrestle over. And yes, dollhouses are METAL!

I am loving Nerdbots (and their site) - and may just have to pick one up. 

"Oddly obsessed with all things robot, married couple Nicholas and Angela from Kansas City, Missouri, decided on a whim one day to do nothing other than to build one themselves."

I'm starting to feel partial to Drip, but Beamer looks like he may need a hug ...

Via Yewknee

The end of the world is nigh.