In the early 2000's I was asked to create a series of images for a new range of Toys being released in the UK by Mattel Toys UK and featured in a new comicbook series published by Toontastic Comics of Oldham , England .

The new Toy Range would be Masters of the Universe........

The images would use a model animation style approach which I had developed with Hasbro's Action Man Range some years earlier .

This production technique blends product photography into artwork style backgrounds with cinema style realism imagery being added to the finished images for presentation in advertisements and for comicbook stories .

 The new Masters of the Universe Comic from Toontasic Comics ran for about twelve months and featured a lot of my photography on Covers , Posters , and editorial page illustrations .

During my time on the magazine the Editor in Chief on the magazine was James Hill , we discussed briefly at the time about the creation of a "photo-story version" with the actual toy products being used to create a stand alone summer special edition .

Unfortunately this project did not happen , the magazine sales although good did not justify taking things forward with a photostory version of the comic .

However I did some preparations and test imagery at the time alongside my normal magazine production work for a possible photostory version to be done .

A number of images , artwork , model sets and a storyboard were prepared by myself as a development test project moving forward as a

"proof of concept" pilot to show people how it might look as a finished production .

This photostory version lost for many years has now been found at my studio archives in Lancashire , England .

Over the following years the items for this development project were placed in three boxes and into storage they went .

One of the boxes has recently been found in my archives , the other two are still missing and probably now lost for ever .

In the box which has been found most of the production is there....so in 2024 I am going to show the production on this studio website of mine as a free to view item for fans of the toy range and comics to see what might have been if it had gone forward all those years ago into production as a comicbook release .

The production will feature the original images , sets artwork that still exists , together with some new imagery to replace lost parts on the production .

I hope to release the missing story before Easter 2024 or early Summer 2024.

On this page a number of preview images can be seen from the missing production .

If you have questions or comments please email me at my studio over the coming months and I will try to answer your questions .

Richard Dixon TPD STUDIOS - Lancashire England .

December 2023....Preview Images from the Production are available here to view