Curto's Custom Alliance Closes!
Wow....what can I say? Everything ends sooner or later. Over the years, I've made a LOT of customs and met a LOT of other artists that share my passion for this hobby. But on this, the Third Anniversary of the site, I've decided to shut it down.
I first opened up this online gallery in 1999 as a means to show off my personal work that I've been creating since I was a child. I have always had a love of STAR WARS, and getting to create the unsung heroes and villains of the SW universe was something I have always enjoyed. I had roughly 350 customs that I'd pieced together from various parts and inspirations. That number has at least doubled over the past few years, especially during my annual Daily Custom Updates, which is a LOT of work, but also a lot of fun. The DCU 1999 ran for a single month, DCU 2000 ran for two months, and DCU 2001 ran for a whopping four months!
Soon afterwards, I began posting my first "guest customizer" on these pages, when Michael Collins, Aaron Kirkpatrick and a few others opened their own gallery. The list of "guests" has grown so large that just last week I added Tony Colucci as the 100th Member!
In June 1999, Scott Corrales and I teamed up and produced a series of interlocking photonovel stories that we called "The Untold Adventures." This was a new tale that began shortly after Empire Strikes Back and continued with our own take of what might have happened, complete with cameos from our own customs and other action figures. Today these types of stories are called "Infinities" by Dark Horse Comics. :)
In August 1999, I was asked to run the Forgotten Force Critique of the Week feature at Rebelscum.com, which has given me the opportunity to meet other artists and share ideas and techniques with them. Who knew there would be so many customizers out there? This eventually led to my joining the FFURG and bringing the idea of a monthly Casting Call of customized action figures. I soon began maintaining the large recipe database as well.
Shortly afterwards, I renamed the site as I was offered my own domain name. "Curto's Custom Alliance" (aka "Curto-Customs.com") also got a whole new look and feel in honor of the change. In July, I formed an alliance of a different kind as the two websites presented the Badoo Bok Custom Contest featuring customs of a new character I created just for the event, the results being posted on FFURG in the casting calls. This character continues to be popular, and new submissions still come in from time to time.
2001 saw the biggest changes as yet another new look (you are looking at it!) debuted early in the year and I geared up for DCU 2001. While originally planned for only two months, it was stretched out to FOUR months, lasting throughout the summer! Part of this was due to the new look I designed for FFURG, but a big part of it was due to a new project I had created over 10 years earlier.....DEADLINE.
DEADLINE was a MASSIVE project as no less than 10 websites formed an alliance and presented different pieces of this fan-fiction custom project. (It helped that I was running half of them though! HAHA) New customs of the main characters of the new series were each previewed on a different site! The photonovel series itself finally debuted in August and had a new chapter was posted for six straight weeks!
Since then I've been focusing my time working on various other sites, but at the price of the one which started it all for me. I've recently joined Rebelscum where I've been reporting on custom-related news, comic books, and other news of interest for fans. I now get to meet an even larger number of creators and fans, many times sharing news and custom tips and overall just having fun again. I'm still making regular updates at FFURG with the Casting Calls and soon will finish re-opening the Card Template Vault, which has been a much-requested area of that site.
Add into this a family and a "real job," and free time has become something I just don't have anymore. So something has to give. And I guess this is going to be it. "Curto's Custom Alliance" will be closing its virtual doors soon. Thanks go out to EVERYONE who has visited this site, and made it popular. I am always happy to read emails from those of you who take the time to write in.
Happy Customizing!!
