I am way too lazy to write anything up for this right now. So, click
here and look at some photos of Darth Mater. Maybe later I will write something up.
UPDATE: At Comic-Con, some people were asking me what I actually did on Darth Mater. I did 90% of the sculpting of Darth Mater. Joe Sid (who is listed on the plaque) sculpted the cape.
The Mater you see underneath was first sculpted by me in 2004 and was made for the Cars toy line that you may see in the stores today. This was done from scratch in the computer using a program called
Freeform and
using reference photos provided by
Pixar. I was also part of the license pitch that brought the Cars license to Mattel.
Anyway, in 2-3 weeks time, I sculpted Mater and it was approved by
Pixar...fast forward to 2005, the movie and toys come out. Both are successful, and made/is still making tons of money for both companies.
Because of the success of the Cars movie the Mattel Design Team created a display of the
characters from the movie to be auctioned off at
Dream Halloween benefiting the Children Affected By AIDS Foundation. That is the first picture you see on the link above...heck, let me just steal it...hold on....here:
...there. Now, I did nothing on this one. Well, actually, like I said I did sculpt Mater, as well as, Lightning McQueen, and The King. So, those are in there a few times in different variations.
For this year's Dream Halloween, they wanted something big. Ben at
Pixar came up with the idea of "Darth Mater". Gentle Giant did a few sketches and
Pixar decided on the concept and I was tasked to sculpt it. Since I already had the Mater file, all I had to do was the Darth parts.
The Darth parts took about two weeks to sculpt. I worked with Ben and Emery from Pixar. Basically, I did everything you see except for that cape. Painting was done by Brandon, he is on the plaque, too. In fact, here is a picture that I jacked:
The other pictures on that site are not that great due to poor lighting at Comic-Con. Brandon did a wonderful job. There are traces of 'rust' and 'different metals'. He really made my sculpt look ten times better.
The rest was done by a bunch of people at Mattel. The pieces were printed by our Rapid Prototype Group, Perry and Bobby. Clean up of the 28 pieces were done by our shop guys. Sorry, I do not know who in the shop worked on it, but they are listed as Mattel Model Shop on the plaque. The plaques and base were made by Jim and Rex in the shop. Assembly of parts by Hank,Mike, and James (listed on plaque), this includes fitting pieces together, installing lights, installing motor, and making it move. Our Electronics Group and Sound Lab (again, I apologize, I do not know the individuals who worked on this) did the electronics, including lights, sound, movement programming.
Yeah, that is about it. In all, I estimate about thirty people had their hands on this. When Dream Halloween comes around, I will update with photos and winning bid.
How awesome is the picture above? Pretty damn AWESOME! Yeah, that is a Calgary Flames jacket I am wearing.
Along with about 15 other pieces, the item was auctioned off.
The winning bid went for $10,000 to this guy:
Uh...the one on the right won the auction, the one on the left has no money. It just happen that he is the President of Mattel's Boy's Division, so sorta like my boss. I wonder if he knows who I am or what I do for the company.
Calgary Flames captain Jarome Iginla scores 3 goals to help the Flames to a 5-3 win over the Nashville Predators.
Fort Knox of cereal.
Last time I mentioned the FREE cereal bar. This time, Jun and I took full advantage of the word FREE. I could live here.
Fridge full of milk. Whole milk, low fat, non fat...even different kinds of soy milk.
I went sans milk, and i kept the biodegradable spoon. Honey Nut Chex, in case you want to know. That is Luigi in the back.
My buddy Jun need to get to a vent in his attic. I volunteered to go up in his attic. A hole needed to be cut into the existing vent, then the new vent tube shoved into the hole.
That is me in a very tight space.
Here is he hole. I had cut the hole, then cut darts along the edge and folded the exposed sharp edge over. Nice and smooth. There was not much elbow room there to move, not much leverage. I was on my stomach the entire time. Jun is going to let me live in his attic...rent free!
Shot of Jun from the attic. Prep for the new tube.
A view from ground level. New vent tube next to old vent hole.
There, right on the front page. Calgary Flames as the featured article. Do not bother going there after today, it will change. I included a screen shot of it just for my records, because I know you are not reading this.
Nike to release Hyperdunk this summer...in 2015 (Back to the Future II) colours. My life will soon be complete. Face it, the chances of me getting a Delorean are slim. This is the next best thing. From what I have heard, only limited to 500.
In the front of the building, a large scale replica of Luxo. I was told that it actually lights up at night. How cool is that?
...and the lobby. The entire left is the cafeteria. On the left is a company store. It was being remodeled at the time, so I did not get to spend any money. Also on the left is the mail room and a game room, fully equipped with a ping pong table, air hockey, Playstation, XBox, and some other fun stuff. Then the highlight of the tour, at least for me...they have a cereal bar! And it is FREE! Free cereal any time! Oh, see that blue bowl sitting on the counter? Inside that is Twizzlers, and it is free!
Oh look, here is proof that I was there, too. Sully and Mike was just hanging out in the lobby. Unfortunately, we were only allowed to photo the lobby/atrium area. these are all the photos that I took. They had a display of the Incredibles and Finding Nemo that I wanted a photo with. Bummer.
Look familiar? Click here to see where it originally came from. Yeah, I totally got jacked. Oh well, I have been borrowing photos for this blog since day one. I guess that means someone other than walkinvisable is reading this blog of mine.
No team as ever won the cup with a non-Canadian captain. Nicklas Lidstrom is from Sweden...of course he is the first European born player to win the Conn Smythe, figure that one out. The Red Wings also have Henrik Zetterberg (also a Swede) and Pavel Datsyuk (Russian), these two are not human...like Lidstrom, they are European. In fact, I think Detroit is somewhere in Eastern Europe, and not in Michigan.Those are just the guys everybody knows about. I do not follow the team so I have no idea how is on the team. The depth on this team is...well, deep. 
