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Post by wacommonkey on Aug 10, 2007 16:14:42 GMT -5
OK that was an exaggeration, Hasbro only has 2 buildings in RI, and licensing was probably a subsegment of marketing which would have been in my building. Still, no idea who would pick up the rights. You'd need big startup $$ to launch and maintain a toy line like Xevoz.
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Post by Squishee Slinger on Aug 10, 2007 17:08:57 GMT -5
A couple of more quick questions if you don't mind...
can you tell of the names of the few kits besides mech shell that actually make it into plastic as prototypes/one ups?
I also remember reading a pre-lauch interview that said that there were to be 12 xevoz species and that the line would start off with only 6. We saw it expand to 8 shortly before Hasbro pulled the plug. Were the other 4 mapped out and if so what were they? I'd like to know as I'd love to make customs based of the 4 "lost" races
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Post by wacommonkey on Aug 10, 2007 19:38:29 GMT -5
All of those that we talked about except Gargoyle and HelioArcher made it to plastic. Only Mech Shell and Warlock ever made the full round and several samples exist with full deco (like the sample at Stikfas HQ) Ursa Khan (sp?) was a hyper guardian body with different stuff, and was to be in a 2-pack with the snow cat. There were 12 species way, way at the beginning of development, but there was alot of overlap that made it really hard to draw lines between them. We narrowed it down to the 8 you know about, and had plans to release an aquatic species later.
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Post by greyloch on Aug 10, 2007 22:04:17 GMT -5
Dragon*Con = big-@$$ sci-fi/fantasy/gaming/comic convention in Atlanta, GA, usually held on Labor Day weekend. It's nowhere near as big as SDCC but it's gotten close to maxing out the three host hotels (Marriott, Hyatt, & Hilton in Downtown Atlanta) with about 5K to 7K people (possibly more, don't know what last year's total was). Last year I think it topped out at 39 full-time programming tracks meaning that there was literally something for everybody. The D*C folks re-spun off the Atlanta Comic Convention (it had merged with D*C years ago) this past Spring to try and bleed off some of the attendance and the comics track was pretty much self-supporting anyways. If you've never been, I highly recommend checking it out some time. We get a lot of cross-over with some of the SDCC crowd, but a bit more risque at night.
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Post by Grayfox on Aug 10, 2007 22:06:49 GMT -5
Wacommonkey: Thanks for all this great info. For fans like us, it's awesome stuff to read Did you personally design the gag pieces or was it more of a team effort? Also, why do some of these gag pieces make sense than others? Like Fire Drake's anvil makes sense, but the chicken leg that came with Crypt Curse on the other hand, is odd (to me at least).
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Post by FratMonkey on Aug 10, 2007 23:49:21 GMT -5
Wacommonkey: Thanks for all this great info. For fans like us, it's awesome stuff to read And depressing to read.
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Post by Squishee Slinger on Aug 11, 2007 0:22:10 GMT -5
All of those that we talked about except Gargoyle and HelioArcher made it to plastic. Only Mech Shell and Warlock ever made the full round and several samples exist with full deco (like the sample at Stikfas HQ) Ursa Khan (sp?) was a hyper guardian body with different stuff, and was to be in a 2-pack with the snow cat. There were 12 species way, way at the beginning of development, but there was alot of overlap that made it really hard to draw lines between them. We narrowed it down to the 8 you know about, and had plans to release an aquatic species later. How many of those "lost" kits do you yourself have? I hope at some point you can share detailed unassembled and fully assembled pictures of those because even though more than likely none of us we'll ever own any of them, I'll love to own pictures chronicling what they were and what they looked like on my computer. Did you guys ever get to writing their bios or making the booklet inserts for the kits? I know you touched on Genok in the design stage but are there any other designs on paper left unmolded that you were really high on and how many future waves did you guys have planned? I think most people here at one time really wanted to see some deluxe figures/ mini playsets with the atlantean king, scientist benjamin hitmar, and a sectoid queen. Were ideas such as that ever mulled over? Was this neo-hacker supposed to be named Netgeist? A transfan once visited and said that was probably an upcoming xevoz kit because he had a list of names Hasbro tradmarked and several seemed to scream xevoz to him. Also in the list were Attacknid I mentioned earlier and Ursa Khan which I assume was changed to Ursa Major at some later point. In fact, there was a rather big board bruhaha a long time ago over whether Ursa Khan was going to be a kodiak with a Mongol invader type theme or a Chinese martial art's inspired panda. So it's ironic to find out now that it wasn't even planned to be a Metabeast bear at all. I predicted a water species and made a name for a line of customs I never painted called the Aquattax. With a black trident as their emblem on a glowing sea green background. I started a squidman and a stingray humaniod but they never got past their rough first stage of design. I also went with an alien race (Ethereals and my avatar is their emblem) as well, but it doesn't seem you guys were going that direction. I also started a Atlantean Police Officer with a backpack/flying wing right after wave three to deal with the street punks but it never has seen a full paint scheme. Did you guys ever spend time creating kitbashes and exploring all the imaginative wonders you built into these toys? Did that come later on your own time as the toys were released and you picked up a few kits and saw how they just lend themselves to creativity? Anyway, sorry to talk your ear off but it's great to finally touch base with one of the genius minds behind these toys. But just to let you know, you guys completely ruined me to toy collecting. Xevoz were so satisfing to create with, unique and addicting that I really can't substancially spend my money elsewhere and feel I get value in action figures anymore. I used to religiously buy franchised toy properties, but now those seem empty and pointless compared to xevoz where we truly got an open door to the imagination. If you guys ever collaborate on anything as cool as this again you have to give the guys here a heads up.
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Post by wacommonkey on Aug 11, 2007 0:37:54 GMT -5
Dragon Con sounds awesome, plus Atlanta is a fun city, maybe next year will be roadtrip time! The humor pieces are a mixed bag, some came instantly others took awhile to think up. Some are directly and logically linked, others are only related to the figure if you think about the whole genre of ideas surrounding the theme. Frankenstein is really just a bunch of meat and bones, so it was somehow funny to us that his favorite food could so easily be a part of him. We had designed alot of other toy lines, and they're generally ruled very tightly by piece count due to costing. The fact that we weren't paying a licensor for the IP combined with the lack of factory assembly cost let us put way more parts into these, and we could put in pieces that were sideline ideas and bonuses. It was really liberating to have complete control like that. Don't be depressed, like everything, good toys run in cycles! Personally I'm interested to see where Urban Vinyl will eventually lead. It's really inspiring to see these guys doing whatever they want they have complete controll. Metaphorically, it's like musicians in the eighties, they've been inspired by all the classic stuff, but suddenly they had the technology to do everything by themselves.
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Post by wacommonkey on Aug 11, 2007 0:51:24 GMT -5
Hi Squishee, Sorry I didn't answer your questions tonight, I'll get to it tomorrow.
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Post by FratMonkey on Aug 11, 2007 0:52:52 GMT -5
Xevoz is the only toyline that I had ever become so obsessed over, that I actually collected every single one of them. Also, just for the record, aside from bad marketing and crappy commercials, I think the biggest flaw in Xevoz was there packaging. I mean nothing on the packaging really stood out and said "I'm a Bad @$$ toy and you better buy me or you'll be the dumbest person on the planet." All you can see from that package is one simple picture of what could be a digitally enhanced and enlarged picture of what probably is a crappy toy. I mean when I first saw a Xevoz at TUR store, I almost passed it, thinking it would be another one of those big ripoff toys. However, it was Christmas and I had some cash to spare, so I decided to buy the Dune Stinger (since I love scorpions). When I opened the package I was like, Wow! This thing looks way cooler than it did on the package. The next day I went and bought 5 more Xevoz (I think it was Shield Breaker, Quick Slinger, Sky Grinder, Skull Jack, and the Bone Cutter/Shadow Blade 2 pk). After that I, for some reason, didn't go back to get more for a while. Than several months later, I finally went back to TRU to discover them all gone, FOREVER!!!!!! I eventually forgot about Xevoz as I moved on to bigger things in my life. Than one faithful day, I found them, tucked away in the attic, forgotten and covered in dust. Than that obsessive sense of wanting more suddenly raged through me, eventually leading to the discovery of eBay and the loss of $500 dollars . God I hate action figures.
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Post by Grayfox on Aug 11, 2007 2:21:05 GMT -5
Wacommonkey:
I'm not sure you did answer this..were you guys aware of this message board when the line was alive and in good health?
Also, was Hasbro satisfied with the concept of ball n joint action figures that promoted imagination and inter changeability? I mean even though the line tanked, were they happy with the work you guys did?
And in the same vein, what would you say are the odds of Hasbro ever using that concept again on some of their other properties like GIjoe, Marvel or Star Wars? A lot of us here would *love* to see characters from these lines made in the same way Xevoz were.
Thanks again for your time!
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Post by eMummy on Aug 11, 2007 11:49:59 GMT -5
Hi wacom (I use my bluetooth graphire a lot! in fact if I forget it, I pretty much have to leave work). I am in total agreement with the others. This information on the line is so great. Thank you soo much for taking a visit here.
RockaHuna looks so cool... and maybe knowing that attacknid and Ursa Major (Conan!! yes a barbarian totally necessary) are Neo-Sapiens I can ponder a spider and bear Xevoz. I'd like to know what materials and tools you use for making sculpts. I've been wanting to get into sculpting more hands on, but books and web articles related to specifically toy making are hard to find (impossible for me) I hung out at Barnes for half a day looking for books on that stuff.
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Post by FratMonkey on Aug 11, 2007 13:12:50 GMT -5
Say does anybody still have the pics of the old production art of the unreleased figures that was removed from the original Xevoz site? I have been trying to track down the pics but have had no luck. So if you have them, I would really like to see them.
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Post by wacommonkey on Aug 11, 2007 13:20:22 GMT -5
Oh Man!, now I'm way behind! -squishee: I have all the kits in whatever the last stage of approval they made it through. Hasbro had painted test models of most of them when I left, I don't know what they did with them. If we decide that it's OK we can show some type of photo reference. Yes, Mech Shell, Warlock Kahuna and Netgeist had bios written, but unfortunately, they were all left at Hasbro. We were tossing around names for the underwater species, but I can't remember them now, only that Atlanteans was too confusing because of the Neo Sapien city. Yes- these were always meant to be mixed, matched, carved painted-because we trampolined off Stikfas, we always intentioned these as kitbash fodder, the designs were supposed to be strong starting points. It was a philosophy of open ended design that inlcluded color theory, shape and function. We only slowed down to mess our own kitbashes when new samples would come in, then we'd dump out the giant xevoz part bin on the table and see how the latest kit worked with the existing parts. thanks for the kind words, -If we start up something again, we'll tell you, I'm sure we'll need all the word-of-mouth help possible! -fratmmonkey, yes those things didn't help Xeoz, and don't forget the game aspect. There were too many messages that diluted the central theme of what was cool about making your own hero. It was hard to tell what you were getting into. Grayfox-Yes we knew that this was happening, and remember the big Xevoz VS Stikfas debate, which is funny to me since I worked on both. Although we didn't have much time to really check it out then, but we knew that you guys were getting the intended message, and it was energizing. The next part of your question is one of those I'm going to have to pass on-sorry, I still am a consultant on alot of the major brands and that stops me from denying or confirming any of that stuff. I can say that my freinds still at different levels of the company continue to think of that as a unique design occurance, so it was noticed. -eMummy: yup I do most of my freelance on a big Cintiq, just more efficient, although I'm starting to miss the scratch of real graphite! Except in the smaller more sculpting based toy companies, most of us are industrial designers. Generally speaking we have skills to build functioning models, but rarely get into detailed sculpting on a production level. We come up with the ideas, and draw the complete engineering orthographics (turn around views with as many additional explanatory drawing as needed) after that we stay in touch with the whole process (sculpters, engineers, marketing, Far East manufacturing) to make sure that our product remains the way we need it to be. I have sculpting experience independently becuase my school had a lot of fine art focus, but that's just a fluke, the creators hardly ever sculpted on this line. -Maybe really really early when we were tryin to explain to everyone what we meant by organic geometry!
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Post by greyloch on Aug 11, 2007 18:20:19 GMT -5
No, thank you for posting this great insight to the inner workings of creating a toy. Urban Vinyl?? Did I miss a post or something? And am I reading one of your posts correctly about the small guys being able to make their own toys without having to play with the big companies? As they used to say on Buffy - the Vampire Slayer, " 'Splainy, please?"
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