Wednesday 16 December 2015

Christopher Tan x nanoblock - It finally happened!

So many of you have been asking me for ages on when you will be able to actually buy my creations. Well, great news! It finally happened! Hahaahaaa =D ... Here, I present to you, my nanoblock mini-series Japanese Food collection =) ... Yes, they are official nanoblock sets from Kawada, Japan. 






They are essentially miniaturised versions of the deluxe sized Japanese Food series I created last time, still remember those? =) ... It took a lot of effort to bring them down to mini-series level, while still trying to maintain as much detail as possible. I hope you guys like them ^^

This series will only be available in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. I am still trying to get confirmation on how many in total will be manufactured and whether it's a single run item (what I heard so far is that only 3000 of each will be made). Will update here when I have more info.

The release date is expected to be late January 2016. I am starting a preorder now. Stock is limited, first come first served! Just CLICK HERE to preorder. You don't have to pay anything yet during preorder. Shipping will only cost around USD2.50-USD3.00 to ship all 4 items ANYWHERE WORLDWIDE by Registered Airmail (Trackable). Also, I would be happy to autograph them for you (if you wish) =)

By buying this from me, you are directly helping to support my work =) ... Truth is, I would need to sell over 1200 of these myself just to cover all my time and cost spent on this project to date. It would mean a lot to me if you could help me spread this by sharing and inviting all your friends to this Facebook event

The Story

This project to turn my creations into actual nanoblock sets have been a very long process that spanned almost 18 months. It took a lot of meetings in Singapore, Malaysia and Japan to accomplish this. I actually flew over to Tokyo twice at my own expense! Yes, that is how much I wanted to see this dream happen! Hahahaa ... 

We started with my deluxe sized Japanese food creations, but those items used a ton of bricks. They would fall into the medium or advanced series, so it would cost way lot more. After much discussion, it was decided that we should try and shrink it down to mini series level so that everyone can afford to buy all the items in the series for a complete collection. I would have loved to see my deluxe sized sets commercialised, but unfortunately, realities of the marketplace dictates the path we take.

I actually did several rounds of scaling down before we got to a size that was small enough for a mini series. There were definitely a lot of challenges in doing this. On one hand, I would love to capture as much detail as possible. On the other hand, I needed to reduce the number of bricks used. They are both opposing goals, so I had to strike a delicate balance between the two. 

If you look at the above photos, you can see that one of the first thing I did was to get rid of the chopsticks. A pair of chopsticks would use up a lot of bricks, but they are not crucial to the design, so they were the first to go. Other side items like soya sauce, miso soup, etc were removed as well. I also obviously scaled the whole thing down in size, but I think I managed to maintain most of the detail, even if they are not as refined as the larger version. For most of these items, they were scaled down by over 80 percent!

When you buy these items, you are not just buying another nanoblock set. You are buying a designer product and you know the artist behind the product. When you build my creations, it is like a window into my mind, you see what I see.  Hopefully, it gives you a deeper appreciation for the design =)

Big Thanks

I have to thank Lancashire and Elite Toys, the distributors for nanoblock in Singapore and Malaysia respectively, for all their support in this project and making it a reality. Special thanks to Mr Ng who pushed so hard for this, really appreciate it! Also, I have to thank Kawada for agreeing to collaborate with us on this. 

Lastly, I want to thank all of you, the fans, for all your support through the years! This would not be possible if not for you guys. A very big THANK YOU! =)

About Chris

If you are new here and want to know more about me, please take a look at the links below:

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