limited

COLLECTOR’S REFERENCE MAGAZINE

SS20

kaws kidrobot murakami be@rbrick freeny

CONTENTS

6 21 THE MURAKAMI VINYL 10 METHOD 22 JEOPARDY SEASON’S COLLECTOR’S 14 MOST WANTED 30 GUIDE BECAME 400% 16 TOYS AN ART FORM BE@RBRICK’S 32 LUXURY FROM KAWS TO MURAKAMI

BARBIE BOY JEREMY SCOT T

35 IMAGINATION OF 36 JASON FREENY FIGURE IT 38 OUT! MAKER 41 DECISION ICONIC COLLABS

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR As some of you might know, Limited is all about collectors’ items, luxury art toys, and their incorporation to our daily ‘adult’ lives. Toys have a power of bringing joy and delight and most importantly nostalgia. Certain colors, forms, patterns, and characters and clearly be associated with play and this association has been more popularized as more and more artists and designers incorporate it into their work.

This edition will focus on the gradual incorporation of children’s symbolism into the daily life whether this is Campana Brothers’ stuffed animal chairs, or designer xxx, while referencing the influence of iconic toy symbolism on pop culture. You can expect to see big names like KAWS and Takashi Murakami, next to the iconic DUNNY and BE@RBICK. This edition will also highlight the importance of variety and the constant seek of a new creation when it comes to collectors items.

Join us as we explore the reason behind the hype and obsession of these artists and designers and their love of children’s iconography.

limited

FROM KAWS TO MURAKAMI: WHY COLLECTORS ARE DEADLY SERIOUS ABOUT DESIGNER ART TOYS CHRISTIE LEE

Covetable “toys” from artists such as KAWS (artist Brian Donnelly), Yoshimoto Nara and Takashi Murakami continue to command tens of thousands of dollars at auction. In May, Nara’s The Little Pilgrims (Night Walking), a set of five fiberglass, cotton cloth and acrylic figures, sold for HK$10.95 million. A month later, the kaleidoscopic Panda by Murakami went under the hammer for over £1.2 million.

And in 2018, KAWS’ Clean Slate, a grey parental figure referencing Mickey Mouse and carrying two smaller figures, garnered US$1.65 million.

Of late, the line between art and toys has become increasingly blurred. Creations by the likes of KAWS and Nara may display characteristics attributed to toys, from the material used to their playfulness, but they are also considered works of art. KAWS is known for his graphic, cartoon-like depictions, while Nara’s work often features characters that appear simultaneously sweet and sinister.

Usually one-off pieces or belonging to a limited-edition collection, many figures are displayed in public spaces, much like works by celebrated sculptors such as Antony Gormley or Marc Quinn.

As 2019 continues to ring in million-dollar sales at auction of such art toys, the pieces most coveted by collectors are those that provide a succinct commentary on contemporary culture while bearing the distinct signature of their creators.

Despite the demand and rising prices, some art toys have a lower price point, which makes them appealing to amateur collectors.

A quick search on Artsy, an online platform for collecting and discovering art, reveals that prices of a KAWS figure range from about $450 (small, unlimited edition) to $195,000 for Companion 4ft (Grey), an achromatic figure again modelled on Mickey Mouse. Meanwhile, buyers can snag Nara’s Pup Cup – a sculpture of a pup in a teacup – for a mere $900.

Another reason art toys are doing so well at auction is that collectors form an emotional attachment to them. KAWS and Nara are known for producing the same figure in many variations, so a toy aficionado who already has one figure from a particular series might be tempted to get their hands on the rest.

The rising popularity of art toys can also be attributed to the fact that those attuned to pop culture understand the veiled references immortalized in such pieces, while also being in a position to own them.

POP CULTURE | 7

The bright colors and stylistic lines of Murakami’s art, for instance, belie the artist’s bleak message about post-Fukushima Japan, while Nara has said that his work is filled with “religious and philosophical considerations”.

Commenting on the popularity of art toys among Hong Kong collectors, Marcello Kwan, senior specialist at Christie’s, says: “Those born in the 70s and 80s [tend to be] major toy collectors. They collect works by Nara, Murakami, and so on.

“These collectors grew up during Hong Kong’s economic boom, when the city saw an influx of pop music, animation, comics, movies, fashion and sports. Their taste in visual culture is very different from their parents. They [the younger generation of collectors] can spend more money on [the toys] they have been coveting since childhood.”

A good example of this is Michael Lau’s playful figurines that channel contemporary references. The Hong Kong-based illustrator and artist, also known as the “godfather of designer toys”, recently made a second stop of his “Collect Them All!” exhibition, which is in Shanghai until September 12, following the 2018 inaugural Hong Kong edition organized

by Christie’s.

On display were over 50 toys and acrylic paintings. Figures included Jordan, a six-inch likeness of US basketball star Michael Jordan, and the cheeky Salvator Michael, modelled after Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi. Instead of bestowing a spiritual blessing, Salvator Michael’s index finger seems to be impelling viewers to “collect them all!”

THE MURAKAMI METHOD Arthur Lubow

At the Mori Arts Center, which is perched atop a skyscraper in the glittering Roppongi Hills development in Tokyo, I recently visited a museum show, “Universal Symbol of the Brand,” that displayed (to quote its catalog) “the fascinating development of the history and endeavors of Louis Vuitton, the brand that is not only incredibly popular in Japan but also beloved throughout the world.” A sequence of galleries exhibiting luggage and handbags proceeded to a large advertising photograph of the actress Uma Thurman and smaller shots of runway models, all wearing Vuitton fashions.

What drew me to the show, however, were two bags in the variation of the Vuitton pattern that the Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami developed with the company in 2003. The brightly colored Murakami line has been phenomenally successful, with sales reported to be in the vicinity of $300 million. Murakami’s handbags were presented along with two small paneled screens painted in the same patterns that appear on the bags.

The handbags in the museum exhibition were hardly Murakami’s only contribution to the Roppongi Hills complex of glassand-steel towers. Cute cartoonlike characters that he had created as branding elements for the center -- Barney-like brontosaurs, droopy-eared rabbits and smiling aliens -- grinned down on me from pennants and from express buses to Roppongi Hills. In the same development, at a large Vuitton store, new handbags in a cherry design by Murakami would soon be introduced, along with a couple of the artist’s sculptures of a red, smiling cherry.

Last year at another Vuitton shop in Tokyo, Murakami displayed a large fiberglass sculpture and a four-panel screen painted in his LV monogram design.

So, in Tokyo, an art museum was displaying luggage, a luggage shop was exhibiting art, an artist had developed a branding campaign -- and nobody thought anything out of the ordinary.

If you want to understand why Murakami’s art feels so dizzyingly up to date, this leveling of status grades among art, advertising and merchandise at Roppongi Hills is a good place to start. When I asked Tomio Koyama, Murakami’s dealer in Tokyo, why he hadn’t shown the monogram work in his gallery, he explained, “In Japan, a gallery has no meaning, and a Louis Vuitton shop is a more powerful place to see something.”

The Tokyo art critic Noi Sawaragi, who was a crucial early supporter of Murakami and a peer, told me that I was imposing distinctions that no Japanese would make. “This back and forth doesn’t seem unnatural to us,” he said. “We have had a long history of museums with department stores as a venue. It was thanks to the Seibu Museum, which no longer exists on the 12th floor of the Seibu department store, that I developed my knowledge of contemporary art. I saw Marcel Duchamp, Malevich and Man Ray in depth for the first time in that museum. I think it is the same for everyone of my generation.

Downstairs you find dresses, bags and shoes, but on the 12th floor you find art.”

Indeed, it is one of Murakami’s dearly held tenets that demarcations between fine art and popular merchandise are completely un-Japanese. The Japanese language didn’t even have a word for “fine art” in 1868, when Japan embraced the West in the Meiji Restoration; only afterward did the country import this foreign “art” notion and create a vocabulary for it. The blurring of high and low remains characteristic of Japanese society.

In his own career, Murakami has moved frictionlessly among his multiple roles as artist, curator, theorist, product designer, businessman and celebrity. Ever since a Chicago collector paid $567,500 at auction in 2003 for his fiberglass sculpture of a long-legged waitress, Murakami, now 43, has held the price record for a work by a contemporary Japanese artist.

Meanwhile, his monumental sculptures and silk-screened balloons of original cartoon characters, displayed in 2001 at Grand Central Terminal and in 2003 at Rockefeller Center, have made him conspicuous in New York. More than anyone else, he has put modern Japan on the map of the contemporary art world.

“He’s a phenomenon, that’s for sure,” said Lisa Phillips, director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. “I think that his work embodies some interests that extend far beyond Japan. It’s a blend of fantasy and apocalypse and innocence.

And it’s the way that he’s worked as much as the work itself -- in the public realm with public sculpture, huge editions of objects, merchandising, working collaboratively. It’s a very ambitious and far-ranging project.”

While best known as an artist, Murakami may be even more interesting as a thinker. Five years ago he elaborated a theory under the clever rubric “Superflat,” linking the flat picture planes of traditional Japanese paintings to the lack of any distinction between high and low in Japanese culture. On stylistic grounds he grouped together some traditional artists of the Edo period with the creators of modern-day animated films, arguing that there were important formal similarities in the flatness of their work. Now, having analyzed Japanese pop culture aesthetically, he is turning his scrutiny

FEATURE | 11

to the function that superflatness might be serving in contemporary Japanese society. As the curator of an exhibition, “Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture,” which opens this week at the Japan Society in New York, he surveys the geeky movement, known as otaku, that revolves around animated movies (anime), comic books (manga) and sexually suggestive figure models -- and arrives at a provocative conclusion. Murakami maintains that respectable Japanese artists largely ignored the horrors of World War II and the humiliations of the postwar occupation, relinquishing the subjects to the otaku, who transported these tough realities into the realm of cartoon fantasy. In childlike animated forms, anguished truths were stripped of their historical context a flattening process that conveniently released both the artist and the viewer from grappling

with the contradictions of Japan’s wartime experience as predator and victim and postwar status as economic rival of, and political subordinate to, the United States.

Flat, colorful and rootless, the images of this popular subculture - the blankfaced Hello Kitty, the mutant monster Godzilla, the giant alien Ultraman, the cat-shaped guardian robot Doraemon -- line up in no particular order, like icons on a computer screen. This cavalcade of weightless images in turn reverberates with contemporary viewers worldwide: anime and manga have become global signifiers of cool. Historically, to be sure, Japan is unique. Until a century and a half ago it was a society shut off from most of the world, and then, with gigantic gulps, it absorbed and adapted whatever it wanted, mostly from Europe, in an accelerated binge. The orgy ended with

the catastrophe of World War II, after which Japan once again slammed the door on the past and started fresh with new, mostly American models. The grabbag appropriation, inexact simulation and accelerated speed that characterize this process no longer appear peculiarly Japanese. They feel now. We live in an age when distinctions are arbitrary, originality is devalued, hierarchies are discredited and authenticity seems meaningless. Barely 40 years ago, Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein caused a transgressive stir by adopting commercial imagery from newspaper advertisements and comic strips as the subjects of paintings to hang in art galleries. How daring that was, and how dated it is. We are surrounded today by too many images to source or rank.

While it would be fatuous to say that we are all Japanese now, we are surely all living in Murakami’s world.

FEATURE | 13

SEASON’S MOST WANTED THE LASTEST AND THE FRESHEST PICKS In this editions season’s most wanted, limited comes to you with four different iconic art toys, from retailer level to collectors items, we can all aggree that any of these will be a sick edition to your collection. First, a 3 inch metal Dunny created in collaboration with designer Tristian Eaton. This piece is fairly affordable and still availabe in retailers.The Baccarat Be@arbrick in standing position.

This crystal bear is still available in Neiman Marcus. KAWS Gone figure is by far the most iconic, also made it to this editions cover. At the top end of the price spectrum we have Daniel Arsham’s version of Mickey Mouse. Good luck finding this in auctions for a musch higer price tag.

Daniel Arsham x Disney APPortfolio ERP $3,699

Baccarat Be@rbrick ERP $370

KAWS Gone ERP $2,100

Tristan Eaton x Kidrobot Money Metal ERP $99.95

familiar?

HOW COLLECTIBLE DESIGNER TOYS BECAME AN ART FORM Jacqui Palumbo Nearly two decades ago, Paul Budnitz was walking through Tokyo’s Harajuku district when he spotted a long line of Japanese youth waiting to enter a tiny gothic clothing store called Bounty Hunter. The shop was owned by streetwear designer Hikaru Iwanaga and sold small plastic toys, inspired by the trinkets found in cereal boxes, that could only be obtained by purchasing clothing from his boutique.

The coveted toy, known as Kid Hunter, was a mischievous pirate figurine, a riff on the American cereal icon Cap’n Crunch—and you had to be in the know to get one.

Inspired by what he had seen in Tokyo, and at toy conventions in Hong Kong, Budnitz founded Kidrobot in 2002. He sold the company in 2012 and, in 2018,

founded another collectible toy company, Superplastic. Designer toys—often made from vinyl and referencing any number of pop culture motifs—skyrocketed in popularity at the turn of the millenium, with nascent toy companies, conventions, and websites generating excitement over a coterie of in-demand artists who were designing them. Designer toys have permeated the contemporary art market more recently as well, with the artist KAWS (real name Brian Donnelly) selling works in major evening auctions for prices in the millions.

KAWS is famous for his morbid-but-cute Mickey Mouse–inspired toys known as “Companions,” which he first introduced

in 1999, and are produced in sizes ranging from hand-held to monumental. Demand for the works is such that in May 2017, when the MoMA Design Store released a series of 11-inch-tall vinyl versions of his coveted “Companions” for only $200 apiece, the flood of traffic crashed their website.

And while the art world has sometimes turned up its nose at KAWS’s work, in 2018, the art market embraced the artist with gusto, with works frequently selling at auction for several multiples of their expected values. In September, at the Phillips “New Now” sale, six of his 4-foottall “Companion” figures sold for two to four times their presale estimates, with

POP CULTURE | 17

a brown colorway topping the group at $150,000 with fees; two months later, at a Phillips evening sale, the colossal 23-foottall fiberglass Clean Slate (2014)—one of three in the world—broke the artist’s record when it blew past its presale estimate of $900,000 to $1.2 million, closing at over $1.9 million with fees.

What makes KAWS so in-demand is not just the popularity of his “Companions,” but his output as a whole, according to Phillips’s head of evening sales, Amanda Lo Iacono. (On the same night that Clean Slate sold, his Fat Albert–inspired acrylic painting Untitled [FATAL GROUP], 2004, sold for over $2.7 million.) “I think it’s just the universality of not just his imagery, but also his democratic approach to artmaking,” Lo Iacono offered. “He works in a lot of different materials, he works in subject matter that’s pwretty universal and known to pretty much anyone in the world who is engaged with visual culture.”

Further, anyone can take home a KAWS— whether it’s the avid designer-toy collector scoring a $200 MoMA store edition, or the fine-art collector bidding in the millions for a large-scale “Companion.”

While KAWS has straddled a unique position between two worlds, he’s not the only creative force raising the cultural profile of designer toys. Budnitz’s famous designs for Kidrobot, created in collaboration with artist Tristan Eaton, were added to the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection in 2008. The toys are named Dunny and Munny—a bunny and a monkey, respectively—and Dunny has been customized by everyone from “Obey” giant Shepard Fairey to fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg to high-end glass company Steuben (the 2-foot-tall crystalline Dunny sold for $21,000). Meanwhile, Munny is a blank white design that anyone can draw or paint on, and thus, become the artist.

Other toy designers like Tara McPherson and Frank Kozik have created toys that fetch thousands of dollars, such as McPherson’s “Lilitu” demon and Kozik’s Darth Vader helmet. The ever-prolific Japanese artist Takashi Murakami has also produced work in the vinyl toy space, with limited runs of his manga-inspired alterego Mr. DOB. The underlying ideas behind the designer toy movement have largely remained the

same since they were first introduced in Asia in the mid-1990s: Create a character that would be popular with kids, and twist it into something more edgy, more adult.

Then, curb their availability by releasing limited editions—make them precious.

Through toy brands, artists can design the same character in different sizes that sell for different price points, from the standard 8-inch, which typically costs under $100; to a 3- to 3.5-inch-tall mini, at $10 to $15; to a mystery Blind Box, in which the exact design is a surprise, for $5 to $10. But those artists often also make larger, more costly versions of their characters in materials like bronze or fiberglass, for gallery shows or commissions.

Major toy companies followed early players like Iwanaga and his peers Michael Lau and Eric So by tapping a network of artists to develop new characters. In 2001, Tokyo’s Medicom Toy offered up the first run of the still-immensely-popular Be@ rbrick, a simplified, paunchy bear with articulating limbs. The following year, Hong Kong’s Toy2R introduced its rival, Qee, a character that took various animal or humanoid forms. On the other side of the world, Budnitz founded Kidrobot in his garage in California, igniting an explosion of interest in designer toys in the West.

Over the next decade, Kidrobot opened

Budnitz Bikes (he also founded a social media platform for artists, Ello, in 2014).

The buyer, WildBrain Entertainment, announced a plan to focus on licensed characters, and nearly bankrupted the company; soon, its stores began closing.

Kidrobot was acquired again by National Entertainment Collectibles Association in 2014, and Kozik joined as the creative lead.

But the damage was done: In 2016, the company shuttered the last of its brickand-mortar stores. Kidrobot continues to sell collectibles online, including both artist-designed and licensed toys.

Budnitz, however, returned to the toy market, partnering with longtime collaborator and toy designer Huck Gee to launch Superplastic, which produces extremely limited-edition toys designed by sought-after artists. Exhausted by what he called “instant culture,” in which the availability of products has reached its peak, he said, “[I] wanted to make stuff that was tangible and real and limitedfeeling again. People are so starved for things they can’t get easily and that are special.” Their inaugural character, Janky, is a curvy, fox-like critter that’s simultaneously cute and edgy, which recalls the design principles that Budnitz used for Dunny and Munny.

That’s a question that has followed Budnitz since the beginning, and his

BUT ARE DESIGNER TOYS ART ? seven stores, from Manhattan to Las Vegas to London. Budnitz grew sales from $300,000 to $15 million.

Kidrobot wasn’t Budnitz’s first effort at turning consumer goods into collectibles; one of his earlier businesses involved customizing Air Jordans, which he then sold for as much as $16,000 a pair. But the manufacturing process for vinyl toys, in which the molds degrade over time, presented a ripe opportunity to create limited-edition collectibles—making the toys out of plastic kept production costs low and price points accessible to collectors. Though some individual Kidrobot toys have been known to sell for upwards of $400, the first designs cost between $10 and $100 when it launched in 2002, and generally cost the same today.

Budnitz sold Kidrobot a decade later in order to focus on his bicycle brand,

answer has always been “yes.” It’s the art world that needs to catch up—and it is. Budnitz believes this is because fine art and pop culture are moving closer together—a shift he likens to the way streetwear became high fashion. He points to artists like Eaton, Futura, and Gary Baseman, who have all seen their audiences expand through designing toys. “I think culture has come to them,” he mused. “I think part of it is they’ve stuck [with] it. [But] I think culture is now completely heading exactly in the direction of what we’re doing, and what a lot of these artists are doing.” KAWS may have nudged open the door to the art market, but who walks through next is anyone’s guess.

YUM YUM TOY SERIES ONE available on yumyumlondon.com

THE ENVY OF SOCIALITES

and penny-pinchers everywhere.

The world’s finest, most exclusive luxury fashions, at prices so far below retail they’re hard to believe. Every piece inspected and authenticated.

Returns accepted, but rarely seen. Ready set, obsess.

FEATURE | 21

BARBIE BOY

HOW JEREMY SCOTT REMADE MOSCHINO FOR THE INSTAGRAM ERA Designers succeed for different reasons. Some, like Phoebe Philo, of Céline, or Rei Kawakubo, of Comme des Garçons, change the basic shape of clothes. Some, like Karl Lagerfeld, at Chanel, redefine our understanding of status—or of cool, as Hedi Slimane did when he brought the rock-and-roll-waif look to Christian Dior, in the early aughts. Jeremy Scott doesn’t do any of these things. In his world, he likes to say, “nothing’s ever in and nothing’s ever out.” He isn’t interested in fashion diktats of the kind that pervade Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. He once wrote a manifesto, in the Guardian, declaring that a fashion designer should be a “communicator,” adding, “No one likes being preached at; I don’t subscribe to that in any way.” Kim Hastreiter, the editor of Paper, told me, “Jeremy’s not a normal fashion person. He’s a culture person.”

Like Warhol and other Pop artists of the twentieth century, Scott is drawn to American consumer culture. His favorite device is not the silhouette but what he calls the “icon.” “It’s any immediately understood concept that I’ve

subverted or added to on its journey,” he said.

“It could be a Windex bottle or Mickey Mouse.”

At Scott’s début show for Moschino, in 2014, a model wore what appeared to be a Chanel jacket—bouclé wool, contrasting trim. Scott had kidnapped this icon of timeless chic and taken it on a journey to McDonald’s: the jacket was ketchup-red, its trim bright yellow. The model carried a matching faux-Chanel bag—quilted leather, gold chain—that bore an “M” whose golden arches had been bent into the shape of a heart. The over-all impression was of Jacqueline Kennedy taking your order at a drive-through window. At his most recent show, a handbag that looked like a box of Marlboro Reds bore the warning “Fashion Kills.”

Scott calls his use of iconography “intuitive.”

His collections often channel the fashion world’s latest party chatter. The McDonald’s-themed show riffed on “fast fashion”—the phenomenon, popularized by Zara and H&M, of consumers churning through knocked-off

runway trends. This year, the talk in fashion circles has grown apocalyptic, as shoppers are increasingly unwilling to wait six months to buy the clothes they’ve seen on Instagram. Scott’s house-on-fire collection made that feeling literal. “Are we burning down our house?” the fashion critic Vanessa Friedman asked, in the Times. “In the midst of fashion month, it’s a legitimate question.”

VINYL JEOPARDY:

THE LIFE, DEATH, AND REBIRTH OF

KIDROBOT

MARC DEANGELIS In the spring and summer of 2014, shutters were slamming in front of the doors and windows at Kidrobot’s retail stores in Manhattan, Miami, and Boulder. The brand synonymous with art toys and responsible for bringing the craze to the western world was nowhere to be seen at the conventions it typically dominated. There were murmurings of major money issues. The company that dwarfed the handful of remaining art toy producers, no longer seemed like an unstoppable force of niche culture. Basically, Kidrobot was screwed. And that had a lot of fans and artists— countless numbers of whom had their careers effectively launched by the company—biting their nails. If Kidrobot went down the toilet, it was very possible that the entire designer toy industry would be dragged along with it.

But let’s back up for a second. For the uninitiated, designer toys (a.k.a. art toys, vinyl toys, and urban vinyl) are pieces of art that typically utilize the same production processes and formats as toys from ’60s and ’70s-era Japan. Before the age of G.I. Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Transformers, toys weren’t mold-injected, but rotocast. Toy manufacturers melted vinyl and placed it inside a spinning copper mold. The centrifugal force pushed the vinyl into the curves and crevices of the mold until it is cooled and solidified. The different pieces were then painted, assembled into the final figure, placed in a box or bag, and sent to stores. This process is extremely affordable, especially at a large production scale, making it a perfect way for artists to create three-dimensional, mass produced versions of their art. Come the mid 2000s, the cool factor combined with the nostalgia of collecting and playing with toys as a kid turned out to be a hit, mainly for urban-dwelling 20and 30-somethings with an eye for design.

Vinyl toys have their roots in Japan. As the legend goes, Bounty Hunter, a small clothing brand in Harajuku, was looking for a way to increase sales in 1997. The founder, Hikaru Iwanaga, had grown up on a military base that sold American cereal. A toy was hidden inside each box, which in turn was decked out with caricatures of pirates, ghosts, or classic monsters. He figured the same principle could be applied to boutique clothing. Hikaru and Skatething of A Bathing Ape fame created what is accepted by most as the first example of a designer vinyl toy. Dubbed Kid Hunter, this portly, punk-rock bastardization of Cap’n Crunch stood nine inches tall and was only available when purchased alongside Bounty Hunter clothes. But the clothes quickly became an afterthought. People simply wanted the toy, just like children pick a cereal not by taste, and certainly not by nutrition, but for which toy is included in the box.

On a business trip to Asia in 2002, entrepreneur Paul Budnitz spotted these strange artifacts.

Were they toys? Were they art? Yes and yes. He knew he had found his next project. Budnitz founded Kidrobot in 2002 and headquartered the company in a small Berklyee, CA office that was shared with his previous company, Minidisco. He called upon his friend Tristan Eaton, with whom he’d worked on animation projects before, to help design some Western versions of the toys he’d seen in Asia. Thus were born the iconic Dunny and Munny. Launched in April of 2004 at the Hong Kong ToyCon, the Dunny was a cute, gently curved mix between a devil and a bunny. Releasing shortly thereafter,

the Munny was similar shape to the Dunny, but was based on a monkey rather than a bunny. Kidrobot commissioned various artists such as Huck Gee, Dalek, and David Horvath to apply original characters to the Dunny silhouette while selling the blank Munny as a DIY platform. Working with outside artists was a major part of the business. “We’d take a lot of chances on new artists who turned out to be popular,” says Budnitz, “I wouldn’t say that Kidrobot was so much a business as a small art incubator, and that’s what kept it real.”

Between in-house talent and hired artists, Kidrobot found its sweet spot when it came to aesthetics. Budnitz describes the visual formula as “the combination of a little cuteness and a little blackness, as my friends at Devilrobots like to say. You gotta be a little evil, but there’s a sophistication to the designs that always resonates with people.” This can be seen even through the blank Munny. At first glance, it’s just a cute little monkey. But the slightly aggressive pose, the slouch of the shoulders, and the downward stare combine to project a vaguely ominous feel. This juxtaposition was even more apparent in future Kidrobot releases, like Travis Cain’s BFF series, which depicted anthropomorphised, everyday objects gleefully murdering each other.

Kidrobot quickly went on to create unique toys outside of the Dunny and Munny characters.

Its eponymous mascot—a streetwear-laden homage to Ultraman—took vinyl form, the brand teamed up with musical acts like the Gorillaz and Madlib, and streamlined Frank Kozik’s Smorkin’ Labbit, which was previously produced by Bounty Hunter and Medicom, by turning the pudgy, cigarette-smoking toy rabbit into a leaner and more crotchety character. Says Budnitz of the brand’s fast track to success:

“WE’D JUST SAY ‘FUCK IT’ AND MAKE A TOY BECAUSE WE LOVED IT, AND THOSE WERE ALWAYS THE TOYS THAT KEPT FANS EXCITED.” The success of Kidrobot didn’t rely only on its edgy toy designs, but also on the marketing of the products. The 3-inch Dunnys, among other series, were solid in blindboxes, cardboard boxes encasing the foil-wrapped toys as to prevent the buyer from knowing which Dunny in the series he or she was about to purchase. To get the Dunny you wanted, you’d have to either be really lucky, meet up with fellow Kidrobot

FEATURE | 25

fans to trade, or keep buying blindboxes until you unwrapped the right one, which at about $8 a pop, wasn’t out of the question for most fans.

And of course this kind of product attracted completists. Fans with deep pockets would throw down the cash for a full case of Dunnys to acquire every piece in the series.

Another key to the company’s success was its leveraging of scarcity. While their toys were sold in specialty shops, their first-party Kidrobot locations were the main draw.

Shortly after the Kidrobot webstore launched, their first brick-and-mortar location opened in San Francisco in 2002, followed by a store in Manhattan’s SoHo area in the fall of 2003.

Locations in Los Angeles, Miami, London, Las Vegas, and Boulder followed. In the early days, Kidrobot products weren’t so easy to come across. It was like Black Friday every month, but instead of over-caffeinated soccer moms waiting in front of Wal-Mart, it was sneakerheads, graffiti artists, and graphic designers outside Kidrobot’s retail shops well before the manager turned the key and flipped the “open” sign. The limited-edition aspect of the company even served to push its designs further.

“WHEN YOU MAKE THINGS THAT ARE LIMITED EDITION IT MEANS YOU CAN TAKE MORE RISKS, BECAUSE IF YOU MAKE JUST 100 PIECES OF SOMETHING, ONLY 100 PEOPLE HAVE TO LIKE IT.” Recognizing the buzz the company was generating, Kidrobot was quick to build a community around its brand and products.

The stores hosted launch parties where fans could gush over the latest releases, trade blindboxes, and meet the artists behind the toys. Popular designers dropped by to paint in-store customizations of Munnys, which were often raffled off or auctioned for charitable causes. Kidrobot was the place to be for locals and a destination for visitors. “I loved that job,” says former Kidrobot New York manager Lisa Lyons. “I loved going there every day. There would be people lined up outside at 10 a.m. in their chairs and they’d give me a juice box. How

could you not like that? I felt like a celebrity.”

Similar to how Budnitz describes Kidrobot as an art incubator rather than a business, Lyons describes the retail locations as a gathering place rather than a commercial artifice. “For me, it was exciting because it was communitycentric. There were some people who would come in and we’d talk for hours and I’d pick their brains. They’d drop all this knowledge and it was so cool for me because I’d learn about all these artists and galleries. It was more of a place to talk about art and hang out than a retail store.”

The brand even created a secondary designer toy market. Certain artists, such as Jon-Paul Kaiser, Squink, Sket One, and 64 Colors, became so adept at creating customized Kidrobot toys featuring DIY paint jobs, additional sculpting, and more, that they were able to sell their work to collectors and create a new source of income, some of them even quitting their day jobs to customize fulltime.

Collectors commissioned custom toys to their specifications from their favorite artists, and those customs often became the crown jewels of their display cases.

FEATURE | 27 For years, it was hit after hit for Kidrobot. It seemed too good to be true. A new form of art was being born. Everyone from pro designers to would-be artists could take part. But after nearly 10 years of the designer toy scene—a scene tent-poled by Kidrobot—things began to taper off in 2013.

The company started to rely more heavily on licensed products such as Marvel and DC properties, South Park, and Family Guy. Whereas they would occasionally license a property and then turn the characters’ designs inside-out, Kidrobot simply would make superficial adjustments to align with the short and stout aesthetic the brand was known for.

These items were, purposely or not, positioned as impulse buys rather than collectibles.

They were purchased by fans of the licensed properties and some Kidrobot fans, but they also caused many collectors to completely write the brand off. Artists and fans began to consider if their worst nightmares were coming true and even dropped the f-word: Had this all been a fad? Were the toy companies like Kidrobot and their artists out of ideas?

WildBrain Entertainment, best known for creating Yo Gabba Gabba!, had purchased a stake in Kidrobot in 2006. In early 2012, two years after the brand moved to Colorado and coinciding with Paul Budnitz’s departure from Kidrobot, it was announced that the company had outright purchased the toy brand and planned to make television and film projects out of the company’s characters. It felt a bit like

selling, the company would focus more on the clothing. Retail workers were given hourly quotas, undermining the once relaxed retail atmosphere.

“When the office moved to Colorado, the focus on [retail] changed,” explains Lyons.

“Some [corporate] managers came in who weren’t there before and as they broke down the business, it became evident that there were aspects to the company that weren’t sustainable.

That’s where things started to go a little bit crazy, because people didn’t know what to do. All of a sudden there was all this pressure on me, like, ‘You must sell 10 products per minute.’”

One of the most obvious flaws was the brand’s handling of licensed properties. The official Kidrobot forums were full of members begging the brand to go back to its roots in order to keep afloat, if not simply to revert to edgier designs. “Kidrobot’s appeal is all about original work, which is hard to pull off. You need a strong vision of what is and isn’t awesome, and what people will like,” says Budnitz.

For two years, it seemed like the company was having a hard time coming to grips with waning interest. But the harsh reality began to really set in throughout 2014. All Kidrobot stores, save for the independently operated Las Vegas and San Francisco locations, closed their doors for good. Even the online store was barren. The brand was noticeably absent from Comic-Con and DesignerCon. In July, an entry

“IF YOU DON’T HAVE VISION, YOU RELY ON LICENSING, WHICH IS A CHEAP FIX AND EVENTUALLY DILUTES YOUR BRAND. IT’S OKAY SOMETIMES, BUT IF YOU OVERDO IT, SLAP MARVEL CHARACTERS ON THINGS IN RANDOM WAYS, THAT’S WACK.” a favorite band selling out. Fans wondered if the end product would suffer due to the hidden hands of corporate overlords. Around this time, it seemed like Kidrobot’s products lacked the qualities that made them so interesting and special. Sales reflected this as products remained on store shelves. When asked if the timing of his leaving Kidrobot and the brand’s slump in innovation and sales were a coincidence, Budnitz simply answers, “No.” As soon as the company recognized the brand was in trouble, it went into a reactive panic mode. Whereas Kidrobot had previously axed item that didn’t turn out as well as was hoped, the company began simply pushing out whatever was close to completion. Focus was constantly shifting. If the toys weren’t

was posted to the brand’s official blog assuring that, despite the store closings, the brand was still expecting to expand into even more design and fashion projects. This came off with all the sincerity of a sweat-drenched ship captain assuring his passengers that everything is fine despite the iceberg lodged in the hull. Fans expected that boat to capsize at any time.

“I was a little surprised but not really,” says Lyons regarding the store closings. “Among the managers, we half-jokingly would say, ‘I think they’re gonna close my store!’ When I left [in 2014] and saw the company making all these drastic changes, I wasn’t really surprised that they closed the New York store, but I didn’t think they’d close almost all of them. It was like dominoes, one after another. That was shocking.”

Even the brand’s founder had to avert his eyes.

“Kidrobot was always my baby and it’s frankly been painful to watch the direction it’s taken some of the time, so I just don’t look,” admits Budnitz. “It’s not a black-and-white thing, but I would have done many things differently, and it was hard to see some of the choices that were made after I left.”

On Nov. 19, 2014, two unexpected announcements were made. Kidrobot had been acquired by high-quality collectibles company NECA, and Frank Kozik, granddaddy of art toys, had been appointed Kidrobot’s creative director. Kozik had been active in the art toy scene since the beginning. With his Smorkin’ Labbit taking 3D form as small resin figures sold in Japan way back in 1998, over 500 toy releases under his belt, and an extensive history working with Kidrobot on Dunnys and his own Labbits in plush and vinyl form, this was a huge relief for some. For others, it was a final gasp for breath. But overall, onlookers were cautiously optimistic. What would Kozik’s true role be?

Would he only be making creative decisions, or would he be helping the brand pick itself up off the ground with his nearly 20 years of designer toy experience and no-bullshit attitude? Would NECA be accepting of Kidrobot’s strange and subversive work? National Entertainment Collectibles Association, founded in 1996 and located in New Jersey, is known for its highly detailed and often photo-realistic action figures based on film, TV, comic, video game and sports icons and not art.

Kozik says he was not surprised Kidrobot approached him about taking a leadership position. “I’ve been working closely with Kidrobot since its inception,” he says. “I have a lot invested in Kidrobot and Kidrobot has a lot invested in me. It just made sense because

I understood the company and the products intimately.” He considered the bigger picture when making his decision to accept the position. “The most rewarding phase of my career has been doing toys. I want to keep working in this field forever. And that’s not possible if all the companies go away. I had the opportunity to help the company revive and I seized it. Otherwise, what are you going to have? Funko? They won’t do art toys.”

As for his role, Kozik is much more than a creative director. He’s been making decisions on how the company operates and what directions it will take in terms of its offerings, its partnerships with artists, and its aesthetics.

One of his first orders of business was to make the company more inclusive. “We’re not going to be ultra secretive. We want to include the fans and the customers and the public in the process,” says Kozik. This decision has already been put into action. Each week, Kidrobot’s forum representative posts a new product reveal while the blog features fans’ collections.

As part of its renewed inclusive mission, Kidrobot is making a concerted effort to create a triple-A stable of artists. “There is a couple dozen artists that work in the toy genre. Cool,

art-based released at all.” He clarifies that the two companies have to work together when it comes to licensed goods. “They’re the ones buying the licenses, so they have a little bit of a say.”

The company is more stable, having downsized from nearly 50 employees to only about 15, allowing for a more cohesive group effort.

“Sales are going up across the board,” says Kozik. “We’re working to get the website together and get international shipping to be correct. Once that’s in place, sales are going to go up tremendously because a third of our customers are overseas. We set out on some goals 10 months ago. We’ve overachieved on every single goal. If you run the numbers correctly, Kidrobot is making more products than it ever did before and we’re being able to do it way better and more efficiently and maintain quality.” While Kidrobot is still clearly in a transitional phase, the question does arise as to whether or not this volume of releases is beneficial to the brand and is sustainable.

Newly released toy series by Brandt Peters, Amanda Visell, and Nathan Jurevicius signal a call-back to Kidrobot’s earlier days, and talks of a partnership with foam and felt sculpting duo

“I’M AN INCLUSIONARY PERSON, I’M A BIT OF THE ANTI-KAWS.” but after a while, we need new stuff. And how many times have you seen a custom and said, ‘Fuck! I wish that was a production piece.’ So we’re starting to do that,” says Kozik. “The foundation of the company is artists allowing us to produce their stuff. We went back to the principles that made this whole genre great and interesting.” But it’s not all about new talent. “At the same time, we’re going back to some of the original pioneers because they’ve continued to develop their work and created new styles that are just as interesting as their old styles. So, I’m trying to do a nice blend of the two, where we have brand new fresh talent, and we have some ‘old masters.’ That makes a nice combination.”

In terms of aesthetics, collectors should expect less blood and more eye-popping color palettes.

“I’ve turned away from darkness and violence here. There was a lot of that, but I like colorful things and whimsical things and freaky, weird things,” explains Kozik. “So, overall you’re going to see the colors and styles get away from ‘it’s got a weapon and it’s mean.’ There was a time and place for that, but it’s not now.”

Kozik is quick to get one thing straight: NECA owns Kidrobot but doesn’t control it. “The first thing they told us was, ‘We’re not going to interfere with your aesthetic decisions,’” he says. “NECA has not interfered with any of the

Horrible Adorables provides a glimpse into the company’s future, but a new series of licensed plushies called Phunnies, a blindbox series based on a mobile game called Best Friends, and Munny, Dunny, And Labbit Halloween masks may cast a shadow of doubt for skeptics.

Then again, Kozik makes it clear that Kidrobot isn’t attempting to revert to its original identity or business plan. “What people have to understand,” he says, “is that this is basically a brand-new company.” So while said callbacks will keep original fans happy, Kidrobot hopes to simultaneously try out new ideas.

Despite the brand’s recent short-term success, Kozik doesn’t want to give the wrong impression. “The gut feeling is that it’s all coming back around,” he says of the popularity of designer toys. “Will it be a brand new, booming thing it was before? No, that was 10 years ago, and everything’s changed.” Even so, it’s hard not to go from “cautiously optimistic” to plain “optimistic” after seeing the company make such a noticeable recovery. The art toy community seems to be breathing a communal sigh of relief. “As someone who collected NECA way before I knew about Kidrobot this is a welcome change in a company so many had written off over the past 2 years,” posted Rsin, who has released a limited edition Dunny with Kidrobot, to the brand’s forum. “And with

FEATURE ||29 7 FEATURE

t

t

COLLECTOR’S GUIDE FROM WEBSITES TO GALLERIES WHERE TO FIND AMERICA’S RAREST ART TOYS DOPE!

ARTSY

ROTOFUGI

online gallery

online platform

Dope! keeps an online shop updated where collectors can find originals, prints and limited editions of all sorts from well-known names in street and contemporary art (Kaws, Banksy, Space Invader, Obey, Murakami, Daniel Arsham, and many more). With an office in London and a strong presence in Asia Dope!

Gallery is supporting the emerging Chinese art scene through events and shows like the Shanghai International Art Contest.

Artsy features the world’s leading galleries, museum collections, foundations, artist estates, art fairs, and benefit auctions, all in one place.

Their growing database of 1,000,000 works of art, architecture, and design by 100,000 artists spans historical, modern, and contemporary works, and includes the largest online database of contemporary art. Artsy is used by art lovers, patrons, collectors, students, and educators to discover, learn about, and collect art.

Rotofugi Designer Toy Store & Gallery, established in July 2004, is located on the border of Chicago’s Lincoln Park and Lakeview neighborhoods in a beautiful vintage building.

Since opening, Rotofugi has grown to become one of the world’s premier sellers of designer toys from artists all over the world. Rotofugi features a diverse selection of vinyl figures, blind box and capsule toys, plush, pop culture collectibles across the globe.

PADDLE8

MYPLASTICHEART

e-commerce

retailer

Paddle8 is a global leader in cultural e-commerce. Powered by best-in-class technology, Paddle8 makes buying and selling fine art and collectibles online an easy, secure, and efficient experience. Curated Auctions are sourced from a range of private and institutional collections. Presented year round, they offer multiple opportunities to jump start or elevate any collection.

Established in 2004, myplasticheart began as one of the first online shops to focus on the burgeoning designer toy scene. They strive to provide fans of designer toys with one of the largest selections anywhere. From renowned brands such as Kidrobot, tokidoki, Medicom to independent local and international artists, you can find affordable mini figures and sought after one of a kind art pieces.

SOTHEBY’S auction platform Sotheby’s has been uniting collectors with world-class works of art since 1744. Sotheby’s became the first international auction house when it expanded from London to New York in 1955. Today, Sotheby’s has a global network of 80 offices in 40 countries including New York, London, Hong Kong and Paris. Sotheby’s BidNow program also allows visitors to view all auctions live online and place bids from anywhere in the world.

store and gallery

tt

| 31

LUXURY 400%

BE@RBRICK

EVERY COLLECTOR NEEDS TO OWN

In the world of toy collecting, Bearbrick is at the top of the box. Otherwise seen written as BE@RBRICK, the LEGO-meets-teddy bear figures come in all shapes and sizes, have seen countless print and material iterations, not forgetting collaborative input from both the biggest name in the streetwearverse and expert global crafters. And while you’ll easily pin down some of the wider releases at select retailers and resale sites, a select few releases have proven supremely more coveted.

Designed and produced by Japan’s Medicom Toy, the first ever Bearbrick came on May 27,

Royal Selangor for Medicom Toy $1531 Royal Selangor is a renowned pewter specialist. For the uninitiated, that’s a malleable metal alloy made up largely of tin, copper, and other metals, done out here in a dimpled, gold finish

2001 – a simple white bear given as a gift to guests at Tokyo’s world Character Convention.

The rest is history, now releasing with a sizing system based on the first ever model being called the “100%”, scaled right up to 1000%, with most collectors opting for the 400% form.

Below, we’ve rounded up some of the luxury Bearbricks out there right now, all of which are sure to stand out in any budding collection.

A mix of elevated materials, detailed designs, and limited runs make these toys some of the greatest releases to ever come from the Bearbrick line.

Kutani for Medicom Toy $2402 Most beautiful of all the Kutani Ware porcelain models is this speckled cherry blossom hue, a triplewhammy of Japanese collectible, craftsmanship, and colorway.

Kutani Ware for Medicom Toy $2264 Kutani Ware is a style of Japanese porcelain from the former Kaga province. This figurine may look simple, but the high gloss, artisan crafted Kutani Ware porcelain gives it some insane luxury appeal.

COLLECTOR | 33

Medicom Toy “Swarowski” $6399 Coming in at a considerably higher price than many of the Bearbricks on this list, It’s completely embellished in Swarovski crystals and yes, it may just be the greatest of all time.

Karimoku for Medicom Toy “Wenge” $2264 Karimoku is known for its luxurious woodworking, and its collaboration with Bearbrick made for not only an amazing collectible but a great homeware, too.

THE ENVY OF SOCIALITES

and penny-pinchers everywhere.

The world’s finest, most exclusive luxury fashions, at prices so far below retail they’re hard to believe. Every piece inspected and authenticated.

Returns accepted, but rarely seen. Ready set, obsess.

ICONIC COLLABORATIONS

LUXURY | 35

WHERE LUXURY TOYS MEET LUXURY DESIGNERS Brazilian designers Humberto and Fernando Campana have created limited-edition versions of their signature soft-toy seats using designs

by American artist Kaws. The cuddly toys are secured to a supporting structure, which also attaches to simple legs. The chairs are also immediately identifiable as part of the furniture series that the Campana brothers have been adding to for over a decade. The Campanas are renowned for using unusual, and often found, materials to create sculptural furniture pieces.

The set includes an armchair and a sofa formed from pink figures, and another seat made with black toys that also have round blush noses.

All have wooden legs, with the darker design’s painted to match. Kaws and the Campanas have previously created a prototype of the chair with bright blue characters, which is in the collection at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The new pieces were on show as part of the Friedman Benda booth at Design Miami, 19th and Meridian Street, Miami Beach, December 2018.

Following the release of its chromed-out Kylo Ren tribute, Medicom Toy has returned with its latest BE@RBRICK iteration, this time with COMME des GARÇONS for a collectible aroma ornament.

In 2003, Murakami unveiled his cheerful interpretation of the iconic Louis Vuitton logo, rendered in the Pop artist’s signature cheerful color palette on a clean white background. The Multicolored monogram became an instant hit, toted by Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, and other major celebrities of the early aughts. The artist’s collaboration with the fashion house included several other designs, including the Monogramouflage, Cherry Blossom, and Character Bag collections, each offering playful spins on the brand’s iconography.

Like the Cleverin x nendo diffuser, this BE@RBRICK comes in a sitting position.

Arriving in monochrome, the figure sees a clean white ceramic body contrasted by glossy black paint at the ears. Though the figure is faceless, it’s decorated with debossed rings reminiscent of COMME des GARÇONS’ signature polka dot patterns, offering an artful expression over the collectible ceramic figure.

The diffuers come with essential oils that can be dripped over the bear for aromatic effects — two to three drops directly onto the body.

Each piece is handmade, differing slightly in shape between one another, making each figure one-of-a-kind.

THE SURREALIST IMAGINATION OF THE SURREALIST IMAGINATION OF

JASON JASON FREENY FREENY DAVID SILVERBERG DAVID SILVERBERG Jason Freeny is a rebel artist with a cause: to toy with, well, toys. His playful digital art tweaks pop icons such as LEGO characters and gummi bears, revealing a unique side to everyday imagery. His latest project? Slicing a Lego mini figure in half to display the anatomy of the toy.

It’s like Body Worlds for kids.

Jason Freeny’s work paints an imaginative landscape, where toy robots escape their packages

The 38-year-old interface designer, who lives in Long Island with his wife and two kids, has embraced his inner child. His previous digital art has manipulated gummi bears to reveal their inner anatomy, added menacing teeth to floppy plungers, and created 3-D effects of an open mouth overlaid on a T-shirt. He has brought his imaginative designs to skateboard decks, mugs, prints and even kids’ toys.

Jason Freeny: I’ve been surrounded by art my whole life. My father was a painting and was a sculpture professor at the University of Maryland when I was young. My mother has always been a big fan of the theater and has worked as a costume designer on more then one occasion.

Viewing a Freeny piece is like experiencing instant sensory gratification. His art is clean but wild, distinct yet familiar. It’s as if you are enjoying comfort food (like a robot toy) and veering them into a holiday from reality. An image like Babies and Rabies could be simply passed off as the dreamscape drawing of an artist downing two tabs of acid, but Freeny’s statement is more nuanced; there is a purpose to every piece, a layer beyond what is simply viewed.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN DESIGNING YOUR OWN LOGOS AND T-SHIRTS? WAS THERE A SEMINAL MOMENT THAT GOT YOU INTO DESIGN?

There have been many seminal moments.

Discovering Dali and Robert Williams are two notable ones.

YOUR DIGITAL ART HAS BEEN LABELLED “POP SURREALIST” BY SOME. DO YOU AGREE? I agree, thats what I label it. Fits the genre perfectly. Pop culture plus surrealism. I have also been tagged as “cartoon surrealism” as well, but they are very similar.

SPREAD

D AD

FEATURE | 37

I WOULD THINK YOU ARE IN LOVE WITH ANATOMY...OR TOYS. OR BOTH? WHAT IS IT ABOUT SPLICED BODIES THAT GET YOU GOING AS AN ARTIST? Yes, I love both. I spent a year as a toy designer a few years back. I wasn’t very successful at it.

The industry is very “feature” driven and I’m more of a “stylist,” and I like to make things look pretty. That’s when I discovered the Urban Vinyl genre, an industry that is 100 per cent style.We have a fascination of anatomy in my family. My five-year-old son is a huge fan. He calls it “inside body” and has a stack of anatomy books two feet high. Anatomy is just really beautiful to look at, and I think it fascinates just about everyone.

DESCRIBE THE TECHNOLOGY AND PROCESS. WHAT SOFTWARE DO YOU USE? HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE? HOW DO YOU APPLY THE GRAPHICS PERFECTLY? All my digital images are first modeled and rendered in Maya, then composited in Photoshop as well as some use of Illustrator.

Every illustration is different and take different amounts of time. But on average they take about 30 hours each.

Freeny has anatomically-supplemented dozens of different characters from video games, movies and even brand advertisements. For each sculpture, he begins by buying a highquality toy (“If it’s a crappy toy to begin with, the sculpture is going to end up looking crappy too,” he says), then cuts away a portion of it.

Using clay, he sculpts the character’s bones and a few internal organs, then paints them what he imagines to be realistic colors. Working on several pieces at a time, he completes about four or five per month, and sells the hand-built sculptures on his website along with his other artworks.

Hypothesizing the proportion of each character’s innards is the trickiest part. “It’s like a reverse forensics project. The exterior shape dictates what the skeleton looks like.”

FIGURE IT OUT! NEW BOOK ON DESIGNER TOYS AND THEIR MAKERS

The colourful world of figurines may often be associated with anime fans, movie buffs, and hobbyists, but there is a growing section of graphic designers who are making their mark as creator-collectors.

Figure It Out turns the spotlight on the talented creatives who apply their artistry beyond their usual two-dimensional canvases onto unique collectibles that blur the line between toy and art. Featuring a wide curation of projects, behind-the-scene snippets, interviews with artists and creators all over the world as well as insights into the materials and processes

involved, it is an inspiring glimpse into a rising trend in design and pop culture where the only limit is one’s imagination.

Figure It Out not only features the words of TTC, but also 150 different Designer Toys that you all love from 60 crazy talented artists & creatives across 250+ pages. Including some of our absolute favourites such as coarse, Colus, Sad Salesman, Jason Freeny, J-Ldn, ToyQube, Unbox Industries and many many more! This is a beast of a book but the perfect size. This will look great on your coffee table and will form the basis of any conversations that folks may want to start on Designer Toys.Toy figurines are, in fact, becoming more popular elsewhere thanks to the artists, designers, and producers who are redefining what ‘limited editions’ really mean to collectors and the industry as a whole.

Made in collaboration with award-winning creative director Lio Yeung, the book features a wide curation of compelling projects and interviews with luminaries in the industry, it is a visual collection of seminal work and ideas that will capture the imagination of art, design, and pop culture enthusiasts all around the world.

Expect to see the work of coarse, Jason Freeny and Awesome Toy, and read interviews with MEDICOM TOY founder Tatsuhiko Akashi and Case Studyo’s Mark Landwehr and Sven Waschk.

?

LIMITED | 41

DECISION MAKER FOR LUXURY PURCHASES

?

n

y

?

DOES IT LEAVE A DENT IN YOUR WALLET

?

?

y

n

DOES THE THOUGHT OF NOT HAVING IT MAKE YOU FEEL INCOMPLETE

WILL THE VALUE INCREASE OVER TIME n y

n

y

DO YOU ACTUALLY REALLY WANT IT y n

CAN YOU AFFORD AT LEAST ONE MONTHS WORTH OF RENT AFTER BUYING n y

DON’T BUY IT n WILL YOU FORGIVE YOURSELF IF YOU BUY IT

I’ll figure it out

?

?

y

BUY IT

?

?

?

DO YOU NEED IT

?

?

?