Ralph Niese 1983-2020

2020 will go down in history as an almost impossibly challenging year, and earlier this week it truly punched into the surreal with the news that our brother and long time collaborator, Ralph Niese, unexpectedly passed away last Monday evening. Our whole family has been trying hard to process this incredibly deep loss, joining Ralph's family, his fiance Jana and his countless friends and colleagues from across the world in mourning.

Ralph and I met online 11 years ago and immediately connected, sharing similarly oddball perspectives on art, music, movies, food and of course, humor. Damn, did Ralph possess one of the quirkiest and sharpest senses of humor ever. This was made even more impressive considering that English wasn't even his native language. 

When he made his first extended visit to our house, we all fell in love with his unforgettable laugh and deadpan delivery, dispensed each morning in the kitchen as he brewed his "special" coffee while standing in just a t-shirt and underwear, Michelle and the kids uncontrollably cracking up the whole time. We would then spend the entire day right into the late night talking about everything and anything, listening to tunes, drawing, painting, sculpting, customizing and planning out lofty toy and comic book conquests. His old workstation is still intact upstairs to this day.

Ralph meshed seamlessly with Marcus as well, sharing the same birth year and growing up with many of the same interests. On one occasion during a visit, Ralph asked to use Marc's computer to edit a few elements on one of the comics, and both our jaws hit the floor as we watched Ralph effortlessly do things at lightning speed in Photoshop that weren't even on our radar as being possible. Ralph did that a lot, making impossible things look easy. The tales of his talent could fill a galactic library.

We would also clash on the regular, driving up each other's temperatures as we jousted over the details and deadlines of our various projects throughout the years. Sometimes after a dust-up, we would drop out of communication for a month or two, but one of us would always reach out and right the ship, which is part of what made Ralph feel so much like family. True family, with all the scars, dents and tears that real love carries with it. 

It's only too natural to want to curl up and hide from the pain of losing Ralph, and that's what so many of us who really knew him are struggling with right now. As I spent the last few days going through literally thousands and thousands of our old emails back and forth, I came across one in particular that contained Ralph's usual blunt, yet accurate, assessment of death itself:

Reading this really brought me back into focus, because I knew he'd meant every word.

We will honor Ralph here and throughout all the things we do moving forward, doing exactly as Ralph wished in his message above, celebrating the person we all loved and never forgetting the astonishing work that was done while he lived.

We'll meet again, Ralph.

Wave 87 is GO!

Wave 87 is live!

Refresh: https://onell.store

Thank you Ralphus for another captivating trio of illustrations! You are the reigning grandmaster of all drawn lines, both bio-curved and mecha-straight!

Please place only ONE ORDER WITHIN THE FIRST HOUR TONIGHT. We will lift all limits after the first hour. Thanks for your cooperation. Have Fun!

Also, due to the state of things with Covid-19, we will only be shipping domestically (and to Canada) for this wave. We sincerely apologize to our international customers for the situation.

Glyatronic Transformation

Ancient Automations

Wave 86 is GO!

Wave 86 is live!

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Thank you Ralph for a triple dose of Mama Mayhem! You finally get to draw a Glyos character without a helmet!

Please place only ONE ORDER WITHIN THE FIRST HOUR TONIGHT. We will lift all limits after the first hour. Thanks for your cooperation. Have Fun!

Mother of Destruction

Fates Warning

Thank You!!!

Thank you for a truly excellent end of the year rollout! It's always a little hectic releasing a new wave in December, but the holiday madness seemed to kick things into overdrive, as we saw a record number of folks checking things out over the span of the last week. Once again, we owe the Crafsman a continued debt of gratitude for the influx of all the new faces. This has been the first wave that we were able to really juice up the production numbers to try and match the altered flow. So far the general supply and demand has lined up pretty well, barring just a couple selections.

Bringing back the Venjorun wolf head was a big one for us, and thanks to the continued work of the incredible Jason Frailey, the end result really seemed to hit the bullseye. Jason's natural abilities are so off the charts that I'm perpetually amazed by what he can do, and he's such a tremendously intelligent and kind person to boot! Thank you once again, Jason!

Extra special thanks to our brother Ralph, for delivering brand new supercharged artwork all throughout 2019 (with one more beauty squeezed in above). With each month's release, Marc, Michelle and I are like kids waiting for Christmas in anticipation of Ralph's new illustrations. Ralphus, thank you for making all these waves infinitely cooler and "complete" through your outstanding art!

As of this writing all orders, including all internationals, have hit the post and are on their way to you guys (except a handful that came in late yesterday/today). With the significant increase in orders it's been taking us a couple extra days to process everything, hence the slight lag in our usual speed. Michelle pushed it harder than ever and is absolutely the unsung hero when it comes to getting all this stuff out the door. Triple Peej came down for a massive assist and had the Paper Palace running in full effect! We mostly had The Mandalorian (we're obsessed) running on loop in the background, though some Dire Straits did sneak in near the end of the packing frenzy.

Wrapping up, we'll be diving into 2020 with a new assortment for late January, featuring a couple twists on some crossover action. Should be a fun way to get things rolling!

It was one of our best years yet, thanks 1000% to each and every one of you!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the whole family!

Wave 85 is GO!

Wave 85 is live!

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Ralph really let his inner animal loose while rendering this new showdown! Thank you for the frenetic fury of feathers and fur, Ralpho!

Please place only ONE ORDER WITHIN THE FIRST HOUR TONIGHT. We will lift all limits after the first hour. Thanks for your cooperation. Have Fun!

The Wrath of Halkennite

Finally evolved beyond the confines of Halkenn’s fatally damaged and battered body, the fully formed "Parasitic Halkennite" defiantly breaks free of its host, intent on becoming the one true version of Halkenn, reborn as the very thing that the weary hunter had sworn his life to destroy.

As the broken husk of the once great hunter falls to ruin, the trapped ghosts of his many slain enemies twist and claw from the prison of his lifeless and empty armor, now content in their doom to serve an eternal watch... over Halkenn's Grave.


Special thanks to our brother (figurative and literal) John Beaudette, one half of our in-house band Arcade Rats, for creating the monstrous boss fight theme for Halkenn's final stage!

The Circle of Chaos

Thanks to a hidden series of coordinates revealed within the Sincroborg Archive, the quest to locate the parasitic bio-force cure leads Halkenn to the distant and spectral walls of Castle Dracuden and the legendary Circle of Chaos.

Existing inside the black shadow of an unhinged reality, Castle Dracuden calls out to the darkest of beings, beckoning them to spend eternity within its infernal paradise, passage only granted by the willing damnation of one's own soul.

Outnumbered and facing the combined legion of Count Dracuden and his accursed Demorran Army, the abomination known as Pheydenstein, and the menacing Hallowden Pheyaos, Halkenn unleashes the true parasitic bio-force dwelling beneath his armor in one last ditch effort to destroy the Circle of Chaos and all its nightmarish followers,  forever.


Special thanks to our long time friend and all around amazing musician, Glen Schricker, aka Circuits and Brains, for setting the sinister mood with his new original composition! Click the play button above!

The Sincroborg Archive

High above the floating fortress known as the Sincroborg Archive, a winged Halkenn seeks counsel from the fugitive Wyverillian of Dreadvalken Keep.
 
Against the clock and in search of the secret to controlling the parasitic bio-force now rising within Halkenn, the duo cautiously travel into the impossibly endless depths of the gravity defying structure, silently guided by the Archive's mysterious mechanical golem, the Curator.

Thank You!!!

Thank you for the excellent response to the new release and for warmly welcoming the Armorvors back into the mix! The store operated without any major glitches thanks to Marcus keeping a tight watch on the code and closely monitoring the launch. To continue keeping pace we've been pushing the overtime even harder than usual so everything moves out the door as quickly as possible (hence the lateness of this post), and as of this writing we're all caught up, save the orders from last night and today which will go out shortly.

This new Armorvor head project really started coming into proper focus back in August 2018.

Jason Frailey and I had always wanted to explore more characters in PVC, with heavy inspiration being drawn from all the excellent resin heads that he produced with the great Marty "The Godbeast" Hansen over the years. After personally contributing some designs to those original handcast runs, I often thought about what the right combination of characters should be for a more varied PVC expansion beyond the original "Venjorun" wolf and Neo Granthan dino-ish heads. For the next phase of the Armorvor it felt important to hedge closer to the roots of what inspired the whole project to begin with. So with this in mind I hit the folded Buxton pads to generate a batch of new takes on a few familiar faces.

As before, Jason took my very basic drawings and turned them into incredible mini works of art. The choice to make moving jaw on the Arthrodak? All Jason. Adding to and expanding the mechanical aspects of the Kugarrec head? Again, Jason doing what he does best. The sculpt he did on the Neo Wyverillian (in conjunction with the demon wings provided by our friends at Spy Monkey Creations) perfectly captured not only the obvious (to those in the know) tribute to the rare Skull Grotess, but also paid specific attention to the influence of the classic dragon transformation from Altered Beast as well as the mostly forgotten main dragon character from another old Sega Genesis game called Beast Wrestler (RIP Yasushi Nirasawa). Jason is a beast in his own right, for certain, and I can't thank him enough for all the time and expertise he poured into this project.

Later this month, we'll revisit the new Armorvor heads once again, along with some special Halloween themed action across the rest of the Wave 84 assortment. Expect some unexpected strangeness.

Big shout out to our long time art partner, Ralph Niese, for two more exciting and original illustrations! The rendering of Phanost chewing the DNA from that bubblegum Pheyaos bio-pile is perhaps one of my all time favorites (though this seems to be happening with every new set Ralph creates). The intriguing image shown above is another Ralphus special that blends multiple influences all into one bizarre and fantastic swirl of visual history, providing some extra treats for those that have been collecting from the start. Thank you Ralph!

I bow down once again to Michelle for her inhuman processing and packing skills! Followed by another deep knee bent before the Pj Paper Palace! I'd be dead and nobody would have their stuff without these two work warlords. Spent the majority of the barn boxing listening to MCU movies this time. However, the prior photo editing mania was accompanied by the incomparable SZA.

In wrapping up this ramble, I wanted to hit on a few points in regard to some of our fellow Glyos makers:

-Jesse D and the Toy Pizza Boys have their new AFOTM 2020 campaign running right now. This is the direct follow up to the successful AFOTM 2019 service that has been consistently delivering exciting and unpredictable figures every month since January. If you're new to the world of KOTS/Toy Pizza, it's absolutely worth checking out. You never know exactly what direction things are going to go with Jesse D, and that's a big positive in comparison to most of the telegraphed thinking that perpetuates the current retail apocalypse. You can peruse the campaign details here. Also make sure to check out his Patreon.

-Toyfinity VS Bio-Masters Double Header release this Friday, October 4th, at each of their respective sites. Both John and Pat have striking and compact assortments on deck, featuring a selection that includes some classic characters, a little special FX PVC and a touch of crossover action. Working with both of these guys is always an honor and I think folks will really dig what they each have to offer.

We're buckling down over here in preparation for the end of the month's festivities, and if all goes well, it should be a solid follow up to our last Halloween rollout.

Huge thanks once again from the whole family for sticking with us!  

Fusion Foretold

Thank You!!!

Huge thanks to you guys for a super charged 12th anniversary release! You were even able to scramble Shopify's circuits, which up until last Sunday we'd never seen happen before! Luckily, Shopify was right on top of things, and resolved the issues quickly, allowing us to stay on track without closing down the store (Paypal PTSD!). We really appreciate the level of patience that you each showed as we worked through the surprise technostorm!

Like everything around here, we'd been planning the details of this wave for quite some time, so finally being able to share felt really good, despite the temporary store weirdness. Connecting all the dots to allow for production Renegades was challenging, but the pathway eventually opened up with some gentle bludgeoning. For those that have been into this stuff for years, I hope that finally seeing the Renegades in production was worth the extremely long wait.

An extra tip of the hat goes to Jesse D and the Toy Pizza Empire for supplying the Renegades with some KOTS powered mechanical menace in the form of the Rift Renegade Construct! Make sure to hit their store tomorrow afternoon for a new wave of UV reactive figures!

Once again, we want to send out a gigantic thank you to Ralph Niese for such a perfect set of new illustrations, commemorating the anniversary as only he could do. We've been collaborating and building the Glyos narrative with Ralph since back in 2010! Ralph, Marcus and I not only have a deep creative connection, but more importantly have a brotherly bond. This includes driving each other crazy at times, but I'm sincerely grateful that we've been able to make so much stuff together for so long. Continuing that trend, be on the lookout for the above illustration to appear as a 1980s fueled sticker sheet in the near future!

Looking towards our next release, the timing should land Wave 83 sometime in mid-September. Expect some more surprises to welcome in the Fall!

As of this post, all orders since last Sunday (barring what came in today) have shipped out, including all internationals. We had a full house for packing this time, and as always, Michelle and Pj were in top form. We all worked triple time to try and get the packages out to everybody as quickly as possible. Barn tunes were a blend of Yumi Zouma (first half packing) and simply replaying Avengers: Endgame (second half packing) on loop!

Special shout out to the our brothers Nate Baertsch and Iz for visiting for a few days during the release. They held down the fort while Marcus and I scrambled to get the store cured and made the night a lot less hectic! I'm getting super psyched for your new project, Nate!

Wrapping up, even if we were to close up shop in a tariff ridden toy implosion tomorrow, I would still feel like we lasted longer than we could have ever asked for. We'll keep pushing it as long as we're able, and I promise we'll stay true to what makes Glyos something special, which is of course, each one of you.

Thanks again from the whole crew for 12 years!

Jungle Clash

Jurassic thanks to Ralph Niese for the four savage illustrations!

Sector Rothan

Disintegration Point

Wrath of the Reborn

Reemerging from the events surrounding the appearance of the Atarikoth Comet and the devastating Diversus Gate Incident that followed, Gatekeeper Viyer once again turned his focus on the study and genetic manipulation of the most unique and powerful entities found throughout the Glyos System and beyond.

Accompanied by his loyal bodyguard and friend, Traveler Evenollus, Viyer crossed through the Zorennor Rift aboard his rebuilt Edgeliner Marezioc in search of the original Villser homeworld, Odravunn, and the untold lifeforms rumored to exist there.

However, before reaching their destination, the Edgeliner was attacked by an unknown, cycloptic creature that possessed bizarre and incredible dimensional abilities. After a long and exhaustive battle due to the its extraordinary regenerative properties, the chaotic beast was finally repelled by the brave actions of Evenollus, who suffered near fatal damage in the process of phasing through the monster's body.

Desperate to save the life of his companion, Viyer infused Evenollus with a combination of hyper powered Mordireus energy and a captured sample of the very beast that almost destroyed him ... 

Wave 79 is GO!

Wave 79 is live!
Refresh: https://onell.store

Thanks once again to Ralphus for the two incredible illustrations!

Important Note: We have adjusted shipping rates because of the recent USPS price increase. However, First Class shipping is now an option for orders $35 and under.

Note: Please place only ONE ORDER WITHIN THE FIRST HOUR TONIGHT. We will lift all limits after the first hour. Thanks for your cooperation. Have Fun!