Squid Game

I hadn’t planned on watching Squid Game when it first appeared on Netflix. I kept hearing great things about it and then my brother, who knows my taste in movies and things very well, sent me a rare text demanding that I give it a go. I’m glad I did because it was one of those shows I had to keep myself from binging so the novel experience of watching it for the first time could last. I spent several days living in the violent and very upsetting Squid Game universe. As soon as I laid my eyes on the Killer Robot Girl I knew I had to paint the set.

The show is about 456 people who are deeply in debt to play a series of children’s games for a chance to earn a huge cash prize. Sounds innocent, right? WRONG! It’s far more sinister and horrific than what the players had originally thought. The show is rife with symbolism with an unwavering motif of how the wealthy control the masses.

As there are far too many characters to fit into a traditional nesting doll set, I decided to make a “shake ’em out” or a “Trojan Horse” set. These sets often allowed me to defy the laws of physics, so I went out of my way to look for accessories to make the entire Squid Game experience.

First up is the Killer Robot Girl, which was an easy one to paint, but I had trouble deciding on how to make her little pigtails. In the end I sculpted it, having an absolute horrible time but they’re done and dusted.

Next, I picked the essential characters: Main guy, Gi-hun (456), his childhood friend Sang-woo (218), Sae-byeok (063), Ali Abdul (199), Il-nam (001), Frontman, Jun-ho, and the guards. And then I decided to add the baddie Deok-su (101), the crazy Mi-Nyeo (212), and the adorable Ji-yeong (240).

Gi-hun, Sae-byeok, Sang-woo, Jun-ho, Frontman, Salesman

Il-nam, the guards, Ali Abdul, Deok-su, Mi-Nyeo, Ji-yeong

As with my side projects, this one took about six months to execute. Every night I looked forward to making a little bit more progress than the last.

As for the accessories, I spent some time tracking down these miniature tins to create the Dalgona Challenge, wherein if the contestants break the paper thin honeycomb treat, they are executed on the spot. The business cards were a lot easier to source, but I had trouble initially finding the right size marbles and bag that will fit into the doll. In the end, everything came together.

While I was emailing my brother, I decided to make two more totems to represent the remaining games: Tug of war and the hopscotch game involving tempered and non-tempered glass steps on a (gulp) bridge. For the uninitiated, you can guess where the loser ends up.

Apparently, if you are to ring the phone number on the card, you will reach a bakery somewhere in South Korea!

When WWE Was WWF

As a child growing up in the 80s with an older brother, I would watch “Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling” on Saturday mornings as a warm up to the real thing almost immediately thereafter (rounded out by G.L.O.W) before changing out of my pajamas and starting my day. Saturday morning was the only time my mother would allow us to watch TV so my brother and I would abuse this decree to the max. It was quite fortunate also that my mother happened to be a Chinese language arts teacher and had decided to retain our linguistic prowess herself, or else we would’ve had to forfeit our Saturday morning toon time in a Chinese language classroom instead like so many of our Asian peers did. I can’t say my mother’s efforts allows me to speak Mandarin as fluently as I’d like, but I am grateful for being able to soak up as much 80s pop culture as I could back in the day because it’s quite useful in my line of work these days, largely because I know what people are talking about when they come to me with proposals.

Like always, I am always thrilled to receive emails from people requesting sets from my childhood, but this latest one took the cake. I was asked to paint the “old school” WWF stars so I was beside myself, thinking: Junkyard Dog! Andre the Giant! Roddy Piper! Mr. Fuji! Wendy Richter! The Iron Sheik! But I must’ve been A LOT older than the requester because aside from Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair, I only vaguely remember the rest of the wrestlers in the lineup since by the time these guy came around, I was already a teenager and was busy smuggling V.C. Andrews books into my room. Still, this was a fun set to paint and I am now moving things around on my schedule just so I can paint the wrestling stars from my childhood.

This set features Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, The Undertaker, The Ultimate Warrior, and the ever so sexy Bret Hart who probably goes through a gallon of Soul Glo a week.

Houston Astros

I’ve never done a sports team set before so I was super thrilled to be tasked to paint the Houston Astros in their retro uniforms. It was a bit daunting, having to paint this double set, on top of other projects, in two short weeks, but I churned it out in time and had a ton of fun doing it—but that was probably because I had my friend’s dog Gypsy staying with us during those time and she was good company, although she was not please by the fact that I couldn’t walk her until I was done with work, usually around 1 AM these days.

These two sets feature the same players: Correa, Verlander, Springer, Reddick, Kuechel, Gonzalez, and Altuve

Fifth of May