Tristan Eaton

Interview with Tristan Eaton

- Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

T: I was born in Los Angeles and my mother is Welsh. I lived there until I was 8 and then moved to London (Chiswick/Acton area) and started skating. I was a skater until I was about 16 and then I left London. It was a great time in London as there weren’t many skaters at the time and Slam City Skates was the only skate shop in the city. We would skate at Romford, Harrow, South Bank and more. This was in 1991 and then suddenly we all stopped skating and started getting more into drugs, partying and girls. Around the same time, my friends and I got into graffiti really hard.

My brother and his crew were bombing alot and that totally inspired me to start as well. He was a really big influence even though he used to beat the shit out of me in those days! Anyways, that’s how I got to know Mode2 and Elk and many other writers from those times.

Then we suddenly moved to Detroit, which was a serious culture shock; lived there until I was 20, did Art School and some freelance illustration and then moved to New York to attend the School of Visual Arts. It’s actually in New York where I started to do a lot of freelance work and eventually hooked up with Kidrobot. I helped them to start up the company by designing their logo and some platform toys like the Munny and Dunny series, Skumbo and Toro.

After a while, I felt that Kidrobot was heading in a different, more commercial direction that I was not initially looking for. We decided to create a company that was more art-based, not based on commercial gain and financial success; not that there’s anything wrong with a bit of that, but we feel those should just be the bi-products of the artists integrity and not the sole reason for making a toy. So we started Thunderdog as a full-service design studio and a toy brand. We try to make our toys have an esoteric meaning to them that are inspired by art and characters that can be made into a series using different mediums.

- Tell us about the London project with the Thunderdog Collective.

T: We created a collective under our company name Thunderdog and we have partnered with another firm called Corbis (Bill Gates’ Licensing company) which is one of the biggest licensing companies in the world. We created a business model whereby we give all our artists in our collective a budget and they then create work which in turn, is licensed and they can receive royalties through that. The licensing goes out to mobile phones, merchandising brands like Dolce & Gabbana, for example and advertising as well. The interesting thing is that this is the only project within Corbis that utilises all aspects of their licensing practices.

The great thing for me is that I get to reach out to these artists, give them a budget and they can then sit back and get some royalties from it which helps them become more independent as artists. We also get paid to market this whole idea and that is why we are running this exhibition in London to promote the project.

- So in a sense, this concept is a win-win situation for everybody involved?

T: Yeah, I really want to promote artist independence and at the same time enable artists from all over the world to come together and form more of a sense of community. It also helps to promote awareness for these artists through using different channels of media.

There are a lot of artists who are excellent at what they do but they may not have the “business-savvy” to go out and get their work where it needs to be and make enough money to survive.

- The vinyl toy was made popular in the late 90’s with artists like Michael Lau in Hong Kong and Bounty Hunter in Japan; 10 years on and toy collecting is still popular. Is this just a trend or has it turned into a movement and a part of youth culture now?

T: I think that at first, people thought it was just a trend, but the ability to make a toy is so accessible now that it has become another popular medium for artists to use.

- What artists do you draw your inspirations from, both in the toy world and the illustration/graffiti world?

T: I have a few people who fluctuate regularly; Ashley Wood, Katsuhiro Otomo, Mode2, Zephyr and Nicer from TATS Cru. I also recently bought a book by Ai Yamaguchi which was incredible and she is a new inspiration to me.

- You have just come back from Japan where you had a couple of things going on. What were you up to over there?

T: I did one exhibition with Gallery Lele which was organised by CWC, who are my Japanese agents and responsible for re-releasing the popular Blythe Doll series.

I created these characters known as Runts which look like really vintage, old-style cartoon characters that like to get drunk, have sex and go crazy. Like most cartoon characters nowadays! So for the exhibit, I created these hand painted animation cells that looked like they had been lost for many years. This was to help it give a real vintage, animated feel.

Shortly after that, we did a show with a company called Alive Athletics and I released a watch with them. We exhibited at the three-floor Calquinto Showroom in Daikanyama. The watch I designed was fucking crazy! It’s huge and has a graphic of mine in 3D on the watch face and then it has the same design laser-etched onto a leather band. The 100pc limited edition boxset came with interchangeable red & blue 3D sunglasses also with laser etching on the sides of the glasses.

DJ Yasa (one of Japan’s DMC Champs) played for us there while myself and Filth painted live. It was the first time we had shown our entire toy-line to Japan; from Mark Gonzalez, TenaciousD, Your Momma to our new 10deep collab toy called Murko.

- So I guess you have been to Japan many times then?

T: That was my third time to visit. I actually have a 75 year-old uncle living in Tokyo called Ralph Danks making a living as an artist. He is an ex-rock’n’roller and he is huge in Japan. His art is used in the Roppongi Hills street posters and on Tokyo subway carriages and he has more toys out there than I do!

- Are you collecting any toys from Japan at the moment?

T: I shouldn’t be telling you this but I have been collecting the nastiest, dirtiest Japanese hardcore porn toys! The toys are beautiful! I got a set of 10 girls who are tied up in the weirdest ways but these toys are injection-moulded with tiny little detailed accessories which are only 1cm long which just blew my mind when I saw them!

- How about any toys from the UK/USA?

T: From the UK, I really like Pete Fowler. His stuff is so playful looking and it cheers me up when I look at it. His designs are well-rounded and brilliantly executed.

In the U.S., I would say that Kaws has really grown on me over the last few years. I wasn’t a huge fan of his work until I got to meet him personally and began to like his work alot more.

Thunderdog : www.thunderdogstudios.com

CWC : www.cwctokyo.com

Alive Athletics : www.aliveathletics.com

Written by Selph

Photos by Anja Parchet