DesignerCon 2014 DeConstruction

Krista Peku

The halls of the Pasadena Convention Center were never filled with so many toys, art and fans for any previous DesignerCon. For two solid days over the November weekend fans of designer toys and art were treated to booth after booth of strange monsters, collectibles and items that people will ask about when they see them on your desk.

Check out the DCon 2014 gallery

One of the booths was from Krista Peku from GeekyU. She had customized backpacks, many spouting video game themes. The best had to be the Legend of Zelda backpacks with shield and sword sticking out. "It came from a custom request," she told me. "Most designs come from custom requests," she said. Her online store has only been open for a year and a half, but they have a space in the Burbank Town Center Mall. I passed by some of their shirts, wondering if I would come back to buy them for friends for the holidays.

Dave Crosland

"I think it's fantastic," on DCon said Dave Crosland, long time featured artist on the site. We run into him throughout the year at events all over LA. He had a booth showing off his work. "It's a great opportunity to display my work...sharing what I do with a different audience." He was showing off Doom Box Volume 2, his self-published work for the first time in color. The story within in contains a sex fight with derby girls.

Ms. Linda Le aka Vamp Beauty said, "...pretty much cosplay full time." When I asked here what she did while admiring the Metroid she made. She made a collectible Metroid and metroid necklaces too match it. She cosplayed as Samus before and thought to herself she needed a Metroid to pull of the look.

Designer Con was filled with artists, cosplayers and makers like this. Not all of them with big stores or businesses, many just indie toy stores online. Good ol' Suck Lord remained on a couch spouting is hate and selling his strange wares that mocked pop-culture. His booth was not the strangest with rows of creatures without heads or frighteningly disgusting versions of characters from childhood turned into monsters.

Ms. Linda Le

Christopher Lee, mentioned earlier in the week for his participation of the 30th Anniversary Dragon Ball Tribute Show,was sharing a happier and gentler memory of favorite cartoon, video game and movie characters. A huge collection of single prints of one character from your childhood or DVD binge, done in his art style was up at his booth. He won't have a new pieces for the Dragon Ball show because of this. "That's an awesome contest," he agreed for the Power Up Contest TTDILA will be holding at the event.

He showed off his remaining Mario tribute pieces, they are almost all gone on his site. "I always meant to do a Mario tribute piece. I looked at all the Fan Art and never saw what I liked. My work put in the environment pieces, " he said.

Chris said, "I've been doing DCon since 2005, when it started in a small room with just some tables and chairs.

Oh, Chris, it's expanded so much since then. It's become a huge toy fair with more booths coming every year.

Christopher Lee

Suck Lord in the shades