Wow! Where do I start. Eh, lets start after High School. Went to Lincoln Tech, pretty much a waste of time. To that point, I was already working in a Service Station and under the wing of the owner at the age of 13. A five year head start put me way ahead of the class. Going back to when I was a senior in high school, I brought my 1970 Mach III into my Auto Mechanics Class and taught everyone what a 2 stroke was and how it worked for a week.
So, I ended up a Mechanic and Service Tech for 25 years in my town. I also wrenched Jap bikes at a local Harley-Davidson Dealer at night when I was in my 20's for 50% of the labor. Mostly because none of the other mechanics would touch them.
Crazy Dealership, they carried Harley's, Moto Guzzi's, Ducati's and Triumph's. They'd work on anything that was old World. It was also a gateway for what you might call slightly illegal motorcycles that were not allowed in this country. They didn't quite meet our safety standards. Ha! Such as Factory Super Bike race bikes that Malcolm Forbes would occasionally smuggle in through Canada and we'd prep. Also, crazy customs like Bimoto's and others you'd never see except in magazines. Fun place, but I digress.
At the age of 43, I walked away from it all. Gave my whole house size tool box to a kid just starting out and never looked back. For the past 17 years I've worked for a company that goes by the name of, McFarlane Toys. I'm the Operations Manager and Quality Control Manager there. We make actions figures and resin statues and none are made better. Current figure lines consist of the Comic and TV hit series, The Walking Dead. The video games, Assassin's Creed and Halo. We also do Sports figures for the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA. Lots more, too. You can see current and past production at this web site
http://www.spawn.com.
Yes, it's a fun job. But, like any other job, it's still a job. I do get to travel and have met many famous and some infamous celebrities in the past 17 years. I travel to China 2, maybe 3 times a year. That's always fun. The job keeps me extremely busy, but at least it is interesting. Right now my focus has been on the usual array of sports figures and a new series of Walking Dead figures. But, beyond that, I've been busy with a new and really cool cold cast resin project for the Halo game and one for the Assassin's Creed 4 game, soon to be released. The kicker, though, is a WWE statue we've been hard at work on. No, at this point I can't tell you who it is. Or, the other two that are also slated for production.
What we do is either sculpt from clay, or render on the computer, designs to be modeled, molded, cast, painted and sent to China to be produced into PVC posable figures, or cast into resin statues. We use lazar scanners for some of our projects and output them on 3D printers. It's a very interesting process. As a matter of fact, I'd be happy to give anyone interested a tour of our Design Group. If you're close by, or ever just passing through the Northern New Jersey area. Just contact me a couple weeks in advance and we'll set it up. I'll even throw you a couple FREE samples of our work when you leave.
Yep, I'm 60 years old and still playin' with toys. Not bad.....not bad.
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1980 to a Jet engine overhaul shop. Then out to the flight line. Still working on airplanes, ClL44's Electras, CV580 CV880 CV990 DC6 DC7 DC8 DC9 DC10, MD11 MD10 MD80's B707 B720 B727 B737 B747 B757 B767 B777 A300 and A310's....
