Fdanielix, Disney Infinity Toy Box Artist

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Fdanielix, Disney Infinity Toy Box Artist

Postby PirateSteven » Thu Apr 23, 2015 12:09 pm

On behalf of all of the interested Disney Infinity Fans we asked Fdanielix some questions.

What is your real name? Country?

Daniel David Sanchez Lopez, Daniel Sanchez for short (yes, we get both of our parent's last names in South America)
Age: 15
Country: (Born and living in) USA, lived in Colombia.

What is the origin story of your Toy Box submission username?

My father's name is Freddy. I included his initial F because of the strong bond I share with him. At the time I made the account I was so excited to play that I just put whatever came up first...
the ix is just there because it's cool! (Or so I thought when I was 7 years old...)

What made you decide to buy Disney Infinity?

I tried getting into Skylanders, but it didn't work out... I heard of Disney Infinity (1.0) 3 months after it was announced. At first I was skeptical about Disney Infinity, but after watching the trailer for the playsets, and the fact that it was Disney, I was sold.

What is your favorite play set and why?

For 1.0, it would be a tie between The Lone Ranger and Monsters University. Both playsets had unique characteristics. I just loved how fun the Lone Ranger was! Chasing bad guys, chasing the train, the combat, it was all great. Monsters University was the first playset I played. It gave a true feeling of having fun with unique gameplay and various activities that truly showed the potential of the game. After playing the 2.0 playsets, I have to say that I like them equally and that the Disney Infinity team should re-visit Monsters U for an example of the diversity of tasks playsets should have. Although I love the combat, it isn't everything we need in a playset.

Who is your favorite Disney Infinity 2.0 character and why?

My favorite Character is Hiro! His combat is truly unique and his super jump has a cool animation. Plus he can ride Baymax!

Which character would you like to see included that hasn't already been and why?

From Disney, I would love to see Hercules and Pegasus!
For Marvel, I would like to have Silver Surfer, Daredevil, Dr.Strange, and Ant man!
For Star Wars, the whole crew from Star Wars Rebels.

What is your favorite power disc and why?What is your favorite new toy from 2.0?

I love Mabel's Kittens For Fists! It captures the whole idea of Disney Infinity: Play with no rules.
You wanna have kittens for fists, and shoot em' so they can bite an enemy? Sure, it doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense!
Hairy babies for fists! Bad-la-la

What is your favorite new toy from 2.0?

The text creator and target cameras really made the toybox a better place, but what really stands out to me is the Locator. Just think about it! Without the locator, we would still have a bunch of creativi-toys lying around the toybox.

What made you want to build toy boxes for challenges?

I've been around since 1.0, but the toy box wasn't as engaging as it is now. After seeing how much fun the artists had at the Toy Box Summit, I decided to give it a try. Heck, I got featured on my first try!

When you hear of a new challenge, what steps do you take to make your idea for a Toy Box a reality?

Generally, I do not have any complications when coming up with an Idea. Whenever I find out about a challenge, it literally takes less than a minute to come up with what I want to create in the toybox. It all takes place in my mind. The next thing is to build the terrain and the path that the player will go to. After that is done, I start with the logic connections. I like to get done with all the logic I'm going to use in the toybox by the end of this phase. Now I add most of the nice little details and decorations. Now what I do is testing, fixing the problem, testing again, and so on. Finally I finish with the decorations and try to make it as pretty as it can be.

What do you consider to be your specialty when building Toy Boxes?

I wouldn't say I have a specialty, but I always try to innovate whenever I see a chance. My Stitch Vacation is an example of that. However, there is something that I do frequently in my toyboxes. I have 3 fun challenges per box, I try to make at least 3 main activities and a final event in most of my toyboxes. Some of my toyboxes that follow this format are Baymax's Tests, Three Wishes, and H.Y.D.R.A.

What is your favorite Toy Box that someone else has built?

Sure, Disneyland Paris and The Lion King By Timon And Pumbaa are great toyboxes, but another toybox that deserves recognition is Gravity Falls Adventures 1.0 by xshadow246. It is innovative and fun. A roller coaster ride like that must have been very difficult to create. The intro was another part that stands out, it truly gave the feeling of being in the game.

What are some of your classic Toy Boxes that have not been a featured top 5 Toy Box?

The first one that comes to mind is GLOBNAR. It is the toybox I have spent the most time building and editing in. It's inspired by the show Gravity Falls. It contains many fun activities to play in multiplayer and a few for single player. These include paintball, racing, combat, obstacle courses, and more. Another recent toybox I made is Three Wishes. It uses a poem to recreate the three wishes of Aladdin. It contains platforming, Combat, and exploration. Finally, If you like races you should definitely check out my Race of Warriors, a race that is full of obstacles in an Asgardian setting.

What is your dream Toy Box challenge?

I would like to have a team-up challenge. This challenge is an anything goes but you have to work together with another Toy Box Artist! This will most likely not happen, so I came up with...
John Vignocchi challenge! Create a toybox inspired by JV. I would do this:
JV and Allison got sucked into the game! Help them escape or they will be late to film Toy Box TV! A second power disc challenge would also be nice.

Share a story of adversity from when you were building one of your Toy Boxes that you had to overcome.

I had some trouble with my S.H.I.E.L.D. toybox. I had finished creating the first 2 levels: the intro and the investigation. It was the last few hours before the deadline and I rushed to create the last level. After I submitted I found out that the townspeople did not stay put and you spawned in the city without any instructions on the second level, (this was because of the glitch that ignores any default checkpoints if a different one was activated) so I had to come up with a solution and submit it in even lesser time! I was stressed out... There were supposed to be shield agents cheering for you before the free fall and hydra agents in front of the question marks, but these did not make it into the final version. I was surprised that it got featured. I feel like I could have done better...

Share a funny story from when you were building one of your Toy Boxes.

One day I was starting to build a toy box with a friend and somehow we started talking about dogs. The game was loading and I asked: What is your favorite kind of dogs? With perfect timing, the game loaded and Mickey said: Hot Dog!...
Not funny? What did a shoe say to the other? Nothing, because shoes don't talk

Do you have any advice for aspiring Toy Box Artists?

I think this goes without saying, but don't be afraid to deviate from your initial idea. Trust me, it will turn out better. Another advice: Do what you like! Do what YOU think is fun. Do you like combat like me? Create a combat-centered toybox. I know that many people will appreciate your style!

Your Baymax's Tests toy box was selected as a featured toy box in the Big Hero 6 Challenge. Please give us some Inside the Toy Box details on your Baymax's Tests toy box.

I was so hyped for the movie and the characters that I decided that this would be the challenge to get me into Toy Box TV. I actually started this box as a character adventure for Baymax, but as I built it, I kept getting more ideas and it only got bigger and better... After watching the movie, inspiration struck me and I based it on testing Baymax's new abilities. I had already built the racing part about a month before the challenge, which saved me a lot of time. Also, this was the first toy box I made that used toybox doors that actually worked... I avoided them before because I had previously failed on successfully connecting them.

Your The Hero toy box was selected as a featured toy box in the Pick a Power Disc Challenge. Please give us some Inside the Toy Box details on your The Hero toy box.

For this challenge I simply did what I thought was fun. I actually submitted 2 toy boxes for this challenge, one being GLOBNAR (Which did not really qualify in the end) and The Hero. I wanted to make a combination of Disney and Marvel. I decided to mix Hero's Duty and Groot (Planet X is Groot's home planet). I chose to inspire the toy box from Calhoun's Blaster power disc because I wanted an excuse to use it more often! I had a lot of fun with this one and, with over 25,000 downloads, it is my most downloaded toy box so far! During the making of this toy box, I decided I would do a sequel but I'm still not sure about it. Maybe for 3.0?

Your Stitch Vacation toy box was selected as a featured toy box in the Stitch Challenge. Please give us some Inside the Toy Box details on your Stitch Vacation toy box.

I think this is the most unique toy box I've done. When I was playing Gravity Falls Adventures 1.0 by xshadow246, I glitched the car out and I was stuck with the car on a fence. I got curious and this led me to experiment with anti-gravity on vehicles. After a few hours I had successfully made a wall with anti-gravity properties. At this point I was "done" experimenting and ready to start building, but I said: Let's see if I can go all the way, so I continued with upside down anti gravity ceiling. I wanted to submit this toy box for a challenge, so I decided to make a stunt park and theme it to Stitch in space! I also added a nice bowling-like game for Stitch, which you can access after you are done with the stunt park. Finally, I added a few references in the bowling level- can you spot them all?

Your H.Y.D.R.A toy box was selected as a featured toy box in the Marvel Villains Challenge. Please give us some Inside the Toy Box details on your H.Y.D.R.A toy box.

Since everyone created toy boxes for the villains characters, I wanted to use different villains. When I saw that SHIELD was also a challenge, I decided to create a toy box that would tie in with SHIELD- HYDRA. I knew that if I got featured I would make a sequel for this toy box. I created what I would have for the SHIELD challenge, which was the training a new agent idea. I changed it for the villains's side and I would continue the story in the shield toy box. This is the toy box that has taken me the less time to create. This toy box follows my 3 activities format: the shooting range, the combat simulator, the puzzle, and the final event. I tried doing some block art. It wasn't amazing, but it works.

Your S.H.I.E.L.D toy box was selected as a featured toy box in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D Challenge. Please give us some Inside the Toy Box details on your S.H.I.E.L.D toy box.

I continued the story from HYDRA but I switched over to SHIELD's perspective. Since HYDRA introduced a new agent, I made SHIELD bring one back. I created the intro to let players who haven't played HYDRA get what's going on. Also, the intro level has a "Laboratory" where I hid the creativi-toys. I had made the training room just so it would make sense. I was very busy that week and had very little time to finish the toy box, I had some trouble editing and creating the second and third levels, but it was all ok in the end. This toy box is mostly combat with fancy effects to make the combat seem slightly different.

Your Spidey's Park toy box was selected as a featured toy box in the Stunt Course Challenge. Please give us some Inside the Toy Box details on your Spidey's Park toy box.

Spidey's Park was a lot of fun to create. I came up with the Anti-Gravity Stunt Parks on Stitch Vacation for the Stitch challenge, which not many people played. I decided to bring Anti-Grav back in a more fitting theme. Spider-man can Wall-Crawl, and the car can do it as well! First I designed the track and walls. It took me some time to figure out how I wanted the park to be. I created the rectangular center, attached the walls and started from there. I wanted it to be indoors but still have a fair amount of light, so after the ceiling was done I cropped out a rectangular section to let some light in. I didn't want to do the exact same thing from my Stitch Vacation toybox, so I created the big jump in the gap and added the Track on the gap too. Now the orbs... ah, the orbs. Initially, I had put too many orbs, to the point that if I decided to "move" something, it would delete or wouldn't fit. So I deleted each orb one by one, which was a slow process because of a glitch that makes orbs have two separate object boxes. I had to try to delete a single orb multiple times because of that. I planned to make each color of orb have a different value, but the toy box couldn't support any more logic. After I had done the layout and basic logic, I started thinking about the little details to make it more special. After watching a couple episodes of the Ultimate Spider-man show, I remembered that Spider-man is known for telling cheesy jokes. I came up with some jokes Spider-man would tell and I think it worked out pretty well. I used 3 randomizers to make random jokes appears after 2 minutes (5 possible ones), another one after 5 minutes (3 possible ones), and a randomly selected ending sentence with a pun (4 possible ones). After all that work, I submitted! But... that wasn't the end of it. After a few hours I started wondering why it hadn't popped up in community toy boxes. The next morning (a few hours before deadline) I thought it might not have been approved because of the jokes, so I took them off and resubmitted. Later that day, inside sources tell me it wasn't approved because it wouldn't load for them! (Dang orbs!) Thankfully, they were able to fix it and apparently they preferred the version with the jokes (By the way, you're supposed to read them in Spidey's voice). To my surprise, a whole lot of fellow toybox artists praised this toybox. I am extremely happy that you guys liked it! To conclude, a huge shout out to fellow forum member Fritzy for helping me with the Spider-man textures!

You can check out my toyboxes here:

http://www.disneyinfinityfans.com/viewt ... evZgk.dpbs
 
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Re: Fdanielix, Disney Infinity Toy Box Artist

Postby Infinity Guru » Fri Apr 24, 2015 4:33 pm

Awesome interview! Great to see more young artists like myself! For the record, I thought the Hot dog thing pretty funny!
8 Featured Toy Boxes. Toy Box Summit 2015 Attendee.
 
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Re: Fdanielix, Disney Infinity Toy Box Artist

Postby fdanielix » Fri Apr 24, 2015 9:12 pm

Agreed! I specially appreciate Disney Infinity because it prepares me for my future as game designer or game director.
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Re: Fdanielix, Disney Infinity Toy Box Artist

Postby GammaQuadrant » Fri Apr 24, 2015 9:26 pm

hey man congrats on the interview, was a fun read.. looking forward to seeing some more of your boxes
 
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Re: Fdanielix, Disney Infinity Toy Box Artist

Postby fdanielix » Fri Apr 24, 2015 9:37 pm

Thanks!
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Re: Fdanielix, Disney Infinity Toy Box Artist

Postby Sheriff Woody » Fri Apr 24, 2015 10:34 pm

.

really enjoyed the idea of driving on the walls and ceiling ...



... how did you do that?

.
 
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Re: Fdanielix, Disney Infinity Toy Box Artist

Postby Elmo STM » Fri Apr 24, 2015 10:51 pm

Yea very interested in how you did that too - viewtopic.php?t=12074
 
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Re: Fdanielix, Disney Infinity Toy Box Artist

Postby fdanielix » Fri Apr 24, 2015 11:45 pm

I will update my toyboxes page with newer toyboxes and details on How Did I Do That? of common features in my toyboxes- Including Anti-Grav. It's simple, really. You see, vehicles tend to stick to walls but there is nothing to hold them- unless you use weather vanes...

EDIT: My page has been updated with recent toyboxes and Instructions for Anti-Gravity 8-)
http://www.disneyinfinityfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=89&t=11564&p=144386#p144386
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