Tell me something about you?
Well, I’ve been painting and illustrating for as long as I can remember, but doing custom toys is relatively new for me. I’ve always collected toys and geek-artist stuff, but while writing for the now-defunct ToyCyte, I immersed myself in the whole toy culture and found a whole group of people who were thinking the same things I was, creatively.

I’m still trying to figure out if I’m any good.

What is your favourit DIY Toy?
Honestly, anything I can find inexpensively. I don’t think I’m in love with any of the blank forms as much as I love the idea of totally repurposing an existing toy that was never meant to be DIY. I love the Mallow because he’s just a huge canvas, and I like Mighty Muggs because they survive in the oven.

Where you get your inspiration from?
There’s a lot of inspiration in the whole art-toy scene – people like Bob Conge and Paul Kaiju, Cris Rose and Daniel Goffin and Monstrehero are really redefining the movement instead of just putting their signature mark on an existing thing, as much as I love seeing the 500th innovative Munny or MadL. I’ve recently been showing with some of these guys and it’s really pushed me to kinda kick my own ass to get up to par, and I love it.

I guess I try to pull as much inspiration as possible from places outside of the toy world too, so I don’t become too referential. Natural forms, unnatural forms, painterly things over ‘designy’ things. A lot of good stuff comes from either being half asleep or while I’m standing in the shower – no joke. I use up a lot of water trying to be creative.

Since when are you doing Vinyl toys?
I started doing vinyl toys a few years ago, but when I had my only piece stolen by a gallery, I gave it up for a few years. I started up again about a year ago and have been messing up perfectly good toys ever since.

How large is your privat Vinyl toy Collection?
I mostly collect mini figures, since the price point on the larger toys is a little bit ridiculous – but I have a few hundred mini figures at this point. Maybe less, now, since I started destroying them. I’m also known to drop serious bucks on a few choice resin pieces from people like Monstrehero and Cris Rose. That handmade stuff is absolutely worth the money.

What will be your next Project? I’m incredibly excited about making my own original wooden toy called ‘The Spaceman’. It’s made of wood, resin, magnets, lights and all kinds of awesome. I’m done with the prototyping and I’m happy how it turned out, so all I have to do is send it in for final production and get back to the garage to cast some more resin parts.

I’ve been dropping promotional images of The Spaceman for a few weeks now, but I’m giving you the first images of the actual prototype. It’s still going through a few changes as I price out final production and practicality – but I plan on a whole line of these, collaborating with different artists, more characters, pieces of a story.

Aside from that, I recently finished a set of custom Droplets (since I’d never seen anyone customize them before and they’re such a great form). I have work in the Robolucha, SDCC Mez-Itz and Into The Darkness shows, I’m working on the Munny Grubbers show, and I’m almost done with a set of custom mini-King Kens, just for fun.

Oh! Also, the Squidulons – a free series of papercrafts I’ve been working on!

http://www.resonantfish.com
http://resonantfish.bigcartel.com
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