My name is Jared, I’m 28 and I had a pretty normal childhood. My parents are still married and allowed me to explore any and all interests I had. I grew up in the suburbs of upstate NY and I played video games, watched cartoons, went to summer camp, played soccer and had a number of part time jobs starting at the age of 11. I learned to work hard at an early age and found it very gratifying to earn something I wanted. I was good in school but got into trouble as I often times found the work to be too easy and ended up screwing around or distracting my friends who needed to be paying attention. But by the time I graduated from high school the only thing that REALLY got me excited was painting and drawing…basically creating things with my hands. I had wanted to be an engineer for a long time but ultimately didn’t have enough interest in the math to keep me interested but I maintained a love for solving physical problems. I took my interest in art and enrolled at University at Buffalo in 2000 with a concentration in Communication Design. There I played collegiate D1 soccer for 3 years, started my 7 year stint as an Applebee’s server and learned a lot about art, art history, graphic design… and life. I graduated in 2004 with a BFA in Communication Design. I didn’t feel my portfolio was very strong so I did some research and found s school in Atlanta Georgia named The Portfolio Center. It was a portfolio school and its sole purpose was to help you develop a great portfolio. While there I earned an internship at Pentagram NYC and ended up working and living there from January to April 2006. This is where I got my first taste of urban vinyl. Through a friend I ended up at a release at Kidrobot NY and was instantly hooked. From there I went to several other vinyl oriented art exhibitions and releases. Visited all the stores throughout the city like Toy Tokyo and Toy Qube. My interest waned some once I got back to Georgia but it never went away. I graduated from The Portfolio Center in October of 2006 and quickly found a job also in Atlanta at an agency named Finished Art. It will be 3 years this upcoming February since I started working as a professional Graphic Designer. Through my work I get to work on various high profile corporate accounts like ATT, Disney and Coca-Cola but our agency is quite small, about 30 people, and is firmly grounded with a strong creative spirit. My boss allows me to maintain a silk screen printing set up here at the office and I have access to all of the top of the line software and hardware that I use during my regular work day. When it comes to my custom work, so far it has been an interest that takes a back seat to my day job but I still manage to spend hours and hours every week working on different projects. I used to be involved in a coalition of sorts back when we were primarily designing and printing limited edition t-shirts, but now I work alone. My work space is in my apartment that I share with my beautiful and supportive girlfriend Amanda and our entire apartment is filled with toys. When I met Amanda she already had a very large Pez dispenser collection so it seemed to me we were a perfect match.

Favorite DIY Toy:

My favorite platform to work on is actually a Dunny which doesn’t come as a blank toy. I’ve made dozens of Dunny’s and I find that the form lends itself to innumerable modifications and possibilities. In my work I try and bring something new and innovative to every piece I make thus I try and think about the platform in a new way each time and the Dunny has worked out really great for me so far. Though I have yet to tackle one of the many I have, the DIY Bambaboss by 3A is probably my favorite DIY toy right now. It is huge—13 inches—it comes with 3 interchangeable faces and he just has the potential for so many different things. I have several commissions at the moment that are keeping me from starting a Bambaboss.

Where I get inspiration from?

Most of my recent work has been commissions so people have come to me with ideas. This way of working is very familiar to me as a Graphic Designer because this is typically the way work comes to us from large corporate accounts. They basically know exactly what they want and we put our creative spin on it. The way I ended up gaining so much recent interest was I created a series of 3” Dunnys based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…and that idea came from something that I draw a lot of inspiration from —my life and life experiences. I feel that since no one alive has lived the same life and had the same experiences these differences give us all a unique point of view and thus most peoples work will be inherently different.

Since when have I been doing vinyl toys.

While I was living in NYC from January to March 2006 Kidrobot released their very first Munny and had their very first Munny paint contest. The piece that entered was the very first vinyl toy I ever painted and I still have it displayed at my home. I was living in a room in a share on the Lower East side and didn’t have the space or resources to really attack the piece like I wanted so I painted the whole thing with sharpies and paint pens. My piece didn’t win but ever since I have had a deep rooted interest in customizing vinyl toys. I didn’t do another one until I moved back to Atlanta where in the following year I did Munnysaurus Wrecks and Munny Raptor. I started doing pieces here and there for shows and ever since my Ninja Turtle Dunny’s dropped in March of this year I’ve been super busy with commissions.

How large is my private collection?

I spend a good deal of money on my toy collection. You could say that all the money and more I make painting customs goes into paying for materials and buying more toys. I still collect Dunny’s but mostly because I can use anyone I don’t want as customs, but the majority of what I buy now are from Super 7 and 3A. I love the Zombies put out by Super 7. Not only are the sculpts fantastic but the paint applications and diversity are awesome. The Monster Family pieces are really nice too. And I’ve been collecting the World War Robots from Ashley Wood ever since the first Bertie was released at NYCC in January of 2008. I have several of the 1/6 robots as well as a number of the 1/6 action figure type pieces including Blanc De Plume, Tomorrow King and Boiler Zomb. I sill buy specialty pieces from particular artists and other things from Real x Head, Gargamel and Secret Base… so I guess for the most part I get things that I like and try not to pidgeon hole my collection but I have been tending to lean towards Eastern Vinyl. Ultimately, my collection fills out almost all the free shelving space in our apartment including 2 Detolfs and I still have some things put away in storage. It’s a decent collection but I’ve definitely seen people whose collection makes mine look pathetic.

What is my next project.

I am currently working on bunch of commissions that will probably take me into next year. I’ve been really lucky because based on the work that I’ve done people with similar interests and aesthetics have been coming to me with really great ideas for customs. That’s a great thing about working with other people is you get to work on things that appeal to you but you may have never thought of as a custom. Beyond my commissions I am in the process of trying to put together a collaboration series with another amazing customizer who frequents the Kidrobot Forums. That could be taking shape in the early months of 2010. I am also trying to put together a show that would probably be in March or April of next year at a vinyl shop in Louisville Kentucky called Ultra Pop( HYPERLINK “http://ultra-pop.com/” http://ultra-pop.com/). I’ve got some ideas for a few other Dunny series but right now they’re gonna have to be on the back burner. It is still not for sure, but I hope to be a part of the Discussion Board Artist Series 2 on the Kidrobot Forums. Series 1 is almost a wrap and will be dropping in less than a month and I have a piece in that series so I hope to do Series 2 as well.