Art of Curet

John Carter of Mars

2011-09-08T23:10:00.000-07:00

Jacked Rabbit doll is being sold all over the country!

2010-10-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

I have recieved calls from freinds and fans all over the country telling me they have seen my toys at stores all over the USA.
Jacked Rabbit was spotted in a toy store in San Francisco.
Noggin Bops are in New York City!
Foofnicks are all over the south- I got a tweet from Miami that thet are in machines there..

Thanks to everyone who contacted me and thanks to everyone who enjoys the design work I do.

R

My Vinyl Dolls are FINALLY HERE!

2010-07-28T14:49:00.001-07:00

Foofnick Roop in firey danger!

2009-07-02T01:34:00.000-07:00

2009-01-12T17:32:00.000-08:00

OK, this is the best part of being a toy designer for over 10 years in Los Angeles.

When you build an artistic career here you meet lots of other creative people along the way.

Some of the people I know run a company called "Legacy Effects"

which happens to be the company that was once known as "Stan Winston Effects".

Having such friends in my life helps when we get a job in house

that requires really thorough reference.

I visited Legacy to get some reference on a particular character they had worked on

and when I ( I am the guy NOT in armour) walked in the door I bumped into this guy!

Ultimately I know the suit is an elaborate movie prop.

I know that I am standing next to parts output via an STL machine and cast in a rigid plastic.

I of course realize that this suit was made over many weeks

by dozens of hard working effects artists

and not in a few hours by a single millionaire weapons designer

as the movie showed us .

I know all this, but...

I AM STANDING NEXT TO IRON MAN!!!!!

Spooky Halloween Noggin Bops

2008-11-19T10:32:00.000-08:00

Spooky Noggin Bops were out for Halloween this year.

They were really fun to design ( I designed the heads for FOUR of them)

and even more fun to see in action!

I just want to say thank you

to our licensee "Z Wind Ups"

for doing a really spectacular job in making these!

2008-11-06T01:12:00.000-08:00

Capsule Toys I designed

2008-10-24T16:44:00.000-07:00

2008-10-09T18:29:00.000-07:00

I thought making toys was cool!

Here's one of my images Tattooed on my brothers leg!

I designed the "Cyclone" character to be the symbol of my nieces fast pitch softball team.

It was used on the uniforms, website and other stuff.

Time went by and the girls on the team moved on to High School.

My brother, who was the team coach has come to regard those days fondly.

He had the logo Tattooed to honor those days.

It honored me!

To my knowledge this is the first of my images to be etched into some body's skin!

Thanks Bro!

Painting

2008-09-23T11:38:00.000-07:00

Read About me in Business Week Magazine this month!

2008-09-02T23:08:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to the story:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_68/s0808041522849.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

This is for Astronit!

2008-09-02T20:53:00.000-07:00

Here are three storyboard images of the Foofnicks in action. You can see when I made these images my thoughts were that our Friends were as small as the gum machine toys right from the start. When I did these drawings I hadn't even met the gum machine guy!

News article I was interviewed for

2008-08-11T11:36:00.000-07:00

Enterprises eye potential for Second Life
Article Date: Friday 24th November 2006
Even Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield isn't sure how seriously he's taking the fact that his company's next press conference will be a virtual event on World of Warcraft (WoW).
Partly, he's doing it to parody the suddenly trendy idea of companies hosting business events within the confines of such virtual worlds as WoW and Second Life (SL).
"Too much of what it's become is the easy answer for a large company to do something just for the sake of being cool," he said.
But he also admits that companies could benefit from being virtual.
"There's tremendous promise for virtual worlds being used as a collaboration platform," he said.
Some of the large companies he mentioned, such as Sun and IBM (Quote), have recently held press conferences, meetings with financial analysts and brainstorming sessions in virtual worlds like SL and WoW.
The virtual in world
These worlds are inhabited by three-dimensional representations of the users themselves, called avatars, and are filled with anything the citizens of those worlds want to make, from chairs and coffee tables to huge open-air arenas capable of seating thousands of "people."
In SL, users can customize their avatars to make them look anyway they want, and they can move around by walking, flying or teleporting themselves.
They can also create goods and services and sell them to each other using a virtual currency called Linden dollars (after Linden Lab, the San Francisco-based company that runs SL).
Linden dollars can be exchanged for U.S. currency at a rate of approximately 270 to 1 (this rate fluctuates on the Linden currency exchange).
No one knows how far this will go.
But IBM thinks enough of its potential to invest $10 million just to see what kind of collaboration tools it can develop within SL and other virtual worlds.
Sun recently held a virtual press conference on SL. And it was the first company to host its financial analyst day on SL.
But it surely won't be the last.
Consumer brands as far-ranging as Nike (Quote) and General Motors (Quote) have established a presence on SL as well, and there is so much activity there now that Reuters has set up a news bureau to report on events "in-world."
And in case you're wondering, there is an acronym for where we are right now, which is IRL (in real life).
But while this is undeniably a phenomenon, the question is whether it's a passing fad or one worth noting.
Passing fad or here to stay?
Proponents suggest a multitude of benefits.
For one, virtual worlds are an easy way for companies to test new ideas.
"You can use it as a kind of unfocused focus group with more spontaneous, unscripted feedback," noted JupiterKagan analyst Joe Laszlo.
Chris Melissinos, Sun chief gaming officer, said that SL is allowing Sun engineers to connect with users in ways they haven't been able to before.
No responsibility can be taken for the content of external Internet sites.
Until now, "a lot of technology decisions have been made in a vacuum," Melissinos said.
Melissinos said Sun was able to introduce a new storage device, code-named Thumper, to a large number of channel partners, so they could see it up close and look at it from a variety of angles.
"You can't do that on a webcast. It's hard to do even in real life, because you're limited by how many people you get up on the podium. On Second Life, I can make as many of these as I need," he said.
This phenomenon isn't limited to multinational corporations.
For the last six months, Little Wonder Studio, based in Burbank, Calif., has been using SL to create virtual models of complicated wind-up toys before building actual prototypes.
CEO Robert Curet said that SL has changed his business by allowing him to think through complex design problems more quickly.
"I can think of something on my drive into work, build a rough model in SL by lunch, troubleshoot and adjust the build by mid-afternoon and e-mail images to a China factory by 5pm. It's amazing! I can then talk with engineers in China that night and have preliminary costing on a project the next day," he wrote in an email.
IBM sees a vast potential for using virtual worlds to encourage collaboration among colleagues.
In a recent blog post, IBM CTO Irving Wladawsky-Berger noted that human beings are more likely to understand complicated concepts when they are presented in visual forms.
He said that IBM may be able to drive more revenues through its consulting services by visualising business processes through virtual worlds.
"Perhaps for the first time, we will be able to understand what is really going on in a business and its various processes, and then systematically improve and optimize them," he wrote.
Virtual worlds are also places where employees can mingle and interact more freely than during a web cast or video conference call.
According to Joi Ito, vice president of Technorati, virtual conferences or meetings make information more memorable than conventional ones.
"Landscapes and texture contribute to your ability to remember," he said.
But people are also finding that participants in virtual events can be more easily distracted from their strictly business purposes.
"I am experienced with the SL world," noted Curet. "But for my clients it's always a new experience. They tend to want to experiment with moving their avatars, or they don't quite know how to chat, or adjust their camera angles. Still, they enjoy the experience."
SL in particular has attributes that make it more attractive to businesses than other virtual worlds.
Ito noted that SL "has gotten a bunch of things right."
Principal among them, he said, is that content created by users remains their property, both in-world and IRL.
"SL is one of the few or maybe the only virtual world that provides a creative commons and allows people to own stuff," he said.
"There's more incentive to be creative inside the game."
One SL inhabitant created a game called Tringo in-world and has since licensed it to electronic game manufacturers IRL.
Catherine Smith, director of marketing at SL, said that "you own the intellectual property rights of anything you create in-world."
Trouble in virtual paradise?
But virtual worlds are far from trouble-free.
"People tend to do things they wouldn't do in life, like storm the stage or chatter incessantly," said Melissinos.
They are also less secure than many enterprises would like.
Thus, companies will have to strike a balance between the spontaneity they wish to inspire in virtual worlds and the caution they have to exercise because of the inherent insecurity of places like SL.
They might want their employees collaborating -- even, sometimes, with competitors -- but they wouldn't want to reveal too much information.
Not to mention that scammers or even corporate spies could crash a corporate event and steal trade secrets.
The site has also been vulnerable to viral attacks like copybots, which copy assets and then allow its authors to resell that property as their own.
Melissinos said that SL is not an appropriate venue for anything remotely confidential.
"It's not stable enough yet that I would feel comfortable enough to hold sensitive meetings there," he said.
Safe to say, most companies will remain on the sidelines and allow IBM, Sun and others to experiment in their place.
Chances are, there won't be any startling breakthroughs in the next few months or years that they will credit to their participation in SL.
But that doesn't mean they won't benefit hugely in the long run.
"People are going to over-anticipate in the short term but underestimate the long-term effects," said Ito.

My entry from the 2007 "Love Hate" group show.

2008-06-19T16:23:00.000-07:00

I just found this image on the web

when I was searched Vinyl Doll show-

I had forgotten I had done these!

This show was put on by the guys at Cardboard Spaceship.

They invited me to submit an entry

and I have to say I was pleased with the reslts.

Kinetic Horse Sculpture

2008-03-26T23:36:00.001-07:00

This is great design, Just the best.

My First Line of Art Vinyl is about to ship from CHINA

2008-03-25T22:20:00.000-07:00

Yes! It's true!
After a long long time of working on this project, it's finally happening. The dolls are made, the boxes are printed and assembled and everything will be heading to a Los Angeles bound ship within the next 30 days!
The doll pictured here- "Jacked Rabbit" will be a limited edition run. He's got great paint, a box designed to look like one of my paintings and best of all, he will be followed by 2 other styles of art vinyl very shortly.
I will post more about this project as the dolls get closer to the USA.

MERZ, an art movement of one

2008-03-24T23:30:00.000-07:00

kurt Schwitters was a painter who wanted to start a movement. Everyone else was doing it, the Surrealists, the Dadaists.
He painted his pictures on flat boards and found objects he cobbled together. I once heard a recording of him at an art museum in New York city, reading a story of his every woman character Anna Blume.
Nobody else joined him in his effort. Merz was just him, but what a wonderful body of work he and his Merz movement produced.

When Function Dictates Form

2008-03-24T19:54:00.000-07:00

Alright, I realize this clock may not be everyone's cup of tea. Sure, it's big, It's got an exposed mechanism that could easily collect dust, the number display- regular and roman numerals..
The thing is, all these things I mentioned? All these things that would keep some people from liking this machine are the very things that capture my attention.
I look at this object and I marvel at the design work and the craftsmanship that went into its manufacture. No computers used to put this thing together!

Actual toys, and how they started in Second Life

2008-02-27T23:02:00.000-08:00

The SURFER toy I Invented gets some PRESS!

2008-02-27T01:11:00.000-08:00

Thanks Trans World Surfer Magazine!

The Original "Sketch" of this mechanism made in SECOND LIFE

Another picture

2008-02-27T01:08:00.000-08:00

Void within a Void

Foofnick art for capsule Machines

2008-02-24T21:46:00.000-08:00

In addition to creating these characters I also designed the art that went in the Machines that sold them.

FOOFNICKS, something else I created years back

2008-02-23T18:56:00.000-08:00

Lonk, Hoz, Pimmy, Roop, Orf, Teepo, Yilp and the rest, they popped out of my head one day and on to pages of my sketch book. I licensed them to a company that makes toys for gumball machines.
Ive seen photos of the toys online- I think people like them!

A Picture

2008-02-23T11:52:00.000-08:00

The bridge between machine and world

Me at Stanford with the Second Life people

2008-02-23T00:15:00.000-08:00

Here I am last year sitting at the SECOND LIFE table explaining to anyone who asked how I used SECOND LIFE tools to design real Noggin Bop toys!
It was a great experience with some really interesting people.

Sketchbook Page

2008-02-23T00:06:00.000-08:00

Since I am an artist first and a product desiner second...Here is a page from my sketchbook. I dont ask why, I just draw whats in my head.

Noggin Bop model made JULY 2006 via Second Life

2008-02-22T00:08:00.000-08:00

And here is the second Life Noggin Bop model I built in July of 2006! Wow! And its just getting to market now!

Noggin Bops, my invention

2008-02-21T23:34:00.000-08:00

So there I was, experimenting with the set of rudimentary 3D building tools provided in a free account in the online world of SECOND LIFE when I had a eureka moment. I manipulated blocks, curves and cylinders to form the layout of a wind up toy mechanism. It was easy for me, as I have been working as a toy designer for ten years and my brain just works that way.
It turns outthat the second life tools were perfect for sketching ideas in 3D. The camera tool allowed me to get images out of the Game environment and into my computer where I could add measurements and make notes.
Two prototypes later and I had a working toy that I showed to the folks at Cal Creations who loved it!
A month or so later I was driving home in the rain and thinking of the swinging head motion, the noggin motion, the noggin dancer, the noggin bopper- Noggin Bops!
When I told the Second Life people my story they flew me up to Stanford University to be a part of their New Products Expo presentation! That was a fun day !

Now, almost a year later the toys are hitting the market. Cal Creations are telling me that they are getting lots of interest in the toys.. and I am excited! Imagine, An invention that WORKS and that people LIKE!

2007-07-09T22:35:00.000-07:00

Art Fans wait to enter the "If You Could" art show where I had a picture on display!

GIANT GORILLA INVADES BLOGOSPHERE !!!!!

2006-12-30T21:49:00.000-08:00

I was on the verge of sleep the other night when the thought occured to me that it was time to start a BLOG.

The reasons are many and the need is great- after years of living i finally have something to say. After decades of drawing I finally have images I'm glad I made .

I plan to use this venue to give everyone else a glimpse of the inner workings of my mind for better or worse... let's see how it works out.