They’ve been made into toothbrushes, printed on to t-shirts and underwear, and reproduced in nearly every size and medium imaginable. So when Upper Deck set out to create a new line of collectible figures of Marvel’s iconic characters, the goal was to bring a new look to a license that has existed for nearly five decades. For that difficult task—after all, who isn’t familiar with the classic comic styling of Spider-Man, Captain America and Iron Man—Upper Deck turned to the design studio TWEEQiM based Portland, Oregon. Having moved on from their design jobs with toy giant Mattel over a year ago to broaden their creative horizons, husband and wife design team miQ and Thuy Wilmott created TWEEQiM and quickly landed clients with such as Nike, Pepsi, Kid Robot, and Mirrorball, bringing their unique creative talents and underground aesthetic to secret projects which are only now beginning to surface.
“Seeing what was going on within the designer toy movement and being fans of it ourselves, we wanted to take our existing Marvel figure license and push the boundaries of each character’s design, bringing a new look and attitude to each figure,” said Dave Sanders, Upper Deck’s action figure product manager. “We knew TWEEQiM would bring a fresh new look outside of the realm of traditional comic artists. In the end TWEEQiM has come up with a look that will appeal to both comic fans looking for a new take on their favorite characters as well as collectors of designer figures.”
TWEEQiM (the combination of Thuy’s first name forward and miQ’s backwards) submitted an early test on Spider-Man that instantly brought with it a unique edge and in the case of Spidey a noticeable hint of vulnerability and emotion. With its enlarged head pouting over slouching and drastically curved shoulders, the design was far from the web-slinging Spidey toy and figure designs that have been produced so many times before. “What we wanted to do was design some of the characters with their strengths heightened, and others with more of their human attributes coming through. With all of the exposure Spidey has gotten over the years, we just could not bring ourselves to design him in a traditional posed sort of way. Most resin sculpts of these same characters are in their traditional poses of action, and most designer toys are the opposite, standing motionless, just being about the design aspects of the toy with a clear definition of the attitude created. On these figures we wanted to provide attitude without the action, posturing without the posing,” said miQ Willmott.
While the designer toy movement, a trend of action figures produced more as works of art for collectors than as toys for kids, featured an array of various plastics usually referred to as vinyl, Upper Deck and TWEEQiM surprisingly turned to polyresin to bring the designs to life in 3D form. The hard stone-like material that most traditional comic statues are made of, the very statues the project was intended steer away from, creates a unique contrast between non-traditional styling formed out of the most classic of materials. “We wanted to work in polyresin to try and do things that are not vinyl friendly. I looked at polyresin as an advantage, so that we could create very top heavy characters, and put them up on some skinny legs. We also wanted to give them postures that would not have to be so balanced, so they could do things like lean farther forward, and not face toppling over when a breeze blew by. Polyresin just gave us a more robust playground to run with, and the potential for pushing things a bit further,” said Willmott who began his art career as a teenager touring with Motley Crue as their t-shirt artist.
Nearly a year after the first concepts were put on paper, the line which will be released under the brand name SubCasts is set to debut at San Diego Comic Con with a special release of Spider-Man. The week-long show for anything and everything pop-culture is a perfect fit for such a line. While the show still has its roots in traditional comics, it has become a hotbed for the latest trends in toys and collectibles, most noticeably the large designer toy section where various companies and artists release extremely limited figure editions and debut their upcoming releases for the year ahead. “Being as we’re taking a traditional comic property and bringing it into the world of designer toys, we couldn’t ask for a more fitting place to unveil the line. The only question was whether to release it in our booth or over in the designer toy section,” said Sanders.
In the end the choice was made to release it in Upper Deck’s large booth at the center of the hall, on display with the company’s full breadth of products from gaming cards to sports action figures. Only 100 Spider-Man figures are being made available for the show as a special sneak peek to its main release in August. The figures will be sold beginning Wednesday evening for $75 while supplies last. Each figure is individually hand numbered on the bottom, with an overall run size on the figure at 2,000 pieces. TWEEQiM’s concept art wraps the figures box, highlighted with silver foil treatments on Spidey’s eyes and the SubCasts logo, making the box itself a collectible work of art.
Following Spider-Man in August, TWEEQiM’s take on Iron Man will be released in October and Ghost Rider in December. Additional characters, including Captain America, Wolverine and Hulk will be released throughout 2008. The task of sculpting the studio’s vision for each character was left to a team of sculptors including Upper Deck’s Bryan Moore, and free lance artists Bill Mancuso, and Larry Malott.
Each figure will be available at www.UpperDeckStore.com and various comic and hobby based shops. More information on the line can be found at www.SubCasts.com, a complete site dedicated to providing collectors with a behind the scenes look at the figures, and www.MySpace.com/SubCasts, the official community space for the figures.