KBB Kaikeshi on Kickstarter!

We consider Rand Borden, the creator of Kaiju Big Battel, extended family over here. My sister Megan (AKA the ravenous dimwit space bug known as Sky Deviler) introduced me to Rand over 15 years ago, in an early effort to put together a "Kaikeshi" series of minifigures in the spirit of the legendary Kinnikuman/ M.U.S.C.L.E. toys.

Upon our first meeting, we spent the entire day sketching and analyzing the incredible array of characters Rand had summoned forth from his monster filled brain. It was a great visit and I was honored to be allowed to contribute to the KBB madness in even a small way.

After about a week, I'd completed the basic control art shown above, based on Rand's initial selections for the proposed first lineup. Though we both really wanted to get the Kaikeshi project into full production, it never came into focus due to about a million things.

That is until now!

If you get a chance, click over to Rand's new Kaikeshi Kickstarter and witness the resurrection of a nearly forgotten project! The character lineup is much larger than before, and a certain Traveler even managed to phase into the mix as well!

The whole Onell family wishes Rand the very best!

Thank You!!!

Huge thanks go out to all of you for a super release! The different elements that came together for this 11th anniversary wave truly represented a little bit of our past, present and future. It's always fun to see old friends again, and opening new boxes of Hades, Argen and Pheyden in their familiar colors definitely made us smile around here when they arrived. Then welcoming the new Zetonian/Mechabon mold into the family really sealed the deal for this round to be something extra special.

Over the last few weeks, between the Toyfinity debut of the Zetonian form and our follow up reveal of the Mechabon form, we've been internally celebrating the completion of a project that Toyfinity's John Kent and I started over a year ago (with some of it actually dating back all the way to the first new Maxx Zero concepts). As always, working with John and the Toyfinity team was great, and we were able to create another new character together, through the study and reimagining of the classic robots we grew up loving. There's a lot of hidden stuff within this beefy little 'bot, but we know that the coolest discoveries will come from what each of you finds within the parts.

Looking towards the next couple months, our next wave is set for early September, and will feature the return of the Mechabon, and maybe even a Miniborg for good measure. Also, keep your eyes peeled for a new Toyfinity assortment in August that spotlights the Zetonian and delves deeper into its origin story.

As of this writing, all orders have been shipped out, so be on the lookout for those packages! Yet again, Michelle and Pj kept the boat afloat and moved with precision and speed through a pretty big stack of orders. Those new Mechabons are heavy little buggers! Barn tunes included another round of TBS with a follow up mix of new MGMT and much to Michelle's chagrin, Winger. I waited until Pj went home to turn that selection on.

The last 11 years have been the best. Thank you so much for the opportunity to squeak out a few more. New projects are rounding the corner, and as long as we can, we'll keep at it.

In closing, I also want to personally express my deep gratitude to Ron Daley, who has been building figures with me since the beginning. We worked side by side throughout the entire process of prototyping the new Zetonian/Mechabon, and hopefully the end result brings you as much happiness as we had while making it.

Thanks Ronny!

Reconstructed

Rediscovered

Reconfigured

Thank you for a great rollout of Bit Figs Space!!

Now that everything is shipped and settled we have put back up the Complete Unpainted Set of 25 for a limited time. Grab the entire crew in one shot or beef up your Bit Battalion!

New exclusive colors to come this summer!

The Skate Wars

The new store is live!

Refresh: http://onell.store

Note: Please place only ONE ORDER WITHIN THE FIRST HOUR TONIGHT. We will lift all limits after the first hour. Thanks for your cooperation. Have Fun!

Beyond the Black Nebula Part 3

As I produced various sketches of the Knight of Darkness and his proposed "troopers" for Project X in late 2012 and into 2013, I started to realize that the core design principles of the original vintage figure had a lot in common with our very own Space Traveler Pheyden. That sneaky domed would-be conqueror from the 70's had actually left an indelible subconscious impression on my tiny brain! It seemed that I had inadvertently discovered Pheyden's long lost cosmic grandpa through the act of drawing oddball pictures.

Strange skull-like swept angled helmet? Check.  Simplified segmented chest? Check. Skinny arms and legs? Check. Asymmetrical weirdo belt? Check. That last one really jumped out at me. All that time playing with the original Knight of Darkness had definitely affected my creative choices when I was developing old Pheyden, I had just never really put it all together until I seriously analyzed the basic aesthetics of both designs next to each other. 

In many ways, the concept of Toyfinity is truly best proven by the very projects that it undertakes. The Knight of Darkness/Pheyden connection may never have been made if we hadn't collectively decided to bring the original S.T.A.R. Team back from deep space. Being able to collaborate, design and develop with John and the Toyfinity team has allowed us to open up all new dimensions, even without Traveler powers.

Or weirdo asymmetrical belts.

Beyond the Black Nebula Part 2

When I first received the Knight of Darkness "doll" from my folks back in the late 70's, I was really taken by the strange and blunted "Vader-like" look of the helmet, as well as the silver and black color combination. Because I was also obsessed with Stormtroopers at the time, I thought the Knight also looked like some kind of elite version of the Empire's prime military force. Naturally, I expected to see other S.T.A.R. Team antagonists like the Knight show up at the toy store, filling out the "bad guy" ranks like Star Wars was starting to do. Each time my family traveled to The Maine Mall I was on the lookout for new S.T.A.R. Team recruits, but nothing ever materialized beyond the Knight and a few Zem 21 figures. This actually bugged me more than it ever should have, especially since legitimate Star Wars figures were starting to invade the shelves. The Knight of Darkness needed his own troopers to command!

I kept my original Knight of Darkness for many years, losing various pieces of its body as time rolled on. Eventually all that remained was the poor guy's head, battered and scraped from years of service. The Knight's noggin one day ended up on my work desk, while I had some cruddy enamel model paint opened up (80's kids know the kind). I thought back to my desire of seeing a trooper versions of the Knight and I applied some of that nasty enamel paint (a red color) to its worn out dome. Needless to say, the paint refused to dry, but for a small window I was able to sneak a glimpse of what might have been.

Fast forward to nearly 4 years ago, around the time I started to develop new S.T.A.R. Team (Project X) concepts with Toyfinity's John Kent (who now held the licenses for some of my most beloved Ideal toy lines including S.T.A.R. Team) and our long time collaborator Ralph Niese. During those extensive work sessions, we discussed how we could bring back the Knight of Darkness and give him an army of armored soldiers. The old "trooper" concept then resurfaced from my youth, and things began to fall into focus for the Knight's resurrection.

More to explore in Part 3!

Titanic Intentions

Tonight marks a special milestone for our great friend and collaborator, Marty "The Godbeast" Hansen, as his very first full production rotocast vinyl figure is finally ready to invade our collections!

I've been watching the creative process of this new "Titan" Mushi unfold since back in 2011, when Marty first started working through the early stages of the Titan's development (as well the first runs of our collaborative Bio Jumpers project and the original Kabuto Mushi concepts). Initially, the sculpt was quite a bit larger than the one you see above, sporting a massive horn and a very stout body. Through a series of revisions, the dimensions started to change, resulting in a couple variations to the overall design. With each passing year, the core aspects of the Titan would alter a little bit, leading up to a heavy round of joint concept work in mid/late 2014 (some of it shown above) that resulted in a more concrete basic look.

It was around this time that Marty began sculpting his new monstrosity, spending weeks working out the details and attempting to incorporate a "folding" mechanic he came up with that would allow the Titan to transform into a quadrupedal form. Many hours were spent pushing the lines and tightening the look of the overall figure, and at DCon 2014 Marty delivered a resin cast Titan to me in person for final review.

It took nearly a year from that point for the Titan to hit the production phase, due to the wonders of timing as well as a number of technical issues that we had never faced at our factory before on a vinyl project. Marty, being a maniac, decided to disregard the specific limitations that I had given him for when he was building the Mushi, resulting in some big challenges to overcome.

There were three main no-no points that were supposed to be avoided:

-No T-Crotch.

-No hard right angles.

-No extremely small protruding design elements.

The Titan Mushi master, of course, had all three of these to the maximum degree!

It took some doing to bring everything together, but thanks to our factory engineers and an intense reworking of the Titan resin master while I was recently visiting them, we managed to make it work. I personally sculpted and sanded on that little bugger for about 30 hours inside my hotel room during the stay in Dongguan. Jesse was inhaling resin dust while he slept! Luckily, he's nearly indestructible.

To see Marty's Titan Mushi come to life after all the back and forth over the years is a really satisfying thing, and even though it was tough to pull off, I'm happy that Marty pushed the limits of what we could do in rotocast vinyl production. The resulting figure stands (or crawls) with a look all its own.

It was an honor to collaborate with Marty on his latest character, and I'm looking forward to seeing what folks do when they get their hands on this latest addition to the Glyos family.

Congratulations Marty, from the whole Onell crew!

Union Emissary

Way back in 1994, while I was deep into reading Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods for about the 20th time, I started working on one of my own stories called "Union", which pulled many themes from his ancient astronaut hypothesis and combined them with just about every conspiracy theory imaginable found in the various magazines (remember those?) I was reading at the time. Having The X-Files on television also proved a massive influence on the subject matter.

The central idea of Union revolved around a secret war between 3 alien factions, and their collective ties to the development of mankind throughout history. Everything from Area 51, ancient civilizations, cryptozoology, bionic soldiers and a colony of enslaved hybrid manhunters imprisoned within a massive space station on the edge of an artificial black hole made it into the mix (I was just as bananas back then).

Throughout my college years I worked on different elements of the story, creating various illustrations (a couple are shown in this post) and bursts of text in the margins of my school notes. Eventually other stories moved into focus, but a few aesthetic ideas from Union survived and were reborn, showing up in Rechlen and Aves and beyond. Since I was fond of the leather armored "Warrior Grays" from Union, I decided to have any classic looking Gray alien type that might show up in the Glyos System resemble those old designs a bit. 

Eventually I ended up sculpting the oddball alien in the pics above, a character that was based on the old Union designs. The body is a series of twist ties, with plumber's compound built over them. Kind of a mini vintage OSM construction with some pretty rough sculpting.This little guy was given to Michelle for Christmas around 2002-2003 (I built my first sculpted-over twist tie guy in early 1999).

The recent secret mode Exile Deniken from our last release pays homage to the Warrior Grays from the original Union story, as well as the original twist tie "Deniken" that's shown above.

Be on the lookout for some other color variations of the Noboto mold that take the core design for a similar "alien" spin.

Maybe even this week.

Enter the Glyoverse

After over a decade, one of our favorites spots on the web, the October Toys Forum, will be shutting down at the end of this month.

Throughout the years our great friends George and Ayleen have generously donated endless amounts of their personal time and effort into maintaining the boards for all of us to peruse and enjoy, fostering an incredible community along the way. The wealth of information that has been amassed in the Glyos section alone is beyond measure. Spending time checking out what everybody is up to has been an invaluable resource on so many levels. The OTF will be fondly remembered and truly missed by all of us here at Onell.

For all the glorious years of true partnership, open communication and good times, we salute our extended family over at October Toys with a full heart. Thank you for everything.

For all of you that have participated in the OTF community, whether posting or just lurking, please know that you have absolutely influenced and assisted in building the very foundation of what we do here. We are forever grateful.

Though we are definitely feeling melancholy about the end of the OTF era, we are also looking forward to what the future holds.

Year after year, Marcus and I have continually been engaged in an ongoing discussion concerning the ever growing world of social media. As evidenced by our complete lack of it, we have consistently kept everything we do contained within this little blog. Being the caveman that I am, this method has served our modest system fairly well, but now with the end of the OTF pending and the loss of an official place for everyone to openly share, the time has finally come to shuffle the deck.

Behind the scenes Marcus has been readying some countermeasures in the event we lost the forum, or simply decided to venture into the universe of modern communications (I am a relic, Marc is not).

Below you will be introduced to something we probably should have activated many moons ago. My sincere thanks to my always technologically savvy brother Marcus for dragging us through a necessary threshold into the future.  -Matt


With the closing of the OTF chapter, we begin the next phase with not one but two new online realms for the Glyos System.

The Glyoverse is a community powered tumblelog where anyone can upload photos, artwork and all types of Glyos related content. Our goal with this site is to cultivate inspiration and excitement for the Glyos System Series, but most importantly to allow the artists, fans, collectors and friends of the line an equal chance to contribute to the community. Matt, Michelle and I can never stop thanking you guys for the incredible support over the years, and we hope this site becomes a tribute to what we have all built together.

We set up a few guidelines for submissions to the Glyoverse. Please read them through before submitting, and also take some time to review the tagging system. The tags will become the filing structure for the Gallery section, coming in the weeks ahead.

The Glyos Tumblr will serve as a fun companion to the Onell blog. The current Blogger site will remain the primary source for all things Onell, whereas the Tumblr will be more of an anything-goes stream of Glyos images and content. We'll be exploring things from the past, present and even the future, including unreleased sketches, scraps, and other oddities.

If you have any questions or feedback, please comment here or email web@glyos.com.

Also, we are looking into various options for a new forum, as well as potentially exploring other social media platforms. The caveman has to get comfortable around a fire before we board any spaceships...

Thanks again for continuing to build this unique and enduring community with us. -Marc

Glyosar Party

The new store is LIVE!

REFRESH: onelldesign.com/store

Huge thanks to the resident Van Gogh from Under The Mountain, Jesse Moore for the amazing painting shown above, and to longtime friend and all around musical cyborg Glen Schricker (aka Circuits and Brains) for the awesome tune! We'll have a little story to tell as the week rolls on, and the creative combination of Jesse and Glen gets us off to a great start.

Note: Please place only ONE ORDER WITHIN THE FIRST HOUR tonight. We usually see an increased volume of traffic during a new release and need everyone's cooperation to ensure things operate smoothly. After the initial dust settles, we will lift all limits. Thanks for your understanding and support. Have fun!

Manglors Character Studies

The original Manglors figures are quite unique, both physically and conceptually.

I was recently able to do some deep drawing studies on a full Manglor set, thanks to having access to the extraordinary toy collections of John and Jesse, combined with my own beat up specimens.

One of the things that's a bit hard to see on the original figures due to the sorbathane material is the level of actual detail packed into the sculpts. It's rumored that the great Ken Kelly himself designed the series, but I do wonder who sculpted them. The designs on the packaging are more streamlined, looking like they could double as Creepy magazine covers without missing a beat. Whoever did the sculpting had a more rugged approach, weaving some serious texture into the skin and scales that cover most of the 6 classic Manglor characters, save for the Manglord, who sports a much clearer, albeit puke green, complexion.

Drawing off of the boxes would have been the easiest way to come up with some clean representations of the characters, but I really wanted to get to the heart of actual toys, to see what was hidden behind their oddball mess of stickiness and twisted limbs.

The above line studies show where I landed after staring at the original vintage figures for extended sittings. There is definitely a very cool cohesive aesthetic running across the line, with repeated texture patterns and related proportions culminating in a unique style and delivery.

Stretchy dino monsters battling swampy cavemen on an alien planet in space.

These are a few of my favorite things.

New Robo Force Rollout

The Toyfinity Team has a great new round of stuff scheduled for release tonight, March 23rd, at 9PM EST over in their store!

You can find all the details here!

Both PVC colors for this assortment match right up to the Ultra Silver and GITD green of our recent February wave, as well as the Kabuto Mushi swarm attack from last week.

The original Sentinel has always been one of my favorite Robo Force characters, sporting a compact yet sleek look to its core body design. The new Sentinel (shown above), was designed to hopefully evoke that classic 80's structure, but also allow for maximum customization potential.

On a related note, as we were working on the Robo Force parts it became pretty clear that with a little pushing and pulling, the head geometry of Sentinel and Enemy could be connected, resulting in a reversible design that could also serve as chest armor for Hun-Dred. The whole figure is kind of a Mecha Puzzle.

Having an already established cast of characters adds a different dimension to the process of making a toy, especially a property like Robo Force. The Toyfinity/Onell teams absolutely wanted to make sure that we honored the classic toy series, yet incorporate brand new elements that would give the modern figures options that did not exist before. Had the classic Robo Force toys perhaps featured some more modular parts, the experience of playing with them might have been a more creative and long lasting one. I do still love those old mech-frigerators, though.

It can be a bit of a tightrope redesigning something that fans of the original hold dear, and I know that all of us involved in bringing Robo Force back put everything we had into the project, because we are those very fans.

Grip Strider

Argen's connection to the Planet Rilleco runs very deep, and quite often he finds himself returning to the dark and mountainous world in search of solace. Watching the indigenous lifeforms simply cycle through their patterns brings Argen a great sense of peace in an otherwise trying time.

Rock Stinger

With a vicious strike that is widely known across the System as one of the deadliest, the Granthan Rock Stinger seemed surprisingly at peace with Argen's presence, much to the relief of the curious Gendrone.

Jump Hunter

Known for their hyper powerful leaping abilities, the Jump Hunters of Planet Volkria proved a deceptively difficult species for Argen to try and learn from.

Claw Stalker and Concept Challenge

Argen studied the creepy Claw Stalkers deep down in the dark caverns of the Planet Reydurra, adapting his structure in an effort to duplicate their incredible natural climbing abilities.

Though some of these Contained Builds have been floating around here for a bit, I thought it would be fun to render a few new conceptual drawings of the creatures that I imagine these builds are based on.

I'll attempt to pop up a fresh sketch with each specific build as we lead up to the release tonight, my stupid lingering sickness permitting!

Maxx Works 3

As Ron and I worked out the proportions for Maxx, we tried different sizes for the little bot's head, starting with a significantly smaller noggin on top.

Using existing Glyos production figures for the scale match was a very important part of the blocking process, and served as a central point of measure.

The primary goal at this stage was to find just the right size for this new Robo Force. We wanted the sculpts to appear powerful and fairly massive in comparison to what we had worked on before, yet also maintain 100% compatibility with everything else already in full production.

The other major concern was that Robo Force would make sense financially for the Toyfinity team to produce, so we moved forward with certain dimensions and metrics in mind, conceived to hopefully result in an overall success and not just simply a redesigned classic robot.

Maxx Works

Tonight (October 27th) marks a very special release for our friends over at Toyfinity, for when 9 PM EST rolls around,  the old series Robo Force will make its return to the world of toys nearly 30 years after its original production run!

This special  project has been running in the background over here for quite some time.

Working closely with John "Doctor" Kent, Mike Hart and Charlie Parry of Toyfinity, we developed the new toys in house, which utilize the Glyos fit functions and play mechanics. My mentor Ron Daley and I built the Maxx Zero prototype from the ground up, based on my original design scribbles. The Toyfinity team, who are like family, put a lot of trust in us, and both Ron and I gave the project everything we had so Maxx's new form would hopefully honor the Robo Force name.

I personally still have my original Maxx from when I first received it back in 1984, and it has survived multiple toy collection cutbacks over many years. I've always felt that Maxx never got a real chance to shine as the cool character that he was, so having the opportunity to create a brand new version of Maxx has been a dream come true. I want to sincerely thank the Toyfinity team for allowing me to work on their property, which holds a place very close to my heart.

Over the month of November, I'd like to share a few notes on the creation of the new Maxx, from conceptual drawings to pics of the prototyping process at Ron's shop. There are a ton of secret builds hidden within the 41 parts that comprise Maxx Zero, from old Tomy robots, ZOIDS and Zeroids to the Trapping Rigs used by our own Rechlen and Aves. My hope is that this reforged Maxx will open up a new world of building and playing possibilities across the spectrum, and that Robo Force will make you smile like you were a kid again.

Cheers to the Toyfinity Team and their new adventures with Maxx Zero and Robo Force!