Friday, January 3, 2014

New Year's Revolution

DesignerCon 2013 was like getting slugged in the gut by the collective creativity of the Internet. A lot of really cool bootlegs on display and getting to meet the resin- encrusted creators behind the pieces really brought out the competitive spirit in me. For 2014, I have my sights set on making the most hardcore bootlegs possible and won't rest until I'm choking on money and resin dust.

The first Hoodslam bootleg, Dark Sheik, had a great debut at "Hoodslam: Non Denominational Winter Season Celebrational Festivity…of Doom.....DOS!" last month. Anyone lucky enough to attend the spectacle known as Hoodslam knows that it's not exactly an environment conducive to selling non-alcoholic merch, so we were happy as hell to see them move as fast as they did. Not only are we working on more Sheik figures to help meet the demand, but we're already working on the next characters figure, scheduled to debut at February's show. While we're not going to reveal exactly who yet, let's just say you might want to lock up your goats.

When you're a main event bone-breaker like Ultimate Carlos or Mixtape, you get a dope theme song, finishing move and fleshed out backstory. But what about the opening match jobbers working for $20 and a torta? Who are these villainous journeymen wrestlers destined to wander the Mexican wrestling circuit as perennial losers? We'll be exploring this question with the next Battling Bastards series, From Parts Unknown.
On top of that, the Bastards have a rare distinction of being one of the few all-Mexican groups of anti-heroes, so taking a queue from the xenophobic world of real life lucha libre, I tried to make nearly all of the villains non-Mexicans to play up boos they would receive from Tijuana audience. Americans, Canadians, I was even able to sneak a Martian into the mix. And seeing as how these villains are basically being brought in to job to the Battling Bastards, I figure it's only appropriate they are made up of leftover scraps and unused casts laying around the Scraped Resin workshop. Sure they were built to lose, but at least they look great doing it!

What about the packaging? Oh...let me tell you about the packaging. Anyone who's ever explored a flea market or Dollar Store knows that no bootleg is complete without some amazingly bootlegged art. Since the start of Scraped Resin, we've been trying to get painter Casey Garcia to submit a piece for a special cardback and have finally bugged her enough to receive an awesome rendition of Ultimate Carlos, previewed above!

...Pagoda is coming.