Brock Otterbacher, Creative Director, Toys & Collectibles
'Tis the season of decked halls and bells-a-sleighing, not to mention dropping a few extra coins in that red bucket to make sure you stay off the naughty list. This year it won't make a difference - you're going to want to be on that list! Because that's when he visits you - that's right, Krampus, the Christmas Devil, ready to take bad kids like you away for meals of coal, punishment at the end of a switch, and probably tossed into Hell itself! Joy to the world!
Artist Florian Bertmer is the second artist in our Designer Series tiki mug line. As a fan of his art, I was always drawn to a piece he did years ago for a company called Moon Editions, in which they produced a Krampus "paper doll" Florian designed:
So when Florian and I got to chatting about doing a mug together, Krampus was an easy pick. We were both excited to do a new version of him. Here's a look at his process to get the final design - first was a super rough look at it, so we could discuss proportions and the like:
Here he's refining the proportions. Note the trident/fork in Krampus' left hand; we ending up switching it out for his more traditional switches in the next round:
This is a more refined version. Love the little kid in the basket on his back!
Now we're even closer to the final now. We decided to change the forked tongue and go with one long nasty taster instead:
And the final inked design. Florian wanted to add his logo to the back, which I think fits in great with all the other line work on the piece. There's a lot of fun details on this from the expression on the two children's faces (they know what they did to deserve this), to all the bells and holly, and of course the fur details:
Next was finding someone who could knock out the level of detail of this piece in a sculpture that would still be able to be made as a ceramic mug. Matthew Black was up to the task and he absolutely nailed it. Here are images of his sculpt, which really bring Florian's design to life. I know I mentioned the kid earlier, but I really love both of them peeking out of the basket. Remember - they're getting what they deserve.
After getting an amazing 3D print from Jason Wires Productions, we passed it on to our friends at Tiki Farm so they could do their magic.
While we're looking to deliver the mugs in 2019 and offer three more of them, we did want to make sure we have something festive (and punishing for you bad kids), we wanted to have the red wiped version as a timed edition pre-order.
We're going to have a lot more mugs for you in 2019, including ones from licenses you've seen us preview, as well as some big surprises! We're also looking to continue the Designer Series with some of our favorite artists, including Becky Cloonan, Urban Aztec, Ghoulish Gary Pullin, Doug P'Gosh, Sara Deck, Matt Ryan Tobin and a lot more! Here's a preview of things to come!
