In late March, the Toy Photographers MeWe community decided to get together in groups to work on a collaborative project. Our team, consisting of Ellen McGinnis Brantly, Todd Rosenberg, and Matthew Wyjad, tackled the theme of how to face “the Unknown.”
“The Unknown” is an incredibly wide theme, so we started tossing around ideas. They ranged from the darkness of space, to a set of dark and blurry abstract images. Finally, a concept with a little more grounding came up from the news: refugees venturing into the unknown.
In the past, I have done some work featuring Tusken Raiders as immigrants in North America. So I suggested that we try making an origin story for them. The premise being a series about leaving the familiar and striking out to face the unknown together.
One of the challenges that we faced was choosing which toys to use. Ellen did not own any Tusken Raiders, so we had to source some LEGO minifigure versions for her. This left us with another challenge though. Each of us own Tusken Raiders at different scales, from different toy lines.
Since we didn’t have precisely matching toys, we also decided to illustrate the changes in their perspective by having the characters “grow” from LEGO minifigures, to 1:18 scale figures, to 1:12 action figures at the end.
Each person contributed two images. Ellen took the first two, Todd the second two, and myself the final two.
Enjoy.
Into the Unknown
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Great series and I love seeing the collaboration of your group in adapting the toys and theme to what each of you had in your collections!
Inspired by the collaboration aspect and also by the pictures. Really fun (and meaningful) project!
Glad it has some punch for you!