ARCHIVE 002
Black Label Variant: The Slim Reaper
Some pieces start with a grand idea.
This wasn't one of them.
I've always been fascinated by people who don't look like they're supposed to dominate the thing they dominate. The Slim Reaper is one of those stories. A player built completely different from what the world expected.
Too skinny. Too tall. Too this. Too that. The list never seemed to end.
That resonated with me, and I'm sure several others, because my/our journey has taken a very similar path.
So when it came time to create this piece, the nickname did most of the work. The Slim Reaper already sounds less like an athlete and more like a character from mythology.
I wanted to lean into that...
Something that felt like the nickname had stepped into the real world.
This was the first BLV statue I created... before I knew what the hell all of this meant. And, like every Black Label Variant after it, this piece started as an exploration into digital sculpting... before making its way through the printing process... discovering mistakes... printing again, then sanding, priming, painting, repainting, second-guessing, and eventually becoming what you see here.
That's the part people don't always see.
The finished piece gets the attention.
The process earns the scars.
Every Black Label Variant carries a little bit of both.
What I've come to appreciate most about creating these pieces is that they let me celebrate the things that inspired me growing up.
Sports. Comics. Movies. Music.
The characters were larger than life then, and somehow they've become even larger in memory.
Black Label Variants live somewhere in that space.
Part tribute. Part reinterpretation. Part reminder of why these figures captured our imagination in the first place.
This one is for everyone who was told they didn't fit the mold.
The ones who succeeded anyway.
Black Label Variant 001
"The Slim Reaper"
One of One.
"The world recognizes greatness after it happens."