Big Metal Robot

Introduction

Hello, welcome to my site. You’ll find the site is a bit disjointed. I’m not sure who will be viewing the site and for what purpose, so there is a little of all my interests spread across multiple tabs.

I know most visiting the site are here for the toys and customized cars , robots and dinosaurs. But there is a little more to me than colorful monsters and artwork. I have a day job, that mostly pays the bills, some other hobbies and a soft spot for planted aquariums. All of which will make appearances between the custom cars and dioramas. So, for those that haven’t met me yet, we should start with an introduction:

My name is Christian Bradley. I’ve recently left my position as the Curriculum and Online Director at Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology (OSUIT). Before moving into the CTLE position I was the Assistant Dean and Dean of the Creative Technologies programs at OSUIT. I’m also the person in charge (I’m the only employee) of Cubicle Arts, Big Metal Robot, Dystopocon Publishing & LEDiecast, all brands from era of my timeline. Before coming to Oklahoma, I was the Institutional Director at The Art Institutes: College of Arts and Design (AiCCAD). Before that long-titled job, I was an Academic Director with The Art Institute of California, San Diego (AiSD). Before that, I was a Full Time Instructor at AiSD and various other colleges. Most of my career has focused on overseeing multimedia, and digital art training and degrees, or Dealing with Curriclum development and Online program oversight. I’ve been an Institutional Director, Dean or Departmental Chair of various AS, A.A.S. BT, BA or B.S. degree programs, including Media Arts (AIOC, AISD), Photography (AIOC), Game Art (AIOC, AISD, Game Institute), Game Programming (AIOC, AISD), Graphic Design (OSUIT), Digital Effects (AIOC), Film (AiOC), Software Development (AIOC, OSUIT), 3D&Animation (OSUIT), Creative Writing (AiOC) and Interface Design (AIOC). I was also an online instructor and curriculum developer with The Game Institute (GI), where I created four online, in-depth training modules in 3D modeling, procedural textures, and basic design. I have experience writing curricula with 20+ curriculum adaptations and classes developed for GI, AiSD, AiOC and a few for OSUIT. The various positions I served in allowed me the privilege to oversee student academic progress, faculty training and accreditation requirements for three different colleges.

I was something different before finding management as a profession. I was a 3D artist and Modeler for what seemed to be a very long time (I think it was five years). For most of those years, I was a texture artist. The job looked very different than what is called a texture or environmental artist today. Back then, one was asked to digitally paint textures for video games and virtual environments. No fancy procedural texture-generating tools for me! Nope, it was all pixel-based, hand painted in Photoshop. Youngsters don’t know how good they have it these days with their fancy procedural software!

Anyway, back to my story, I worked on over forty game titles, most not memorable, but a few were well-received. Some of my favorite projects I worked on were the Unreal series of games by Epic Entertainment and the Scooby Doo a New Doo, and I created most of the artwork for the Gameboy version of the latter. I owned my own game asset creation company, Cubicle Arts, for several years. If you’ve ever bothered to read the credits of video games, you may have noticed Cubicle Arts listed in those credits, usually under model, script or texture map creation. Recently I’ve been more involved in designing virtual reality-based training modules than video games, but it is all the same process; one has a puzzle to solve and one trains you to solve the mystery. 

I’m still very much an artist at heart. I spend almost all my free time twiddling away at some creative endeavor. I’m happiest when I’m just given a ball of string, glue and some toothpicks and asked to make something new and extraordinary. My traditional art training and digital environment art skills have merged to be a need to create cool spaces, most small affordable ones that can fit on a shelf. I’m happiest when making (or sometimes breaking) awesome dioramas, models, 3D printed creatures and various gizmos and doodads of different, often unnecessary purposes. I’ve won multiple awards for my vintage toy restorations, dioramas and models and, at one time, was relatively well known as a YouTube personality for a diecast customization and collector channel.

You’ll find this site is my own personal museum and theater to tell my stories, observations and share my hobbies and art. I make a lot of things, mostly small things that fit on a shelf. I love toys and all things related to pop culture. I find most of my time is spent making something that doesn’t exist, but that I think should. I basically make what I think should be sold in a toy store made just for me.

All these things and there is still more to know about me. You can find a little bit of each of my interests here on the site.

Nice to meet you and please get in touch with me if anything here interests you and you want to share the things you make that you think everyone should have. Thanks for visiting.

Cheers, Christian

BigMetalRobot