The Soopa Show

Saturday, April 19th at Concrete Jungle was ESC-Toy’s Soopa Show, an exhibition of over 30 artists’ take on the Soopa Coin-Up Bros. DIY vinyl toy, which premiered the day before at the New York Comic Convention. I was asked to customize a cast resin prototype for the show, which was pretty much my dream job since the Soopa is modeled after the type of classic arcade machine that housed the classic video games that influence my art. After a particularly amusing incident while sketching one night at my favorite dive bar, I was inspired to create a character called “Cock Blocker”.

More photos of the show, the NYCC, and other Soopas after the jump.

We started out the day by sneaking into the Con to stop by our friend Steff Bomb‘s toy signing at the ESC-Toy booth.

We also got to check out all the colors for the Soopa. That gold color way is hot. I also like the mini-Soopas, which ESC-Toys founder Erick Scarecrow told me would be out in ’09.

I figured while I was there I might as well check out some of the other designer toys premiering at the Con. My personal favorite was this vinyl line by DGPH. How can you not love moles?

The Uglydolls booth was ridiculous.

And of course no Comicon visit would be complete without a shot or two of some people in costume.

Once I realized I’d spent over half the cash I’d brought to NY I decided it was time to leave the convention, and seek out some sort of food that didn’t involve cheese wiz, a deep fryer, or a combination of the two. We found a nice little Thai place on Bleecker. Also, I am loving Photoshop CS3’s “photomerge” feature. I find myself taking at least 3-5 shots when I am in tight spaces and letting Photoshop stitch them together for me.

After dinner, we picked up Steff and her special guy near Madison Square and headed out to Queens for the Soopa show.

Unfortunately, though the backlit display cases looked cool, they made for a photographic headache. Most of my shots, the flash didn’t go off due to the amount of light given off by the display, so they ended up super dark. So I didn’t get a great shot of every piece, but I did get some decent shots of a few of them. Also, being a newbie to this whole blogging thing, I forgot to get the names of some of the artists, so if you know who belongs to what, or titles of work, please post a comment!

Steff Bomb – “Keep Your Day Job”
The back has a bottle of Elmer’s glue on it.

Jared Deal – “Soopa Koopa”
This was one of my favorites. 

Doktor A – “Game Over”

Bucky Lastard – “One Armed Bandit”

Anna Chambers – “Beware the Sea Soopa”

Brandy Anderson – “Centipox”

Michael Burk

And of course the Cock Blocker himself.

There are some much better photos at this blog. I think perhaps I should take a remedial photography course before my next attempt at blogging. Also, here are a few other blogs about the show: Saki Wrote What, Grim Santo, and some video footage at A.L.B.O.T.A.S. as well as a complete rundown of the pieces (complete with titles and artists!).

Appropriately, we ended the night at a dive bar in Williamsburg that had about 30 different classic video game arcade machines. After a few rounds of drinks and Tetris, we called it a night and headed back to Philly.