Day 374 January 9th
Ushering in the 10th anniversary
of the Minimates I have conducted a series of interviews with people that were
involved with the creation of Minimates ten years ago as well as the people
involved with keeping them going strong today!
10th
anniversary interviews – Nelson X Asencio, Co-founder/ Director of Creative
Development - Storybox Ink Studios, co-creator of Minimates
First
off thank you for taking the time to do this interview in honour of the 10th
anniversary of Minimates!
Nelson - It’s not a problem; I am honored
to do this interview to commemorate the 10th anniversary of
Minimates. Seems like yesterday that we
started R&D on the project and were thinking of names for the lil’
guys. At one point in time, we were
calling them Mimics! It feels kind of
surreal trying to think about how it all came about back in the early days, now
that I think about it.
 | |
| First ad for Minimates, 2002 |
1 – How
did you first become involved with Minimates?
Nelson - At the time, I was Senior Art Director at Art Asylum and was in charge of the 2D department. This meant that I was in charge of all design that came out of the studio. We were involved with new investors so Digger Mesch had an idea to come up with a whole new line of pre-skool inspired toys which evolved into Half-pints, Wobblers and Minimates. Half –pints was inspired by Michael Lau and the underground vinyl toy movement as for Minimates was inspired by Kubricks. Minimates survived the scrutiny of the buyers, sadly Half-pints did not. I’m very proud to be a Co-creator of Minimates along with Digger.
2 –
What did your job all entail?
Nelson - During the time, I was in charge
of overseeing the designs of Marvel statues, internal projects, and also
involved in creating the toy line plans we had at the time. For this particular project, I was in charge
of the initial design of Minimates.
Digger sent us a bunch of different mini-figures for us to look at…from
Kubricks (which I love btw), Legos, Playmobil, and some other ones that Digger
sent over from China. I started going over them to see what was
missing, hence…full articulation. I
wanted to combine the best of all these different figures and bring it into
one. I remember sitting down in the car,
on my way to work one day and sketching out the first design incorporating
these ideas. I knew I wanted it to be fully articulated. Once I had that down,
I asked Andrew Bradshaw to come up with different proportions for the
Minimates. Longer legs, shorter
arms…Bigger heads, smaller torsos, and so on. At the end, the proportions
turned out to be pretty straight on to human proportions.
Once we had the final design, I was in
charge of getting the 2D artwork done by Andrew Bradshaw, Uriel Caton and I,
which I sent to Chuck Terciera for approval.
When we were given the green light, it was sent to the sculptors and the
graphics department. Manny Jesus and
Djordje Djokovic would initially handle the tampo art, translating any 2D work
that would become the final art for each figure. I would also oversee the
prototypes that came back from China
and make tweaks if needed. The final
stage was the paint department, in which Tina Wang would work her magic to pull
it all together. It was definitely a
group effort and I am very proud to have worked with such a strong team.
3 – What was it like at the beginning of
Minimates?
Nelson - At the beginning, I completely
loved it. Something that was in line
with Legos that was our own, I thought it was awesome. Of course, it was a hard sell at first. Many people did not want to take a chance on
it, especially with the properties we had at the time.
As for its style, we were trying to copy
the simplistic styles of Legos and Kubrick, but it really did not convey the
right emotion. When we acquired the
Marvel license through Diamond, that’s when things changed. The size became smaller because of licensing
issues, but it ended up being a good thing.
Since we were now doing characters we loved drawing, being that we were
into comics and all, we started drawing the faces (meaning Andrew Bradshaw,
Uriel Caton and I) within our own style.
We liked what we saw and its become the style of Minimates ever
since.
If you compare the first lines, being the
initial 3” Minimates to the lines that came after we started Marvel, you can
see the difference in style.
4 – Were there any of the earlier
properties that was a personal favorite?
Nelson - I really liked the ‘Crouching
Tiger and Hidden Dragon’ Minimates line.
It was a project that Digger put me in charge of, from coming up with
the toy line plan to final product. I would have to say that I also loved
working on the ‘Lord of the Rings’ line for Minimates. It was challenging to try and get the
likenesses of the actors down, but I think they turned out pretty cool. Another challenge was putting in the right
detail, it was still about simplifying so that was challenging. It was also fun
working on the packaging. Mshindo Kummba
provided the artwork for the front.
5 – Is there any one Minimate that you
would consider to be a favorite even today?
Nelson - Honestly, one of my favorite early
Minimates was Eddie in the “Somewhere in Time” gear. It was never produced, but the prototype came
out awesome. Man, it would have been a
nightmare to produce so many paint ops, tampos and accessories, it was
insane. Unfortunately, the Rock line
didn’t do so well to justify another series, I should have kept the prototype -
LOL.
I also loved the ‘Batman Begins’ Minimates,
which unfortunately never made it to market.
Batman came out awesome and Andy did an awesome job of capturing
Christian Bale’s likeness. I should have
kept that one too - LOL.
Guess I have more than one.
6 – If you could have any character from
any property as a Minimate who would it be and why?
Nelson - Being a huge anime fan, I would
love to do “Gatchaman” as Minimates. I
would love to do the different outfits, the 70’s and the 90’s version. I also remember us doing some Akira concepts
for Chuck back then, and that was also some fun artwork to work on.
Would love to see Star Wars as well! We need a Darth Vader Minimate for sure! LOL
7 – How does it feel to see the Minimate
brand still going strong 10 years after you helped bring them to life?
Nelson - It’s awesome and it’s an honor to
see something you helped to create, have such a following. I do not feel as connected with it as much
now, but I am happy to see Chuck taking it to different levels and doing things
that it was meant to be, like the Pirates line and the Max line. I would love
to see some astronaut lines and underwater explorer Minimates come out as the
years go by. The whole idea was to
create a whole universe of Minimates and that’s were it seems to be going which
is amazing.
It’s also great to see Uriel Caton working
on Minimates to this day, keeping the look consistent for so many years.
8 – What are you working on these days?
Nelson - These days I am working hard on
Storybox Ink Studios, my own design studio that I founded with Manuel Jesus in
2005 after parting from Art Asylum. We’re creating and designing for companies
such as Mattel and Gentle Giant. One of
the cool projects we worked on was the packaging for the ‘Obama’ figure for
Jailbreak Toys. We also had the privilege to work with Newtek, the creators of
Lightwave, on their ‘SpeedEdit’ packaging. We are venturing more into 3D
modeling and prototyping as the year’s progress, being that it is the wave of
the future.
We are also working on our own intellectual
properties and building our own brands such as “Chuki and Friends”. It is where my passion lies; creating new
things has always been my strong point, so we have a few different properties
we want to fully develop. You must love
what you do and that is the power of art at play.
good job ,i like all ,increible
ReplyDeleteGreat interview! Love the designs! Nice work X-Hombre!!!!
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