Interview with Wheaty Wheat’s Richard VanOver

Richard VanOver founded Wheaty Wheat Studios with his wife, Debbie Yoon, with the goal of producing art toys of the highest quality possible.  An artist in his own right, Richard’s passion is helping talented artists turn their 2d art and characters into living breathing 3d toys.  We recently had a chance to visit Wheaty Wheat Studios’ brand new building and talk to Rich about his company and his perspective on anything and everything about the designer toy biz.  Since Rich had a lot of insightful stuff to share, we’ve broken the interview into two parts.  The second part will follow tomorrow.

Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?  What did you do prior to starting your mega empire?

Ohhhh… Mega empire. I like that.  I might have to put that up front.  Well, I went to art school in Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Institute of Art. I moved out here, because I had a couple friends that  moved out from school and they were working for a big prop company doing things for theme parks and stuff like that. I got hired and moved out and then started doing the large sculpting out of foam.  I worked there for about 2 or 3 years and after that I went into special effects where I worked on Dogma, Three Kings and also worked on a bunch of commercials.  From special effects I was hired at Disney, back to doing large foam sculpting.  Well I was at Disney I worked on Tokyo Seas Disney and California Adventures. I worked there foe one year before getting laid off. From Disney I went to Gentle Giant Studios and began my career of toy prototyping.  When I left GG I began Wheaty Wheat Studios out of my garage.

In art school I was a painting major with a print minor.  I did maybe one semester of sculpting, In the 4 years I was there mostly wood I used. I never really sculpted figures before moving to California. So it was all pretty much taught on the fly.  So that’s what I did before I started my mogul empire!

People on the boards probably think you’re a mogul.  You must be right?  You make your own toys!

Yeah… Till [we let them know that], “Yeah it’s just me and Debbie in our house and garage” (surprised sound) (chuckles).I told someone that and it fucking freaked them out. It was great.  And it was the truth you know.  And the product was packed up around me and I was sitting out there trying to sculpt in a tiny little space smaller than a prison cell.

And it was almost like it was your warehouse as well.

Yeah, I had all the Pinocchio Product we did with Gris Grimly in there and then we had MAD’s Phase 1, 6000 units total run and Phase 2 packed in there.  Basically I had just a tiny space to do my molding, my sculpting, my casting and sanding. What a toxic nightmare!

You almost didn’t have a house anymore.  It was full of toys.

Yeah. Well the office was full of toys.  And the office was coming out into the dining room and taking over that space.  Debbie was getting tired of not having the house be a house.  So we made the leap of faith to the new building.

Do you collect toys and if so what?

Toys. Yes, I do!  And my favorite toy…  Well, I collect some vinyl.  And of course I have  my own product. Who is my favorite?  I love MAD’s anything! I dig his work allot he is very talented. I’m humbled just to be able to work with all the artists under the WW banner. Brandt Peter’s new piece we are doing are sweet! I’m in love with the 30’s animation style. Tristan’s designs are one of my favorites, Nathan Juervicius, Michael Lau.  Those are probably my two overall favorites outside of the Wheaty Wheat clan.

But my biggest love is “Johnny West” by MARX toys. Johnny West was a cowboy action figures when I was a kid. Those things are just… I had the whole freakin’ set.  Out of all the toys I had, Those were my favorite.   I had the covered wagons, the horses, the Indians, the soliders, and the women, the whole set.  Then my mom gave ‘em all way. But I just bought from Marx re-released of Johnny West and his horse Thunderbolt in the original packaging from the original molds. I believe they did a low run of those.  I’m a huge fan of the Marx toys because the articulation in those for the time was pretty sweet.

So you still do prototyping for mainstream toys?

Yeah, we try to keep it flowing.  We do a lot of stuff for Sideshow right now.  We’ve worked with Jakks, and Mattel. It pays the bills!

Favorite artist?

My favorite artist [is] Lucien Freud.  His paintings are badass!  He just did a show at MOMA, maybe a year ago.  Lucien Freud has to be my favorite painter of all time.

And my other favorite artist is Tom Waits, just so you know.

The Musician…

So 2 spectrums.

People who have motivated or influenced you?

My DAD — with the back of his hand.  No, my dad was a good motivator.  I think my parents taught me on pretty well how to work.  They gave me a good work ethic – nothing’s handed to you.  If you wanted it badly enough, you worked for it.
Thanks Mom and Dad!!

On your website you mention that Wheaty Wheat was started with 500 dollars and a dream.  What was that dream?

The dream was just to make the best toys I could. To be able to do what the other companies I worked for are doing but be able to do it on a better level. And not…  It’s hard to explain.  You have to work in this environment. When we did toys – you were a sculptor and made these things bad ass and then they’d go to China and then they’d come out like crap.  Because everybody wants to cut corners and make it cheaper.  Not all places.  Sideshow Toys is fucking phenomenal.  Their stuff is so beautiful, it’s unbelievable.  They take the time to do that.  A lot of companies just…

Here’s a quick story.  I was work for this company and we made these Lord of the Rings Toys.  They were going to be the Burger King premiums.  They were only like 2 or 3 inches tall and they stood a pie shaped base. You could put them together and the ring was in the center.  We spent allot of time working on these pieces We had a lot of scans of the actors and what not but you had to go in there and tweak everything and make them into their poses.  They were going into detail like sculpting their irises in.   It was just insane detail and painstaking, because it was just never enough detail.  And the client sent them out to the factory, we got test shots back to adjust. Oh my god they looked like lead soldiers.  All the detail was gone, washed out and it was just like a blob for a head, two black dots for eyes.  It was just really crappy looking, clubs for hands? That to me was just — you know these artist are working very hard to make something nice and crap comes out at the end.  I really couldn’t take that anymore.

So I wanted to be able to do my own thing and do it right. Make sure we can make the best product we can.

When did you found Wheaty Wheat?

I think it was 2001.  January 1st, 2001.

Why Designer Toys?  How did you get into that?

I wanted to start doing some small scale manufacturing and we were looking to pickup  smaller artists when we first started.  We ran into Gris Grimly at SDCC and he was looking to do something as well, we really dug his art. I was basically looking for art that was fun to translate that had personality of its own. I had a lot of fun sculpting his pieces. Then we meet MAD at Toy Fair just happened to be showing around the MAD*L design… I was starting to get into vinyl the comic-con before, I had picked up my first Michael Lau piece. I dropped about $600 for two figures from Kidrobot. I was kinda getting into that, I was digging that whole style.  WWS was still prototyping so we were still work in the whole mainstream action figure world. But once we started manufacturing that when my interest really started. Because it was an art form and I dug that. 

I sooo hate when people that any sculptor that does toys isn’t an artist.  Because if you’ve seen some of the sculpts that people do freehand – they’re better than anything  that I’ve seen in  some museums, by people who do call themselves artists.  I just have a pet peeve about that.

About people not thinking toy sculptors are artists?

Yeah. Anybody involved in the creative side of toys are artist.  From designers to the model maker all artists.  As if all of a sudden, somebody just craps out a toy.  I mean you could think that because a lot of the toys that comes into the toy stores are crappy. It’s been cheapened or tweaked to make it cheaper for the corporate machine or whoever.  Which is sad.  Even if you’re making Sully and Mike or some other thing, you’re still an artist.  You’re still an artist, still putting your soul into it – even if you have to make into a shampoo bottle.  When you take that time to work something… there’s a lot that goes into it. I don’t think sculptors get enough respect.

And they’re anonymous right?

Yeah.  Only a few toy companies actually put the sculptors name or designers name.  We’re going to start doing that.  We did on the Gris Grimly thing, put all who was on it, who helped on it.  I think we want to start doing that because it’s a little bit of everybody – like Joe  Brogno who’s an awesome modeler.  I feel he should be represented on the package in some shape or form.  Like Nick’s (Tragnark) new toy, we’re going to do it on that – start doing that stuff.  I think it makes sense.  But then there’s a double-edged sword to that.  Is it going to affect people who want that to be an artist piece? They don’t want to know that someone else sculpted it?    I don’t know how that would fly.  I believe in that totally.

People know you as the owner of Wheaty Wheat.  But I don’t think many people know you play an active role in toy development, at least you do some of the sculpting.

For any of the vinyl stuff, that’s pretty much done in the computer.  Unless it’s a really organic project.  The reason we do that is just to keep really nice clean edges. They are shapes that should be nice and clean.  I do all the action figures out side prototyping work, I sculpt everything else that comes through the shop.  I also do the mold making and I do the majority of the painting, though I do hire freelance painters – it’s very time consuming sometimes.

You’re an artist yourself.  We’ve seen custom Funny Clubs and Munnys from you, have you done other art projects before you started doing toys?

Yeah, back in Cleveland.  We had a group called “Art without walls”.  I was one of the founding members.  We used to do art shows.  We’d find raw spaces such as warehouse spaces that were either for lease or just abandoned.  We  would find out who either owned ‘em or who was leasing ‘em  and then we’d go “hey we’ll go in there clean it up, paint it, have a show – it’ll be up either a night or however long you’ll let us have it up”.  So we went around and we got pretty well known in Cleveland. We had a couple of shows in New York, Pittsburgh, and Akron.  Anyway that blew up.  I was doing a lot of painting – had a lot of solo shows in Cleveland.  It was a fun time. Cleveland’s art scene is really good but you want to get out and explore while you’re young too. I thought California would be a good opportunity to do that.  I never expected to own a business.  I was more having fun doing art, being an artist.

Are we going to see a Rich VanOver vinyl?

I don’t know.  I don’t think I’ll do my artist series yet.  I’ve thought about it but… Maybe.  Sometimes it puts me off because I don’t want people to think “OHHH because he’s the Wheaty Wheat owner he can do a toy”.  I have designs, but I have a company to run first.  But I am making my garage into my studio so you might see 2D artwork from me.  That’s my passion.  You might see some other things down the line, maybe a vinyl.  I can’t guarantee it though.  I would love to but I don’t know if I got it in me to do that.  It’s more of a design thing.  My painting style is so different than toy stuff.

What is your painting style?

Sloppy and drunk.  Drunken Master. No.  It’s… well you saw my 20” MAD*L.  It’s that style – it’s got dark overtones to it, it’s very loose and painterly.  Kinda on the heavier side.  We’ll see what comes out of it. 

It would be good to see more vinyl like that. A lot of it’s on the cute side.

Yeah… that’s true. You know, maybe I should do one and see.  Yeah, good point (chuckles).

It seems like several companies have had trouble with production of designer toys.  Especially in terms of coordinating with factories overseas in China.  From the outside, it looks like it’s been mostly smooth sailing for Wheaty Wheat?  Is that the case?

(chuckles) It’s a lot of up all night talking to China and emailing China.  We’ve been very lucky, knock on wood.   That could change at any moment.  I try to keep stuff on schedule but it’s hard.  There’s a lot of things that play into that, there could be a problem with the factory not understanding something you’re trying to explain to them or what not.  Yeah, I just have to say we’ve been super lucky. I guarantee you somewhere along the time something might… you never know.

What do you look for in choosing artists to work with?
I guess just how it’s going to translate to 3D.  If it’s going to work as 3D vinyl.

Is it hard to tell that ahead of time?

Not if you know your shit!

You hear about talented people complaining that they can’t get into the toy business.  Do you have any advice for talented but mostly unknown people?

That’s a tough one.  Not really.  Keep trying. MAD took it to everybody and he found someone who was willing to take a chance.  It’s just trial and error.  If everybody could do it, it wouldn’t be special.  It’s like being a movie star… no, it’s not.  There’s thousands of actors out here, but how many get picked up?

You recently signed some new artists.  Can you tell us a little about them and what we can expect from them in terms of toys?

All I have to say on that is everyone of them is very talented and the toys are going to be pretty bad ass.  We’ve got one girl to the group and we’re working on another girl.  That’s about it.  Come to Toy Fair and see.

Check back tomorrow to read the conclusion of Richard VanOver’s interview.