Acromaxx

2013 has been filled with some really fun projects, which helped to balance out the various curveballs that were thrown throughout the year. One such project was Toyfinity's resurrection of Robo Force.

Working on the Robo Force relaunch ended up taking a bit longer than I had originally anticipated, with many weeks spent up at the shop working with the always amazing Ron Daley. By the time we finished the prototype I had taken around 500 pics of the process, attempting to catalog the various alternate builds that we tried to hide within the parts as well as the actual progress. John, Mike and Charlie over at Toyfinity were always encouraging and trusting and made for great partners in the development of their new Maxx Zero.

Once we finally got Maxx into production, John and I spent a lot of time talking about how to roll the new series out, and the best possible way to coordinate the releases with the story John wanted to tell. As we had been shooting ideas back and forth for the greater part of a year, the decision to have some shared colors across our respective lines seemed to make the most sense, for potential building as well as for crossover story purposes.

The recent blue hues from the Ecroyex wave were selected to pay homage to Takara's Giant Acroyear and Mecha Acroyear (thanks Microforever!), two true classic toy designs from Japan. As strange as this may sound, as a child I would always dream of seeing characters from one series color swapped with characters from another series. Something about that idea still sticks with me to this day, so when the chance came up to possibly see Maxx sporting the colors of a Giant Acroyear, we had to go for it.

It's been a true privilege having the opportunity to work on bringing Maxx and the Robo Force back to life with the Toyfinity team, and I'm really looking forward to watching the line expand in 2014.