As we are getting closer to the actual Shanghai Alleycat event, sponsoring brands are rolling out the goodies. None of these items are for sale, but produced to be given away to the participants and winners from the day’s race.

adFunture will be giving away 100 of these Shanghai Alleycat YOKAs to those registering to race that day.

While ONEWAY will drop its newest messenger bag item, and to start things off, 10 of these especially made variants will be awarded to the winners of the different categories in the event.

I held one of these tonight, and must say I like the quality of it.

For its regular season, I know for a fact that ONEWAY will have like 5 other colorways of this design, without the Alleycat logo and VEIL’s logo of course. I wouldn’t mind a red one myself. K, you get my hint~~

www.shanghaialleycat.com

Frank always gave me headaches whenever he want to do something “different”. It was like that since like 5 years ago. There were the 48 one-of-ones “I,WZL” figures, and then there was the 2-meters tall “Perk Pioneer“, etc, etc. Forget about pushing the envelope, I think Frank’s mission was simply to push ME.

Our usual conversation would go something like this:
Frank: How tall is this?
Me: 9cm.
Frank: I think this will look awesome if is bigger!
Me: …okay,… how big?
Frank: 2 meters.
Me: you @#@$%$@ kidding me, rite?
Frank: No. How long do you need?
Me: ….ah shit…

Frank: What’s the minimum if I give you a new graphic design to be put on this?
Me: Depends if its a single-stamp graphic or something messy like a camo.
Frank: Hmmm… let say a camo.
Me: To make it worth your while, I’d suggest 1000 pieces.
Frank: Ok. I’ll give you 48 designs.
Me: 48 designs??
Frank: Yes, but I only need one of each.
Me: you @#@$%$@ kidding me, rite?
Frank: No. How long do you need?
Me: ….ah shit…

You get the picture…..

A few months ago, another one of those emails arrived, with Frank’s name attached to it, and I knew, that very moment, “ah shit….”

After reading that email, however, my reply was short and simple: “OKAY”.

A sculpture, 7″ tall, the character involves a dragon and a rooster. Symbolic to Frank being born at the year of the rooster, and his new bride, Kim, being born in the year of the dragon. The character was designed for the two’s wedding event in Germany. And for Frank to always remember he can always have his ways when it comes to 3D sculptures, he wanted to have this character (no official name still) available to give to the guests attending to his big day with Kim.

How could I say no to this dear friend?

70 pieces produced, 2-piece rotocasted sculpture, Frank has successfully pushed adFunture into the business of producing wedding premiums. Thank you, Frank. Once again, you did it.

All kidding aside, it was our absolute pleasure having these at your wedding.
My sincere wishes to you and Kim.
I’ll see you soon in JP.

ICONIC-1 was used as Clot’s JUICE STAND Pop-Up Store for the past month and a half. Today, we turned it into an exhibit venue for Bee Wong’s FIRE PANDA 10th Anniversary Exhibition. This exhibition is split into 2 showrooms; ICONIC-1 Store and its next door neighbor SOLEGOODZ Sneaker Boutique. I haven’t curate an artist exhibition for a long time, about 2 years. Setting up an exhibit one night before the opening, well, haven’t done that in a while….

Bee Wong arrived this afternoon, and we immediately went to work.

K from ONEWAY came to Shanghai for our friend’s anniversary exhibition opening. I actually met both of these guys on the same day almost 2 years ago. Is nice how the three of us worked very closely ever since.

Setting up. Crack opening each exhibition pieces. We were like kids opening up our X’mas presents.

Li Ming aka DAYBREAK. Veteran FIRE PANDA member, impressive illustrator in his own rights as well.

So what does this exhibition entails? Why both Iconic-1 and Solegoodz?

Paintings and illustrations. Of course, FIRE PANDA’s forte.

Customized figures. I just can’t help myself…. Each FIRE PANDA member customized one FIRE PANDA vinyl.

Customized PUMA shoes. Thanks to the support of PUMA.

adFunture usually drop a new item in each exhibition, how can this time be different? Especially with it being FIRE PANDA’s 10th anni.

So, let’s drop the big one.
I bought a FIRE PANDA 5″ like 8 years ago. Loved it. This time around, we made it big. I mean like 14″ big.

I’ll post more images after the opening. Better yet, if you are in town, swing by and take a look for yourself.

Haven’t drop one of these in a while; 10-inch Teddy Troop by Flying Fortress.
I mean a 10″er actually designed by Fortress himself, this will only be the second one we made with him in all the years we have been producing 10″.

Titled “Le Mans Teddy Troop“, this design surfaced about 9 months ago, and finally, we will release this next month. Cut the edition size on this one, with only 400 units made. Wasn’t delayed or anything, that was just how it was scheduled. Personally, love the vibrant colors on this. For now, we have it on pre-order at the adFunture eShop, just to make sure the TT collectors won’t have to hunt too hard.

Days before the opening, I’m sure there are tons of things not yet covered, but then I don’t feel the panic yet. Wait til Friday nite, it’ll hit me hard. Always a last minute guy..

Had to take mug shots this week, Neil did a great job and made me look half decent.

Was asked to make a YOKA for the opening, and decide to draw inspiration from the gradient 580.
Nothing crazy, just looks cool.

These will go into goody bags for the Saturday opening event.
SOLEGOODZ, come check us out if you are in town.

Visited ICONIC-1 Store on this beautiful day.
The window decor we did for the adFunture x Devilock promo brightened up the store front quite a bit.

This will be changed into something else again soon though.
Want to keep the store looking fresh.

Two YOKAs on my desk; NINJA YOKAs.

Made solely for my own amusement. Consider these as “customs”.
No production plans for these. (Note to lawyers: don’t bother emailing me)
If they remind you of something else, ……..NAAAAAH!

I’d like to introduce Indonesian artist, ARKIV, to you readers. He’s one of the artists we are working closely with, and upon product launch, we had the chance to meet up at Taipei a few weekends ago. Really cool dude with alot of heart for what he does. Fellow toy-blogger TRE did an Q&A with ARKIV after the festival, so I figured I’ll just re-post it here.

TOYSREVIL: How many times have you been to TTF so far? (Including this year)
ARKIV: this year was my very first time of TTF. it was really exciting.

TOYSREVIL: How was the experience - especially with the debut of your toys, and live painting! How was the response?
ARKIV: i dont really know what to expect from TTF, but it was wonderful experience and a really good exposure for my debut figure, ARKIV INSTANT. They seemed to respect and like what i do, and meeting people is always great experience. The response was lovely, there was one Japanese guy who bought 6 pieces of my figure at the same time, so he must be a very serious collector.

TOYSREVIL: Hardcore! Besides “work” - did you enjoy the event? How many days were you there?
ARKIV: Yes the event was terrific, and i stayed there for the whole event. The Air Cond on the first day was off for a couple of hours, so it was sucks haha, but when its on again, it was pretty enjoyable event.

TOYSREVIL: Besides debuting your toys - Did you score any good toys yourself? What do you collect?
ARKIV: People are nice and I scored a lot of free toys actually so it was great haha

TOYSREVIL: Anything interesting that caught your eye? That made you want to own or try to own the toy/figure/s?
ARKIV: nope.

TOYSREVIL: What was your personal impression of the event? A Success or Failure? And Why?
ARKIV: yeah, this is a big success for me or maybe a great step for my career, I think everyone seemed to love my works, even though there were more people buying cute and small toys rather than my toy haha cheaper and small toys are the ones that sold and suit the most at TTF.

TOYSREVIL: Any suggestions you would like to give to the organizers or attendees or exhibitors - to improve for TTF 2010?
ARKIV: The event was great and well planned. Lets hope there will be more exhibitors from the U.S and Europe or Japan. This year most of them came from Taiwan and Hongkong.

TOYSREVIL: What was your most memorable happening/incident/item of TTF 2009? I saw your tweet about the earthquake in Taiwan firs thing in the morning - that’s how I knew about it happening!
ARKIV: The earthquake. I was chatting with friends and all of sudden there was really huge earthquake. It was really scary and i try to calm myself down and the earthquake was getting bigger, near to 6.3 richter. I never experieced that before, and what scared me the most was i heard that the building is starting to crack, and i thought i was gonna die here. what a day and what a great experience.

TOYSREVIL: How about 2010? Looking forward to going / exhibiting again?
ARKIV: 2010 is the time for me to make more moves. I hope there will be someone, or more people want to promote ARKIV in the U.S or anywhere else. I’m also hoping i can do an exhibition in the U.S since i want to focus more on painting now, and be a great painter, but of course im still gonna design toys as well.

TOYSREVIL: In closing - please do share with us on TRE -Who is ARKIV?
ARKIV: Well, i used to be a serious collector, but since i design my own toys, i stop buying every toys available and became very picky in buying toys. I’d rather concentrate in designing one. My education background is architecture, so i would say that I’m the architect of Arkiv Instant. Arkiv is my nickname, so yeah Arkiv is myself. check my website out Facebook / www.arkivinstant.com

So there we were, at Taipei, doing the Taipei Toy Festival.
We were working hard everyday and the result was very pleasing.

Here is how our booth setup looked like.
One side display windows, and the other was a live-performance window. We had the pleasure of having DGPH from Argentina and ARKIV from Indonesia doing live-paintings in the booth while the visitors enjoyed the creative process.

Some new goodies dropped at the event.

Thank you to those who came by, it was great seeing you all.
We’ll do this again next year.

Something we are working on.
Want to produce something that I can actually use…

FIRE PANDA will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year, and we’ll be curating its anniversary exhibition for them in Shanghai. Bee Wong, the founder of FIRE PANDA, was in town this week for preparation meetings. After work, we all headed over to Red Dot on the Pudong side for a nice group dinner. No work talk during dinner, that was the unspoken rule.

Bee must had a long day.. “Why the long face??”
He’s usually a cheerful fellar.

Ken. A new friend introduced to us by Bee. Pleasure to meet you.

Ming, or as I like to put it: MING.
Malaysian interior designer working hard in Shanghai, MING is also responsible for our new store’s interior design. Talented in what he does, the fact that he’s also a sneaker freaker doesn’t hurt our project neither!

I’ll be off to Taipei tomorrow, I thought I’ll post this for you.
Taiwanese streetwear label REMIX’s take on the Mini G-Robot project.
Is cool to finally work with these good friends from REMIX. We’ve been talking about doing something together for years. This is a small step forward for sure.
See you boys tomorrow, Eric!

Got more designer vinyls to lay on you today.
I personally love going to these toy fairs, other than the fact that we do business there, these are also the times we get to meet up with the different artists that we actually work with. If not for these exhibitions, most of our interactions are via emails/MSN. You can work with a guy for 3 years and have never met once. This year, we have a number of artists meeting up at Taipei Toy Fest (next week), including Tony from WrongWroks and DGPH from Argentina.

Tony will be there to release his 10″ edition YOKA he designed for adFunture.
We will also release a collaborative t-shirt with his WrongWroks label.
If you know WW’s works, then you know there’ll be a girl on that tee graphic somewhere somehow.

DGPH, we actually worked on a lot of products in the last 12 months. Again, never met them face to face! This time, they’ll be at our booth signing for fans and also dropping the TOPO DE MADERA vinyl. Should be fun. They will be doing live painting session in our booth all day on Friday (July 10th), don’t miss out if you’ll be at TTF. Come say hi.