Tuesday 31 July 2007

YOD will come again!

We have noticed that some people believe that the SE YOD figure has completely sold out. Please note that this is not the case. The official release for YOD will be in September. The ones on sale at Comic-con were a pre-release special.

YOD will be available in six colours from selected Amos dealers. The white Special Edition (the exclusive 7th colourway) will be available only through the Amos online store. DO NOT PAY BIG MONEY BUYING FROM EBAY OPPORTUNISTS. Another couple of months is surely not too long to wait!!!

Thursday 26 July 2007

Special Edition YOD for SDCC 2007.

At last YOD arrives...

36 of the Special Edition white colourway (with exclusive different hand sculpt) went on sale from 5:30 pm today at San Diego Comic-Con. They are not expected to last long. The rest of this colourway will go on sale in September, exclusively through the amostoys.com online store.

Monday 23 July 2007

Il Pirata


Watching Rasmussen and Contador in this year's Tour brings back memories of the mighty Marco Pantani. 

ALLEZ VINO!

Chapeau!

Saturday 21 July 2007

Mario's Peruvian and Seafood

People put the most mundane personal things on their blogs. The other day James was rambling on about his track bike set up. And who wants to know what some bod' ate last night?

Well. Why not? If you are going to commit to doing this blog crap then you have to have something to say...

James and I have a passion for a particular little canteen food spot that he came across a few years back whilst travelling in the US. Mario's Peruvian and Seafood lies hidden away in a little strip mall on Melrose and Rossmore in East Hollywood, CA. Their Saltado De Marisco (shrimp/onions/squid and fries sautéed and seasoned together with rice on the side) is amazing. Carbohydrate hell but worth every calorie.

I was there this afternoon and ate some. How mundane is that!

Thursday 19 July 2007

'I will do my best to explain'

Both Russell and I are very excited about the very-soon-to-be-published Japanese-language edition of Vortigern's Machine. With that in mind, I thought it might be interesting to show an excerpt from the e-mail Russell wrote to Amos Japan explaining (or at least attempting to explain) some of the concepts inherent in Harvey and Jubs' vernacular:

'I will do my best to explain.

'BREDERS – a breder is someone that copies the style of other people. Like a style biter.
BEGWAN BASHI-NA– “go away or I’ll beat you”.
Serious! Bare blaps.Ya gwoan rashness on road,boyo. - “I’m not kidding. Big punches/slaps. Go and take your foolishness and move on up the street”
Yo…member…man-dem wet up Bristol, my luvver. I merked’em bad bruv, in da nuts.Ya get mi? - “Remember when we beat up Bristol (a boy’s name), my friend. I really beat him badly in his balls (testicles). You understand me?”
Man dem blau punkt man. Bad mans is wettin’is kecks ya-know. - “Man, they are like a blue spot (stain or blemmish that you want to wipe away)”. “Check them out, the bad boys are wetting their pants” (this means they are scared)

'Please realise that you should not translate any of the above exactly. Harvey and Jubs talk in heavy slang that is impossible for anyone other than them to understand. When they talk to Rusty and Wiggs the boys have no idea what they are saying. No-one knows what they are saying. We have taken lots of different types of slang words and put them together in a way that sounds real. You need to come up with your own way of saying this stuff. Maybe go closer to Jamaican and American slang. It is hard for us to know what type of slang is used in Japan. But whatever you use you must exaggerate it so that it sounds real but makes no sense.

'Enfant Sauvage – This is a french term for a wild/savage child
luverley badger’s milk – very nice badger’s milk. (a badger is a British weasel type animal with black and white fur that lives in holes in the ground. He is talking about milk taken from a female badger)
Chuckler – This is slang for a drug/pill that will make you chuckle/laugh (These are not real. We just used words that sound like uppers and downers).
Howler – This is slang for a drug/pill that will make you cry or howl like a dog. (as above)
Screamer – This is slang for a drug/pill that will make you scream. (as above)
Laugher - This is slang for a drug/pill that will make you laugh. (as above)
a black mivvi – A strawberry Mivi was the name for a special type of ice cream (popsicle) on a stick. We made up the name Black Mivi as it sounds evil. No one will know what this is.
a medieval mandible – This was the name for a large sword used by medieval knights (looks a bit like a bone).
black turnips – Black Turnips are simply a black version of a turnip. They are supposed to be used for Black Masses when people try and summon the Devil.
I’ve got some monkey glands out black – “I have some monkey organs (part of the inside of a monkey) in the back of my van”

'Mr Spoons always offers the children things that are not right for them. He rarely offers them real ice cream or soda. The things he offers are usually very weird/odd, not suitable for children and slightly dark!

'Who put a bug up his backside – This is common used slang in the US. “Who put an insect up his ass” which means “who made him so upset/aggitated”'

Autobahn



This is the image I drew for an exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Helvetica typeface. I was given the year 1974 to commemorate, which I did by re-imagining the cover artwork for Kraftwerk's Autobahn L.P..

The artwork has be reproduced in a print edition of 50. You can purchase it here.

You find more information about the project here.

Wednesday 18 July 2007

I Exist

While Russell is out damaging his hearing, I am probably Googling myself. Anyway, my professional life has now been validated: I have made it onto Wikipedia.
James Jarvis (illustrator)
Now I can go back to doing something useful.

Monday 16 July 2007

Cosmic Metal Overlords

James doesn't like it when I post band images that have nothing to do with Amos. He didn't like the Comets on Fire post a few weeks back. And I can see his point. But seeing that he does not post enough material on these pages I'm going to post some more band images for my own amusement!

Last weekend was the Supersonic Festival in Birmingham, UK. This meant that many class acts visited the UK to perform at said festival. So athough I could not make the trip to Brum, I did get to see San Francisco's Om play in London on the Friday. They were excellent. Very very heavy. 4 long tracks of bass guitar, pedals and drums. Very loud!

I also got to see Finnish space cadets Pharaoh Overlord on Sunday playing a worthy benefit on behalf of Resonance FM. It was an amazing evening of metallic psyche grooves from the one of the pioneers of The New Wave of Finnish Heavy Metal (NWOFHM). I loved them so much that I'm posting a couple of artful photos taken by Will Bankhead on the night, and kindly forwarded to me earlier today.




Trés cosmic!

And nothing to do with toys but I don't care 'cause I'm bad!

Friday 13 July 2007

YOD is coming...

Amos will release 36 Special Edition YOD vinyl figures for sale exclusively at San Diego Comic-Con between July 25th-29th. These will be available from the Strangeco booth #4729.



We will post photographs of SE YOD on this blog after the preview day of the show.

It will also be possible to purchase the YODzine during this time, although there will only be 30 copies on offer.

The Special Edition YOD figures, and the YODzine will later be available from the English and Japanese Amos online stores. Beginning of August for the zine and end of September for the YOD figures. The production run for SE YOD is limited to 140 pieces.

There will be six other YOD colourways and these will also go on sale from selected Amos outlets at the end of September. We will announce the size of each colour run at a later date.

Remember, you can win a Special Edition Yod by entering the contest mentioned in "Build your Theatre of Dreams!" posted on this blog, June 15th.

Meanwhile we have posted another couple of YOD comic strips on the MYspace page.

http://myspace.com/greatyod

Wednesday 11 July 2007

Could this be the rarest Amos figure ever?

Last year, on our Ebay Guerrilla Store, we auctioned a super rare one off colourway King Ken. The olive coloured General Ken was one of a kind, but there are thousands of other Kens out there. Below is a sample of an unused, proposed colourway for the Platform International Animation Festival Trophy. The entire production run for the chosen trophy colourway was just over 150 figures. I guess that makes this guy pretty damn scarce...

Tuesday 10 July 2007

And more mind expansion...

I know they are posted elsewhere but we may as well have them here too!



Available now in Japan. They will be available in the UK (exclusively through the Amos on-line store) at the beginning of August, and also, later in the year, in Australia through select stores (no date on that one).

Friday 6 July 2007

May the contest continue...

We've been getting asked for the blank template for the YODZINE comic strip template so people can enter the competition to create their own YOD comic strip. Again, because of the scarcity of YODZINE, here's a link to download it as a PDF.

http://amostoys.com/downloads/blank_strip.pdf

Scan it, fill it in with your masterpiece strip, and send it back to yod@amostoys.com. As promised in the zine, we will send one of His Master's drawings to the winner in a couple of months time.

And by the way, there's a new Micro Theatre of Dreams video on the Yod myspace page. The link is below.

http://myspace.com/greatyod

Thursday 5 July 2007

Stolen Stills From PIAF

Thought we should post a few stills from the Platform International Animation Festival. One can see the James Jarvis God of Animation trophy in practical use.








For more images of the award ceremony and the trophy in action take a look at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Platform07/PlatformFestivalSaturday02

These are the people to track down to find this figure!

Wednesday 4 July 2007

YOD strips are coming...

We have been receiving some entries to our YOD comic strip competition, as advertised in the YODZINE. The basic brief was to take the blank template we published and add your own dialogue. Here's a couple of our favourites so far...

From Nigel.



From Wayne.



Keep them coming. We will keep this contest running until the Autumn.

And where are those YOD Theatre of Dream videos? Bring them on!!!

Tuesday 3 July 2007

Portland

I spent last week in Portland, Oregon at the kind invitation of the Platform International Animation Festival. As we have posted previously on the Amos Blog, I designed the trophy that was presented to the PIAF Award Winners.

It was good to see people receiving their trophies (they seemed to like the thing itself), and as a big fan of Aardman Animations it was particularly rewarding to see Peter Lord and David Sproxton accept several awards.



I am very grateful to Irene Kotlarz, the Festival Director for arranging the trip, and thanks to everyone who attended my presentation. Thanks also to Peter Dougherty who remembered me from when I went to see him as Creative Director at MTV as a student many years ago and kept me entertained with Slayer and Rick Rubin anecdotes at the closing party.

"They say the pen is mightier than the sword... but I say fuck the pen and die by the sword!"

* * *

I was also lucky enough to pay a visit to the Nike headquarters in nearby Beaverton. Thanks to Jesse Levya for arranging the visit, Andreas for showing me around and Todd and the Running guys who took me out for a run.

Portland is an amazingly nice city which I would definitely recommend for a visit. I was particularly impressed at the way everyone would thank the bus driver when they let them off at a request stop.