Working in the Garden!

I know, I know, it's not the latest in toys, but it is something I've been working on with Judy recently. Click the picture to check out some photos.

It's a work in progress,
Enjoy!

StudioHowell Sketchbook

I have decided to separate my artwork blog from the Eclectorama Blog. To date this blog has focused on memorabilia and toys and I thought it would be nice to feature my illustrations and designs in their own space.

I'm not sure how often I will update it, but it will be a good way to get just the artwork filtered out.

Enjoy!

The Making of the Bat Boat

So since I've been showing off some "off the wall" Batman stuff this week in honor of our special guest from LOG, I thought I would go out with a Bang, Biff, Pow!

For your viewing pleasure the 1960's Bat Boat or rather a company brochure for the Bat Boat. Now, I do not have a lot of older pieces in my collection and I certainly do not have a lot of catalog, brochure, magazine pieces, but being a designer I am drawn to paper products and older advertisements. It's just something about that era. So I do have a copy of this brochure. Why just a copy? The owner didn't want to part with the original, and since we had a color copier at work, he was more than happy to loan it to me to make a copy for my collection.

So here's the story. I guess I should proceed this with the following, you never know where you'll find Batman stuff. Okay having said that, I was the art director for a waterpark ride manufacturing company for a few years in the early 2000's. We developed water "rollercoasters", slides, and tons of what we called water toys. Those were giant hippos, elephant slides and what not. Nine times out of ten if you have been to a water park, indoor or out, you've been on one of the slides we developed. So this manufacturer is smack dab in the middle of Texas, probably fifteen minutes away from my house, outside of town. It was the best drive to and from work I have ever had, in the three years there I was in maybe a total of three traffic jams.

Well one day in the Spring I decided to check out a local hobby store at lunch and while I was in there I found the Polar Lights model of the vintage Bat Boat. I bought it just for the package art. Well on my return to work I decided to take my new prize in and show the art team what I had found, and when I was finished showing off my latest trophy I sat it on top of my monitor to gaze at while I worked the rest of the day. The building which we occupied was once the Texas branch of Glasstron Boats, more precisely their engineering and development branch, and to take it a step further our head engineer and our park layout designer both used to work for Glasstron.

So now the park layout designer worked for me and when I showed him the boat he launched into a spill about how Glasstron used to build boats and they even built that boat. Of course I didn't believe him, I've heard one to many of his fish stories, so he rang the head engineer. David, the head engineer, comes down to the Art Department and starts telling me about the Bat Boat he helped design. David is a very straight shooter, there was now doubt in my mind that he was speaking the truth. He told me about testing it out on a local lake, doing the float test in the factory, and trying to make this thing look like a Bat Boat and still be able to run like a regular boat. Now my Park layout guy starts chiming in about blue prints and David says they are long gone, moved with the company files, but he still had a brochure. He brought in the next day for me to see and make a copy and now it's up here on the blog. All in all it was a great couple of days to be a Bat Fan. I scored a cool model with an even cooler box, and got to listen to war stories of the good ole' days of making Batman's trusty Batboat. It was like I was there on the lake chasing down the Penguin, quick where's the Bat Shark Repellent!

Medicom Kubricks

Seems like I have a nice little Batman groove going, So why not continue with a little Batman? This is none other than the 89' Batman in the fun little Kubricks style. Kubricks is a toy line from Japan, from a company called Medicom. I have to say they make some of the coolest stuff. I hope to feature some more Medicom wares in the future. These toys are under 3 inches in height and all share some basic features, such as the same shaped head, basic body, arms, and legs. I guess these would be close to Lego mini figs, a little bigger, and I like to think these were the inspiration for Minimates from Art Asylum. I do have a few examples of Kubricks with sculpted heads and not the standard cylinder, these are mainly animal type characters, the ones I have include Bruce Lee. I'm guessing that they needed to have a better likeness of Mr. Lee than the cylinder could reflect, though Art Asylum did a pretty good job with their version.

Medicom has run the gamut with these guys. They cover popular Japanese properties like Astro Boy, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shin Getter, and even a set from the cult classic Battle Royal. They didn't stop there though, they started hitting the American licenses as well, Edward Scissor Hands, Planet of the Apes, Back to the Future, Star Wars, and of course Batman just to name a few.

So far as I can tell they have covered Batman with assortments from the following eras of the Dark Knight; Batman the 1989 Movie with some Batman Returns thrown in, Batman The Animated Series (including a couple Batman Beyond characters), The comic book style Batman, and finally the more recent Batman Begins Movie. I'm still working on getting most of these, but to date this 89' Batman is my favorite of the Batman Kubricks.

Batman Carnival Capers Sign

As a follow up to yesterday's post here is the Batman Carnival Capers Signage that was produced for amusement trade shows back in 1996-1997, by the now defunct Play By Play Toys and Novelties.

The actual dimensions are 2' x 4' and the "poster" itself is a high output print mounted on foamcore with a high gloss laminate coating (so please excuse the glare from the flash).

This lived in my son's room when he was younger and when he decided to get rid of a few posters, I moved it to the back of the office door for safe keeping.

Enjoy!