Indie Toy Maker Epoch's Top 5 Favorite Designer Toys

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: yeah my name is Jaime Valderrama everybody in the art world knows me as Zipok I'm an illustrator toy designer and printmaker from Los Angeles and today I'm going to be showing you guys my top six favorite designer toys so this is the den of my house that we converted into like space for me to show off my collectibles and I primarily collect like vintage toys you know I got visionaries turtles I got you know Beast Wars Captain Power but I think about maybe 15% of my collection is made up of vinyl toys and designer toys I started attending designer con like years ago when it was in the Pasadena location and I just by attending those shows I was exposed to all these cool like designer toys like Maggatarius Barbarian Rage you know those artists were making really cool stuff at the time and then I just started collecting their toys all right so number six on the list is Arrakis by Maggatarius Mike he's an incredible artist and this piece as soon as I saw it I had to pick it up I love translucent fluorescent vinyl and you know it has the wings in the back it's like a cool kaiju so we see his ribcage has like a claw hand and just everything about this figure is amazing and yeah it's Mike and Tracy Tracy's the one that does like the header card artwork she's an incredible artist so it's like a team vinyl producing all right so number five on the list is Papa Squatch by Wonder Goblin and James is an absolute beast I love his stuff I love his aesthetic I picked this up blast I think it was last weekend or the weekend before that at a collect the con and I love his color palette it's beautiful his stuff is kind of like fantasy cryptids you know I love like Sasquatch Loch Ness Monster Mothman all that stuff so his stuff is just right up my alley I love it especially this piece is like his eyes like when you kind of tilt him backwards his eyes closed and yeah it's just a such a beautiful piece all right so coming in at number four we got cosmonaut face hugger edition by creatures of decay so dingy Dave made this piece when you first look at it it just looks like a regular cosmonaut but when you hit it with some black light there's a face hugger in there which is fucking incredible this just blows my mind and if you know everybody that knows me they I love alien alien is like my top favorite science fiction movie so me this piece he's always making these and so Dave is one of those guys I just like he keeps pushing the boundaries of what you could do with resin art and I highly admire his work and he's a great guy so coming in at number three it's two bones by boda from China I picked this up last year from Omo gallery and I had been looking for this for a long time and it's it's an absolute beautiful piece this guy constantly is making incredible vinyl figures his designs are just blows my fucking mind and this is no exception I love the the marbled resin the eyes everything about it just it checks checks off all the boxes for me and it's just such a beautiful piece okay so this one's called an interdimensional being by this Chilean artist called ser de papel Natalie her name's Natalie she makes these out of paper mache and wire and to me this is like the definition of designer toy this is all handmade and it has this cool like shimmery holographic material that she put on top of it and those that know me I fucking love aliens I'm a big alien enthusiast and yeah she's a such an incredible artist make sure to check her out so coming in at number one these are called mic mic dolls and these were made by my two kids and to me this is such a beautiful piece of artwork they got this box cut it out put some plastic in there to make it look like a you know like a toy and then they sculpted everything in there with that air dry clay and they just made it look like a cool toy so to me this is like you know the creativity that went behind this and just everything about it is just such a beautiful thing all right so that is my top six thank you guys for watching if you guys want to learn more about my work or see more of my work you could look me up on Instagram under epoch underscore art or and then I got two shows coming up I got designer con coming up in June and then I have a designer con in Vegas taking place this November shows over come back tomorrow