I AM NOT ORIGINAL!!!!...nor are any of my IDEAS! Over the years, I’ve given this ‘speech’ during panels and in interviews but it’s still relevant to all you good people out there who ask me “TODD... HOW DO YOU THINK OF ALL THOSE COOL THINGS???!” Listen, all of my success over the years with comics and toys has NOT been based off of originality. In fact, I am most inspired when I see something and think… DOH… why didn’t I think of that????!! what I have done, though, is take bits and pieces of things Ive seen in my lifetime, that Ive liked and put a bunch of those little pieces together into something a little different. And when I do that, I tend to get too much credit for doing something New. Its just not true. No artist can create in a vacuum. We have all looked at the world we live in and from those experiences, they have shaped how we make art. all I ever wanted to do on any project was to make it look cooler! I want to take something that already existed and make it even COOLER. Like Spider-Mans webs… I wanted to make them come alive so artistically I could do more things with them. This was inspired by a couple things I saw other artists attempt in a single image here and a single image there. Back in my early early Spawn days, when the comic was at the top of the sales charts, all the toy companies came to me wanting to make my character into plastic. I quickly understood that they were going to regurgitate the same standard, traditional toys. I thought my character would work best by selling them in NON-TRADITIONAL places with non-traditional designs and methods. They couldnt do that and so a new toy company was born... McFarlane Toys. When I first started making toys, I had access to ALL of the same information and tools as everyone else. Photos, videos, EYEBALLS, etc. I simply thought, ‘WHY can’t action figures actually LOOK like the person or character?’ Why cant they just be COOLER? So, I set out to attempt to answer that question. It was as simple as that. And the answer was that action figures could be cooler because plastic will go into any shape you want it to. Add a little paint and you would be amazed at what you can come up with. Now, fast forward a couple of decades and there are lots of companies that are also doing cool toys. And we the customers are the ones that win. Below are a few photos of toys from our upcoming The Walking Dead TV and The Walking Dead from Skybound (comic) line-ups. Whether we are sculpting or painting (which you can see here).... we are always referencing a picture of the character to get the closest resemblance possible. Anyway, I didn’t do anything original - I simply used their inspiration and applied it to make something COOL (action figures) even COOLER. You can do the same thing! Take something that already exists and make it better (think about the cell phone and then the iphone. They let you touch the screen directly. That was really COOL!!!! YOU can be different AND ‘successful’ TODD
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 02:19:01 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015