Arachnauts is the brainchild of an inventive, smart and funny Sacramento, California man named Alex Paman. The premise was that space adventurers transporting mega-criminals crash-landed on a planet whose entire mythology was based on spiders. He and I intended to develop a video game, toys and other collateral; kids, don't try this at home. The toy industry is incredibly daunting and unless you have an "in" with a talented toy broker, you will never even come close to approaching a decision maker at a toy company.

These are two "vehicle" concepts I sculpted from a wire armature and "Model Magic," plastic that resembles bread dough and dries in about a day. Very intuitive to work with and a little fragile over time, but still good for fast prototyping.

The white spider features a detatchable command ship which I illustrated with Amorphium, 3-D software from Electric Image.

Alex came up with the basic look of the cat-villain and two heroes, and I did the goofy chicken-villain and the illustrations (a little crudely-- I had barely learned PhotoShop). I also did a boatload of spider vehicle sketches based on various themes-- a skull, midieval armor, a Japanese pagoda, you name it. This one is one of my favorites (something all spiders should have, a butt-mounted turret that fires bolts of electricity.)

(All images and the name "Arachnauts" copyright 1996-2003, Alex Paman and Eric Warp).