About a Few years back I was trying to think of a fun Birthday gift for Tom (newgrounds). Something that could catch him off guard and be totally unexpected. Then after watching a few interviews online of places like Bungie studios or Eidos, with all their famous characters in the form of bigger than life statues in their hallways,thats when it hit me. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a Statue of a newgrounds character at the office entrance. Nothing fancy just a nice sized statue greeting all our visitors and letting them know, right off the bat, this is a cool place to hang out. Its a perfect gift for Tom, and its basically something everyone can admire and enjoy.
Ok now I had the idea now its time to see who can do this. I looked at a couple of places that took rendered 3D images and printed them into foam, but the prices were off the wall. Not to mention the character would come uncolored,which would’ve left me with the shaky task of painting this thing. Then I decided to contact Lou Castaldi. He was the scuptor responsible for the tank trophies, Tankmen figures, and the Pico kids figurines .
I emailed him my idea and he loved it. He’s definitely a fan of the site and of Tom, cause he gave me a crazy low price ,and even painted it! Now it was time to get down to business.
First, who should the figure be? Orginally I was thinking it should be Pico, after all he is NG’s mascot. Then I thought about how he’s not really in the public eye as much. Who upates us every day with new content, who filters out the crap and gives us a top 10? That would be Pbot. Hes perfect. P-bot embodies the site and what it stands for more than Pico does, and he a robot!:) Win Win!
Ok First things first., how big will this statue be? I since P-bot is inspired from Vincent (the robot from the black hole) I figured his size should be around the same.. Vincent was about 4 feet tall, I figured that should work. First thing I sent off to lou was this mock up of Pbot in relation to size:
Lou then sent back a quick schematic on how the figure would stand.
Not only would he stand, but he would have pose-able head, arms, legs and waist! That was insane. Most foam figures like these are simply one single solid statue with removable parts , but definitely not adjustable ones. I was excited to see what he came up with and so I sent him a 3D rotation of Pbot to work from. A few times Tom caught me updating the Pbot model and asked what was it for, I said it was for the (yet still unreleased) P-bot cartoon. phewww!
While this rotation was helpful to Lou, he perferred to work from sketches and organic images. Thats something I was worried about since my perspective cant get pretty wonky, and I was afraid my sketches wouldnt read as well as a 3D image, but I made him one none the less and hoped that any inconsistencies would be cleared up by the 3D rotation.
He said it was fine, all there was to do now, was wait for up dates.
Our first meet up was pretty exciting, He told me he’d meet me at the trainstation, It felt like some big drug deal. Here we are meeting up in a public trainstation parking lot, opening up a trunk and looking over our shoulders each time we saw movement. He quickly assembled what he had started and I was already loving it. P-bot was coming to life before my very eyes!. After that there was an exchange of envelopes , it all probably looked very seedy to people passing by haha, but who cares, P-Bot was on his way. At this point I felt the Goggles on his head were a bit too big, and Lou said it was an easy fix.
At this point I had started sending the image around to the office, seeing if any of the other guys would like to chip in. (even though the price was really low compared to other places, it was still a huge blow to me if I had taken on the tab on my own.) Thankfully everyone was really loving it so far, so that part was covered. All that was left to do on my end was to sit back and download image updates!.
I loved these works in progress pictures,something about seeing pbot in a workshop just made it feel like I was looking at an actual robot.
Then the moment of truth arrived. The Statue was done, and ahead of schedule. I had to figure out where to hide this thing before Pico day.
Bob was able to get everyone to have lunch at the mall which bought me enough time, get lou, and his car into the garage downstairs , assemble Pbot , then hide him. I looked around for for a good hiding place for a while, then realized hey, theres over 300 boxes of tankmen against the wall, hmmmm….
So what I did was I carved out a hole within the piles and piles of Tankman figurine boxes. I figured he would be safe there since it wasn’t like we would sell a hundred figures within the next week . So into the pile he went, then I stacked the remaining boxes of figures infront of Pbot and hoped that the boxes wouldn’t collapse on him, but it all worked out.
The funny part came when it was actually time to reveal Pbot to Tom.. I went downstairs and brought him up as carefully as I could and set him down infront of the main door. I then went and told Tom that somebody was asking for him in the hallway,and that this person said he was an old friend. Thankfully back then we didnt have the video surveillance cameras so he had no choice but to go see who it was for himself. Thankfully I was able to capture his expressions on a small camera I was hiding at my side.
Hahah It was so worth it.
