Thanks again for another sucessful drop AND Behind-the-scenes of the Rokk'pots & Lil'grinds!

After encountering a little turbulance, we managed to pull-up in time & the drop went off without any severe problems. Victor, Beth & I want to thank all of you for your purchases & sticking by us while we make these rocky dudes available to all of you. We have alot of fun on this project, but also alot of head-banging moments when things just seem to always go wrong. You all are what makes the stressful parts worth it, and for that I sincerely thank you.

Rokk'pot & Lil'grind Study Sketches!

I'd wanted to show these to you all before the drop, but that turbulance I mentioned resulted in that blog entry being pushed into this one. I'd come up with the idea of Rokk'pots back on October 20th, where basically they just started as a smaller, more affordable Ston'emm figure that wouldn't require anything more then x1 Gobon Ball to build.

This 1st design had Light-piping worked into the head to give it a sort of Glyan Battle Helmet. This was designed to have the ston'emm parts meld better with the Gobon Ball torso. This idea design was shelved due to the high number of paint apps needed to complete the look I wanted, so I fore-went giving the head a unique helmeted piece. I also go rid of most of the other crystaline details to make a more, stream-lined design.

This one more closely resembles the finished design, although it doesn't look 100% like what I ended up sculpting. (as shown below)

After talking to Matt Doughty about the Ston'emm in general one day, he commented on how he wanted to see them with inter-changable weapon hands. Since the Ston'emm do have rock-moprhing abilities this made sense. So while sculpting the Rokk'pot's arms, I opted to give him a spiked mace for a left hand and make him a little different then his larger counterparts. The design works well and you get the hint that although these guys are small, they pack a wallop!

As for the Lil'grinds, they're all based off these small creatures native to Slauria called "Rock Klectas". There are regular Klecta creatures, these merely being an ancient Ston'emm variety of them. Here are two drawings I did of them as a kid:

The name "Lil'grind" comes from a pet Rock Klecta named Clamp Jaw who was the side-kick to a heroic Ston'emm warrior named "Rokk" (I know very original). Since he was Rokk's little buddy, he always called him "Lil' Grind". His habit for gnawing & grinding on things also contributed to his nick name.

I based the above sketch I did for the Lil'grinds directly off of Clamp Jaw, and once I can figure out how to give them an articulated mouth expect to see a Rokk/Lil' Grind homage set in the future. It's one of those dreams of mine to see alot of my original Creature World characters as new Glyos toys, but I can at least work on the Ston'emm ones for now. Last NYCC we made 1 Dy-Mond, the Indestructible Ston'emm, a direct homage to the Creature World character of the same name, maybe that's something I should revist again...hmm...

More stuff to come as we approach New York Comic Con. Matt & the rest of the Onell Design gang are extending their hospitality again to us so we'll be at the table all 4 days selling off new Ston'emm products. We have a few things in the works for the con including some samples of new products that'll be coming out from us in the next few months.

If you like the Ston'emms and rock-people in general, man you ain't seen nothin' yet!