Tag: disney

Introducing Zubees: A New Era in Pop Culture Art

Comicones, my stylized pop culture art project, is something that has been near and dear to me for almost a decade. It’s a silly project that has been a wonderful stress reliever. The core concept is the base design for all characters is the same. A metaphor that at our most basic, all humans are built from the same foundations. It’s the details that make us unique. Indeed it is the details in the characters that makes them (hopefully) instantly recognizable.

Since 2016 I have created over 1,000 designs from all aspects of pop culture. My Teepublic store is an official licensee of Adventure Time, Cobra Kai, Jay and Silent Bob, Rick and Morty, Shaun of the Dead, Star Trek and Squid Game.

This year, I’ve decided to breath some life into the project. First off, I’ve decided to rename it to Zubees. I wanted something a little more playful. I feel it rolls off the tongue a little easier and us a more memorable.

I’ve also played with the core template. I’ve changed the position of the arms and added more life to the facial expressions. The neck has been shortened slightly and I think it makes a big difference to the cute factor.

Also, so I can keep a better inventory of characters I’ve created, I’m turning each character into a trading card.

With this new phase, I am not simply recreating the characters I drew under Comicones, I’m creating new ones to go along side them. For every three characters, I’m porting over, I am creating at least one new one. So far I have created characters from Sinners, K-Pop Demon Hunters, Creature Commandoes, and Super Mario Bros among others.

If you want to follow along on social media, you can find Zubees at:

https://www.instagram.com/official.zubees/

https://www.facebook.com/official.zubees

https://x.com/zubees_official

I will be posting unique designs over the various platforms to keep fans engaged.

Is there a character you’d like to see? Let me know in the comments.

Star Wars Pin Collecting: FigPin

So my latest pin obsession is FigPins. These are roughly 3″ tall original illustrated pins in a plastic collectors case. While the series features pins from multiple franchises, my focus is of course Star Wars and as of August 11th they have released 44 Star Wars pins. This includes all exclusives and variants.

The quality of these pins is outstanding and the presentation is top notch, however the series is plagued by exclusives, variants and limited editions which naturally sell out fast and far too many end up on the reseller market instead of the hands of the collectors. If you want your collection to be complete, be prepared to shell out up to 5x retail price to scalpers. This is not going to be a cheap collection to complete.

But all gripes about exclusives aside, the quality of these pins really is second to none. This is a company that takes a considerable amount of pride in its product and it shows. Each pin has a unique serial number and can be registered in the FigPin official app. I think this is what irritates me so much about the scalping is that FigPin has put so much love and care into their product that it kinda sucks that they are in the hands of scalpers rather than collectors. More pins are scheduled to be arriving in the coming months.

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