Totem Hamster by Ryan Crippen aka Reactor 88

Toy Architects is proud to represent a new Hamster custom made by Ryan Crippen aka Reactor88.

Ryan Crippen was born in Southern California. After painting and drawing continued throughout his youth, Ryan eventually went to get a BA in Illustration and Design. Once out of school, he immediately landed a web development job at a local software company, where he still holds a full time position.

Late in 2005, Ryan decided to get back to his "roots"- so he dusted off his pencils, paintbrushes and markers and returned to traditional illustration and painting. Right around that time he was inadvertently immersed into the urban vinyl toy scene as well- it started with collecting small limited edition platform toys, which soon led to him custom painting the toys himself. He's participated in custom toy gallery shows and his custom designs are sought after by the vinyl toy community. Since then Reactor88 has been developing a unique style in customizing the scene of platforms and designer toys using totems as archetype.

The word totem origins from the Ojibway word dodaem which means "brother/sister kin". It is the archetypal symbol, animal or plant of hereditary clan affiliations. Totem Poles as been used mainly cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America by carving from large trees. Like an original totem or totem pole Reactor88´s customs have several faces like good and evil mostly positioned one upon the other. Even painting the back of a figure Ryan picks up the way totem poles can be turned around. The significance of Totem Poles is the fact that though round shaped only “front” and “back” are being used to carve faces or complete bodies. 

Here´s some further work like the Totem - Moola character originally made by Eric Nocella Diaz http://argonautsresin.blogspot.de

 or Steve Talkowsi´s Sketchbot http://sketchbot.blogspot.de/ .

The Totem-Hamster is available in Ryan´s shop now!

http://store.reactor88.com/

Please have a look more of Ryan´s sites to get an idea of this great artist.

http://www.reactor88.com/

http://blog.reactor88.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/reactor88/

You can follow Reactor 88 on Twitter via http://twitter.com/reactor88/
Buy a Hamster? http://urbanhamster.bigcartel.com/
 

We´re very glad to finally represent an original Hamster – Totem made by Ryan Crippen aka Reactor 88. Just from the middle of the last year I was curious to see the first pictures.Thank you very much, Ryan!