August 2012 Update!

Its August already, so where is Nori Toy?

Well, needless to say, It took longer than expected to build the studio. We are excited to report that it is finally done and we are ready to print.

I have lots of plans for Nori Toy, but since it is a one person show some of my other projects will be coming much later. There are plans for animation, toys and possibly apps. For the time being my focus will be textile printing. As I get each department of Nori Toy situated, I will begin to slowly add on the new items we will carry.

In other news I have been preparing for my daughter who should be born in less than 50 days, getting back into customizing toys, writing my novels and exploring new creative outlets. In addition to all that, I am still working with Villain on IOS projects. I post whatever I am working on as well as daily toy photos on Instagram. One friendly service I found for viewing and interacting with instagram was webstagram. You can check out the photos in the link, and don't forget to follow. http://web.stagram.com/n/noritoy/

Now that I am starting production I will be more present on twitter and our other social networks to keep everyone up to date. I will also begin writing articles for my blog on toys, art and the like. Over the next couple of weeks I will be printing a few designs I have been working on. These will likely be sold on outlets like etsy, and ebay until I launch the new site. Over the past couple years I have been coming up with tons of shirt concepts so those will start trickling out soon. Thanks for following and support us over the years and we look forward to sharing out new projects with you all.

Margin Collapse solution for web design

This was a helpful tip I discovered when trying to design a page for a friend. I did not come up with this, but since it was so buried in the search results I thought I would share it with the rest of your. If you have a set of Div containers that you are using to organize a page, once the page is rendered in a browser sometimes you get spaces between the

containers. The problem is you designed them with the intentions of them touching to create a single form. It seems to be a common problem, but it most do not understand why this happens. This issue could be considered a bug in the whole html/css system, that still needs to be addressed. Even the dreamweaver template lists this issue as a note that its state is unexplainable.

zeroing the margin of the last element in the #header div will avoid margin collapse - an unexplainable space between divs.    

In my early searches I discovered using float resolved this issue.
float: left;
The problem is that it created a whole new issue. It caused the container to float over the elements and prevent the links and text from being selected.

After lots of searching I found this great page which resolved both issues.
Instead of using float in my center container, I was able to use padding in its place and it resolved both problems.
padding-top: 1px;
padding-bottom: 1px;

It was a great simple fix. If you want to read more about go to Minz Meyer's site. http://www.researchkitchen.de/

A new year in blogging

2012 will be full of articles and posts on a variety of topics. As some know I also work in a wide range of industries. From design, illustration, toys, to the mobile gaming industry. The blog will start to cover articles and opinion pieces on a variety of topics related to the different industries I have been tied to in addition to all the news with Nori Toy. I will start up with some light stuff like maybe some games to try out or a toys to look into, so stay tuned.
We are getting closer on finishing the studio. I finished up most of the electrical and am working on getting the water installed now. Things are moving at a steady pace, but we are getting everything assembled solidly and look forward to announcing our reopening. As always stay connected at our facebook or follow us on twitter @NoriToy.

Blast off 2012

Hello 2012. I was early signing off for 2011, so it won't hurt that I am little late announcing 2012. I spent the last month in Asia and had a lot of time to plan this coming year for Nori Toy. Below is a short tour of the adventure. 

In Malaysia I got to see the freshest of sea monsters in the market. Nori managed to escape unscathed. 

There is really quite the appreciation for sculpture in a lot of other cultures. It was great to see so many public works. 

I got to see buildings that were once the world's tallests, but still some of the tallest. 

I found where a bat bike was stored. The DC store seems to be quite popular in kuala lumpur. Each one had a bike as well. 

Just some clowns in Gentang. Why so serious?

The movie version of my idol. 

Theme park in a mall. Those are roller coasters ove head. 

After a few weeks in Malaysia I got to spend a couple days in Singapore. They were preparing for New Years Eve, so there was quite the energy flowing around.  

I have a soft spot for 3rd party independent projects and was happy to see this Devastator in person at the China Square. I met Andy from Toysrevil for lunch and he showed me around to a few great shops. A special thanks to him and his hospitality. Its a shame we wereso caught up in toy talk that we forgot to take a picture together. 

Another shop there had some works from famous designers. I am a big Touma fan, so this was especially cool for me. 

I stopped by the Play Imaginative store to pick up a few things. Its getting funny how many things I collect these days, the stores won't even sell. More than a few stores had items I had been looking for my personal collection and they were for display only.

After our short stay in Singapore we headed to Japan. Nori managed to keep a low profile and avoid any sushi chefs. 

On new years we checked out one of the large shrines there. 

We spent some time in the electric city. 

Mazinger Z!  

I also got to check out things like the Kaiyodo museum. I am huge fan of the toy sculptor Yamaguchi. I have been collecting his figures even before the revoltech line. 

I was also luck enough to see the new life size Gundam statue. 

Towards the end of the trip we decided to see Mount Fuji. 

In the airport they had an impressive origami museum. 

During my time there I had some time to practice drawing. I chose to experiment with an app by Adobe called ideas. it uses vectors rather than pixels to create lines. Below are a few sketches I did.

 

It may be obvious, but I love curry. Mostly curry from Northern India, but I was able to discover new curries in Malaysia, and Japan. 

To see more images from the trip as well as future project images and news follow us on Instagram and Twitter. You can also rss feed this blog to get regular updates or like our facebook page. 

Now that I am back we are already very busy. We are working on some new projects with Villain as well a a couple other independent projects. As for Nori Toy we are building the rest of the studio now and hope to have it done by the end of the month. Our new design of the site is established and now we are working on the code end of things and hope to have it done in the near future. I am not going to give away all the news for 2012 just yet, but you will be seeing a lot more of Nori in coming projects that will require a lot more of my time drawing. So happy new year to you all and we look forward to sharing more exciting news with you!