On World Book Day (April 23) World of Pop! Volume 7 became available for purchase, capturing an entire year's worth of Pop! characters and representing dozens of fandoms and story lines. In addition to containing a basic marketing image of each Pop!, Funko's exceedingly talented art department collaborated to create stunning, artistic photos inspired by their favorite fandoms and characters.

Every year since 2012, Funko has released an art book and catalog documenting the year's worth of new Pop! figures resulting in World of Pop! Volumes 1-6. With a World of Pop! Volume 7 just around the corner, bringing with it a brief opportunity to buy the previous books as well, it seems like the perfect opportunity to celebrate and share some beautiful Pop! art.

Unfortunately, a single book can only contain so many Pop! images and World of Pop! Volume 7 simply didn't have space for all the photographs captured by the art team, however amazing they might be. Since many of the photos that didn't make the cut deserve to be seen, we'll be sharing them over the next few weeks. In addition to artistic photographs, each Didn't Make the Cut feature will include some background information from the artist that created the image--their relationship to the fandom and characters, any special techniques they used while capturing the photograph and interesting occurrences while shooting.

Happy looking and reading!

Artist: Matthew Ferbrache, Packaging Designer

"I love Pixar and I really liked the first Cars, but what interested me the most about photographing the Cars 3 Pop!s for the book was the challenge of it. The figures aren't the traditional Pop! shape but they aren't particularly automobile shaped either. Taking these static collectibles and giving them a real sense of energy and motion seemed like a fun problem to solve.

My initial concept was a shot of Lightning McQueen and Cruz Ramirez racing on the beach with the ocean in the distance. I was taking a short trip to Ocean Shores and figured that'd be a great opportunity to get some beach photography done. I got up early one morning and was thrilled to see that it was a gorgeous sunny day! I grabbed the Pop!s and all my gear and headed to the beach. At the exact moment that I set up my camera to get some shots, a huge gust of wind came rushing down the beach! The wind brought with it cloud cover to block my sunlight and worse, a blast of sand that concealed the Pop!s from view and mucked up my camera. Disaster!

Needless to say, I binned the idea of photographing the Pop!s on a beach. Time for a plan B! I decided to go with an old standby of my Pop! photography--my son's sandbox. On a sunny afternoon, I set up the Pop!s in a pile of sand in my backyard and took some photographs. I tried taking a few shots whilst throwing sand from just out of frame, but the dirt flying around the Pop!s added more of a ‘war zone' look to the photos, rather than an ‘exciting race' look so I decided to nix that idea. The coarse sand from the sandbox reminded me of the dirt tracks of early stock car racing and that felt like a good direction to go aesthetically. Ultimately, some color correcting, a composited background, and a liberal amount of strategically placed motion blur created the look I was aiming for.

Despite it almost ruining my camera, I really enjoyed creating this piece! It was a fun bit of problem solving and I think the finished product looks dynamic and has a vintage feel to it that I think really matches the look and feel of the movie. Obviously, I'm a bit disappointed that it didn't make it into the book, but the act of making the art can be as rewarding as the finished piece, and that was certainly the case here."