Zombiemonkie

“His madness keeps him sane.”

The first and only emperor of America, Joshua Abraham Norton was in reality San Francisco’s first and undoubtedly most beloved crazy homeless person. After losing his fortune investing in rice, Norton went a little crazy and decided that he was now “the emperor of America and the protector of Mexico.” Living on the streets of San Francisco Norton gained a strong following from the local community who accepted his ridiculous new persona and treated him like the dignitary he had now proclaimed to be. Restaurants had special reserved tables for the emperor, he had his own box seat at the opera, and at one point he even minted his own currency which local shops and restaurants gladly accepted. In his time Norton made many grand and often ludicrous declarations, including calling for “the United States congress to be dissolved by force,” and demanding that the government “build a bridge from Oakland to San Francisco”…. the now famous Bay Bridge. At his funeral nearly thirty thousand San Franciscan’s showed up to pay tribute to their once great emperor.

“I’m afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.”

The father of pop art and the creator of the famed New York factory art scene, Andy Warhol is primarily known as a visual artist; Although in his time Warhol stretched his influence far beyond traditional art into film, television, music and even publishing. Creating an empire on reproducible large silk screened images, Warhol built a world around him that was ripe with the excess of the late 60’s and early 70’s party scene, while himself being more of a social recluse who preferred to “watch the party from a distance.” An obsessive collector Warhol rarely threw anything away, when he died at the age of 58 his New York townhouse was packed full of everything from priceless antiques and art to a mummified human foot! Purposefully walking the line between commercial and fine art, Warhol created not only a unique new art style but an artistic legacy that lives on long past his untimely death.

“People of accomplishment rarely sit back and let things happen to them, they went out and happened to things.”

Da Vinci was an Italian artist and scientist (among other things) whose creations and discoveries were SO far beyond his contemporaries that his work was often considered ludicrous if not flat out heretical. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure in history epitomized that of Renaissance ideals. Known primarily as an artist, Da Vinci went far beyond that delving into math, science, and technological innovation. Da Vinci is credited with conceptualizing human flight, war machines like the tank and the submarine, and scientific breakthroughs like plate tectonics and solar power. Seeing how most of his inventions were so ahead of their time Da Vinci kept most of his work a secret until the day he died, writing down his thousands of innovative ideas in several leather bound notebooks… all of which he wrote in backwards cursive!

“I think it is nice to be a little magical. Today we need this. Nowadays we can think that this magic has been killed and I am try to make it survive as long as possible.”

The story of Klaus Nomi is as strange as his on stage persona. Born in Immenstadt Germany, Klaus was a classically trained opera singer who somehow made his way into New York’s underground club scene in the mid 80’s. Known by his unmistakable countertenor operatic style, Klaus mixed his classical background with modern rock and experimental music and combined that with an otherworldly live performance. Creating his own history and mythos around his persona, Klaus became a character of his own making, an extraterrestrial from a world full of beings known only as Nomi’s.

“Too much sanity may be madness! But maddest of all - to see life as it is and not as it should be.”

The only fictional character in this collection, Don Quixote epitomizes the genius behind madness and its reverse. Alonso Quijano was a retired Spanish gentleman nearing his fifties, who in his leisure time read so many novels about chivalrous knights that he decides to revive chivalry under a new moniker “Don Quixote de la Mancha.” Finding an old set of armor Quixote goes off in search of adventure and excitement, fighting off bandits, saving maidens, and at one point battling the windmills of Spain which he mistakes for giant monsters. Quixote was someone so unwilling to accept the banality of reality that he built a world of creative fancy around himself making the world a better and brighter place for not only himself but the people he encounters along his path.

“If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness and can remain sane to the hideous end!”

American science fiction author and creator of of the terms “Weird Fiction,” the Cthulhu Mythos, and the Necronomicon, H.P. Lovecraft was a creative genius truly a head of his time. Obsessed with stories of otherworldly beings and ancient horrors, Lovecraft created a literary world full of swirling tentacles and monstrous beasts hidden just beneath the veil of reality. Creating a religion with a full pantheon of gods and beings from other worlds, Lovecraft filled in the gaps of our planet’s history and re-wrote it to be something far more interesting yet somehow quite plausible.

Mechanized Mad Men Day 1: Nikola Tesla

“Six ancient deities stacked on top of one another, Names lost to time, stories obscured through history. All that is known about these long forgotten gods is that They reigned over the earth long before man. Worshiped by this planet’s original inhabitants and Held holy above all else.”

Long time no post! But only because I have been working on several big projects about to be unveiled. For now, Andy is ready for his close up!

one of four designs im working on for this year’s OMFG mini figure contest.

“Lord of the Flies”

Mr. Sparkle is now in my webstore

Mr. Sparkle is starting to look a little less creepy.

4 creepy possessed Mr Sparkle heads!

a very bad picture of a new toy design im working on for OMFG s4 submissions…. still rough but you get the idea!

Playing with a few Android reconfigurations for an upcoming blind box series!