The blog of a person....yeah that sounds good.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Your evil cyclopic educators of oneness, will not allow you to know

About a week and a half ago my brother came back from the pizza restaraunt. A place called Cici's which is basically a pizza buffet. It seems to be a chain, and it seems depending on where you go the place either rocks or sucks. Luckily the one on Dale Mabry rocks. And as with all the cheap restaurants that exist these days, these guys have vending machines.

It appears my brother found some little toys in them that 'reminded him of me' since I'm prone to scribbling weird monsters all over the place.
Either way here they are.

The first thing that struck me about these toys was how different they are from the stuff toy machines usually carry, i.e. tattoos, sticky hands, sticky bugs, fake gangsta bling, etc.

These toys look like designer toys. Like as someone on another blog mentioned, the sort of things one would expect from a place like kidrobot or MyPlasticHeart or something.

But they arent 80 bucks and available only online. They're in a candy vending machine at a fast food pizza parlor! So I put them on top of my tv set next to an old dusty Mike Wazowski happy meal toy and Soundwave.

Well my curiosity about these things faded to a mild drizzle as the days passed. Until the other night when I went to the pizza restaurant with my father. And as I ate I noticed the vending machines out of the corner of my eye.

"Foofnick's Swamp"

"Strange Collections"

These were the two various toy machines that dispensed these very unique, arty, but cute little figurines. So I decided that I would find out who the heck made these toys.

The label under the toys was a company called "THE AMUSEMENT FACTORY"
So I set off to google them. And all I could find was old news articles from 2005 about how Coinstar had bought the vending machine company. Coinstar owns alot of shit apparently.

Either way, I kept digging and learned that the Foofnick's toys also have plush toys and other incarnations beyond tiny plastic figurines. Which lead me, finally, to the person who designed these things in the first place.

A chap named Robert Curet who runs a little wonders studio. He also has a blog where he's posted all sorts of little Foofnick designs. Not much on the Strange Collections toys though, which are my favorite due to their bright colors and odd geometric style.

In fact, all I've managed to find of the "Strange Collection" was a picture on someone else's blog which I have stolen and uploaded here:



Now you may be asking "why is nathan talking about toys he found in a machine and not whining about his life or discussing polypeptide"

well thats because today's post is a lesson that I have learned time and time again.



YOU CAN FIND INFORMATION ABOUT ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET.
INCLUDING TINY OBSCURE PLASTIC MONSTERS IN PLASTIC EGGS.
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This week has been grand.
I got to meet my favorite band just a couple days ago.

VNV Nation who are on tour again!
Whenever VNV go on tour they always come to Tampa. And each year me and mike miss it. Which sucks. So this year we were certain we were going to get to see them.
But Mike made the gravest mistake of all.

He listened to Joey. Yes, 'gatherin up the bees' jailhouse Joey. Who of course gave mike the wrong concert date info because he is Joey.

Mike then acted like it was somehow my fault that I couldnt get anyone to take my friday closing shift when we just had several employees quit, so that mike could continue feeling like listening to Joey was the right idea. Despite HEAPING evidence to the contrary. HEAPING.


So I closed at work, got myself some gummy bears, and headed over to Mike's place.

Mike instructs me to get into the car, and off we go to Ybor. We quickly dash to the Castle (an industrial techno and goth club with tasty flaming mixed drinks) because apparently VNV were hanging out inside the Castle (which is apparently vince and mark's favorite place to go).

And voila! There they are. Their music is even playing in the club. And they are there, drinking and flirting.

I got a big ol hug from Mark from VNV nation. That alone was worth the trip.

If you dont know who VNV nation are, then you should go here. And watch some of their live performances on youtube.

Once long ago....I tried to make a music video to one of their songs. My favorite song by them, LEGION, of which they did a snazzy new mix of not long ago.

Needless to say I did not have the skills back then to animate it how I wanted to. One day...maybe...I will try again.

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Speakin of animation, the other night I made the best background art I think I've ever done for a cartoon. And it was completely by accident! what the hell!
it makes me kinda sad its in the cartoon for only a second.


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also for those who haven't noticed, I am splitting apart my links list into various sections. Mainly because blogger only lets you have so many links and I hit the limit on my one list. So now I have several. You really should click them because they lead to wonderful places!

8 comments:

mrscriblam said...

the first pic reminded me of lil big planet but then i saw the second pic and i was like this is not lil big planet

Anthony said...

You know, Tom unbanned your account on Ng, why don't you just go ther to submit Polypeptide ?

Pinao said...

Actually, Anthony brings up something I have been wondering. Where are you planning to submit Polypeptide? I know you may have mentioned this before, but if you did I totally missed it. :P

ZSL said...

i dont care that he unbanned me. i gave my account away already. i'm done using newgrounds.

my whole last post was about me trying to find better ways of releasing the film!

Pinao said...

I'm sorry for not reading thoroughly! A recommendation I'd make is that you could start your own website and host it there... But that requires designing the whole thing.

ZSL said...

Indeed! :C

And I've tried to do that and HOO LAWD I suck at making sites. I can barely edit this simple blog.

Eventually I'll probably just hire someone to make me a site. But not until I really NEED it.

Anonymous said...

So are you going to keep posting the animation videos, just on here instead of newgrounds?

ZSL said...

don't know yet. won't know for a bit.
i doubt i'll ever just post them on this blog. a blog is a crap place to keep track of cartoons.