The ‘Drone Blank’ is a platform art toy designed and made by American artist Gabriel Rivas aka Nerviswrek. Platform toys are unpainted toys, usually of a simple design, which are made for the purpose of being customised – kinda like a blank canvas in toy form. What separates Nervis’ ‘Drone Blanks’ from other well known mass manufactured platform toys such as the ‘Dunny’ from Kid Robot is that the ‘Done Blanks’ are all hand made by Nervis himself. This places the Drone Blank in a wholly unique position as the only hand-made platform toy! A true testament to Nervis DIY ethic, sense of community, and craftsmanship!

To celebrate the release of the ‘Drone Blank’ Nervis has put together an amazing and diverse group show featuring 46 artists from all over the world. The artists involved all got a chance to custom a ‘Drone Blank’, and present it to the world – with the show happening at this years Designer Con from November 16th to the 18th. It is not to be missed!

In honor of Nervis’ achievement, and the upcoming show, we thought it would be nice to ask five of the artists who are involved in the show to present their works and also answer some questions about their art, their approach to customising the ‘Drone Blanks’, their thoughts on art toys generally, and some general gossip about Nervis!

So without further ado, read our interview with, and check the ‘Drone Blank’ customs from artists Jason Forbes, Under Our Knives, Dr Barbados, Tasha Zimich, and Nasty Neil of ‘Wasted Talent’, below…

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We at Art Whore have loved the designer toys of American artist Gabriel Rivas aka ‘Nerviswrek’ for over half a decade  now – and even had the pleasure of interviewing the man himself for an Art Talk back in 2014. Well, recently Gabriel revealed to the world a new Platform Toy he designed, the ‘Drone Blank’ figure.

What’s a Platform Toy I hear you ask dear readers? Well simply put it’s an unpainted toy, with a basic design that is sold for the purpose of being customed by it’s new owner. Kind of like a blank canvas in toy form. Classic examples are the Dunny and Munny figures from ‘Kid Robot’, the Qee from ‘Toy 2 R’ and now the Drone Blank from ‘Nerviswrek’ – which cost $US 25 shipped within America.

Describing the Drone Blank, ‘Nerviswrek’ states how he,

“Just thought that this would be a different type of platform, one that doesn’t give you a limited platform. Most other platforms are kind of outlined for you, like coloring books. But this one I think leaves it open to a lot of different designs.

Plus I’ve been using this base for a long time in  a lot of my original work, like over 5 years.“

On top of the huge news of a new, made in America resin Platform Toy – and one that is being sold for a very reasonable US $25 – is the fact that Nerviswrek has also decided to play host and curator for an upcoming group show to be held at DesignerCon / Dcon in November this year! For the show, a slew of well known and highly respected artists will get the chance to publicly display their own customed Drone Blanks, which will also be for sale throughout the show – Exactly the kind of scene building event Nerviswrek is known for.

(Photo below of the flyer for the upcoming Drone Blank multi artist custom show – Coming to DCON in November)

Well we thought it would be a good idea to find out more about Gabriel’s ‘Drone Blank’, and the associated multi-artist custom show, so as usual we asked him a few questions… Read all about it, below…

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