Sol Nte is passionate about toys, as many collectors are. What sets him apart is his drive and motivation to become an active participator in his hobby. Not many people have the guts (or talent) to be so inspired by the toys they collect to go and make their own. This is the FiGUREPUNK story.

>>>What lead you to form your own toy company?

First of all I should say that I got hooked on figures as a child: My Dad bought me a Han Solo figure in 1977 and in the next few years my Star Wars figure collection grew and grew. Aside from Star Wars the only other figures I had lots of as a child were Smurfs: There was a window full of Smurfs near where one of my Mum's friends lived so we'd often pass it. It wasn't a diorama; just a couple of plants and loads of Smurfs. It was a really good collection. Star Wars figures and Smurfs were the first figures I collected, I still have all of them from that time and I think that they began my interest in collecting figures. On our first trip to Tokyo, in 2000, Jane (my partner) and I saw the first Crazy Children figures. We were amazed. We enjoyed Japan so much that we went back to Tokyo in 2001 this time we bought a lot more toys and I began to become interested in toys as an art form. Before going to Japan I'd never seen figures displayed in glass cases and treated as sculpture.

Anyway after we returned from Japan I still wanted to collect some of the toys I'd discovered there so I began to look on the Internet and suddenly found that there was a lot of information there about the amazing figures I'd seen in Japan.            At this point I should also tell you that I've been a conceptual artist since 1995. In the autumn of 2002 I sold a painting in a group show organised by the London Institute of Pataphysics and realised that I was tired of most of the art I'd been doing. I'd recently done some ceramics which had rekindled my interest in sculpture and then I read on the web that the vinyl figures I'd been so impressed by in Tokyo started life as polymer clay or wax sculptures. I had no experience with wax but had done quite a bit with real clay plus at that point I'd been sculpting experimental figures in wood for over 10 years. So I bought some polymer clay and started making a few figures. At first I just wanted to make some unusual figures for myself but then the more I read about figure production the more I liked the idea of turning one of my polymer clay figures into a vinyl figure. This was early in 2003. There then followed a year of painstaking research into the figure industry, the rotocasting process and marketing figures. I realised that most successful figures were produced by companies and the name of the company became a brand for the figures. I was inspired by the names of Japanese Companies like Bullmark, Bounty Hunter, Medicom etc. They were not only good names but they were also good brands, normally if you liked one figure produced by these companies you would like the others and the company logo on a product could tell you what to expect. This made me realise that if I was going to produce a figure it made much more sense to form a small company to do it rather than just use my own name. I also felt that if I was successful the company could grow and include other people whilst retaining its brand identity. Having a company was also important for online figure sales: I needed a good domain name that was easy to remember so I could sell figures online. I thought of various things but figurepunk.com always sounded the best, Jane liked that one best too thus my own toy company, FiGUREPUNK, was born. 

 

 

>>>Do you have a background in manufacturing or any of the steps involved in making a figure?

Well I have a lot of sculpting experience and that was vital because it meant that I could sculpt tooling master figures myself which saved me a lot of money in the manufacturing process. I also got friendly with a local company called MouldArt whose expertise produced resin copies of my sculpted figures so I could get a very good idea of what my figures would look like when I varied the vinyl base colour. Apart from sculpting experience I've learnt everything I know about figure manufacturing from the web. As I said above it took a year of research before I could produce my own figure. During that time I talked to a lot of companies, toy sellers and fans to gather the information I needed. I'm slowly in the process of collating that information and putting it on the web as a guide for others interested in figure production. Currently this takes the form of the small DIY section I have on figurepunk.com .

>>>How did you come up with your first figure, Mashboy?

Mashboy contains 2 elements. The head is a style of head that I've sculpted and drawn many times over the years. I think I first drew that style of head 18 years ago. The body is like a rubber duck body but smaller and with the wings replaced with arms pointing forward. I'm very interested in the situationist concept of detournement, the adaptation and re-contextualisation of existing forms, and Mashboy is a essentially a detourned rubber duck. I was very interested in the idea of the rubber duck as the simplest vinyl figure form and so wanted to work with that idea but at the same time produce my own character with my own style. I wanted to do something different but which felt familiar and this ended up as Mashboy.

>>>Was it a difficult process turning an idea into a commercial end product? Can you give some idea of how you went about things?

The process was quite easy because I made the decision to just do it regardless of the outcome. In other words I was prepared to make Mashboy even if I didn't sell any. When I produced Mashboy Series 1 I thought either I'm going to make a toy that will sell and people will like it or else I will have a box of these things cluttering up the house for years. As it happened Mashboy sold well and I was able to produce Series 2. I think that whenever you want to produce a new product you have to be prepared for failure all you can do is make something to the best of your ability and then let people decide whether they like it. When I produced Mashboy I was very careful to do something that was completely different, there are a lot of vinyl figures out there and I wanted to do something that stood out but at the same time felt familiar. That's why Mashboy is loosely based on the rubber duck so that it feels familiar but when you look closely you don't quite know what it is. I also wanted to appeal to other people like me who liked unusual toys. I'll keep this short but further technical details can be found in the diy section of figurepunk.com .

>>>I was interested to see on Mashboy's packaging that he's an "art bath toy". Certainly a different take on the vinyl figure, especially as most collectors would freak out at the thought of their figures coming in contact with water, let alone  the bath. Are you trying to encourage interaction with your designs by making them for the bath?

Yes, I mean there's this whole culture of keeping vinyl figures mint in their packaging but I don't really see what pleasure there is in that, I mean you're obviously not even going to look closely at the details of a toy if you don't take it out of the package so what's the point in having it? The idea of Mashboy as an art bath toy is that it's durable enough to be played with, get wet and still look the same.  Ultimately it's supposed to be fun. You're not going to have any fun with something if you keep it in the packet so Mashboy is a bath toy just to give collectors that extra incentive to take it out of the packet and play with it. The best thing is that because Mashboy is a boy and not a duck he doesn't float upright but floats face down just like a real boy would...I still think that's funny!

>>>The DIY ethos was one of the characteristics of the punk movement. Was this in anyway influential in naming your company?

Yes, of course. The DIY ethos has been central to avant-garde activity for over a century but with punk it was the first true democratisation of this philosophy that encouraged everyone to do things for themselves from making tapes and publishing fanzines to setting up infoshops and independent record companies. Now of course the web adds an extra level to what is possible for DIY culture. I like the idea that everyone should have access to doing and making anything they want. After all everyone has interesting ideas and this should be encouraged. I think punk encouraged people to just have a go without worrying about how good the result will be. This meant that even if the result wasn't very good you'd gone through the process of putting something into the public domain and could learn from that and make each subsequent thing you did better and better.

>>>Do you consider yourself a punk?

No, not really. I mean the punk moment has been and gone, it's no longer a contemporary force for cultural change and has now been reduced to just a music and fashion style. We have to be here now, learn from things and move on. Punk is just one piece of the puzzle, one part of a continuum of non-conformist democratic creativity that began with Dada in Zurich in 1916 and just keeps getting bigger and better. Currently I consider myself a conceptual artist because it's the best description of my creative activity and the way I approach it.

 

>>>Who has influenced you in what you are doing?

My toy production is influenced by Devilrobots, Michael Lau and Bounty Hunter. My artistic style is influenced by Karel Appel, Jean Dubuffet, Ray Johnson, Viktor IV and Dieter Roth. Of course there are so many more people and things that influence me but the above names have a direct relation to my work. My wonderful partner Jane is also a big influence on my work as she has encouraged me every step of the way and always given me an honest opinion when I've needed it.

>>>Are there plans for developing further figures?

Yes, basically as many as I can afford to produce. There will hopefully be 2 new vinyl figures out in the first quarter of 2005 and I'm making new prototypes all the time so I always have more things I want to produce.

>>>How about taking on other people's designs? Is FiGUREPUNK open to submissions?

Not now, but maybe in the future. At the moment FiGUREPUNK is a one man operation: I design and sculpt the figures (quite literally at my kitchen table), fund the manufacturing, design the packaging, handle the marketing and distribution and also maintain the website and handle the sales. If I accept submissions I'd have to pay other people and at the moment there just isn't the money to do it. I encourage everyone who wants to make figures to save up and do it themselves, if I can do it anyone can.

>>>>Thank you for your time.

RTHQ.com December 04