It took about a week to get everything together, but it's up. Doki's a really nice guy, and has been sculpting toys for over 30 years. http://www.sqdblstr.com/interview/yamomarkinterview
Thank you very much, that was extremely interesting! Would love to learn the Barabaran's backstory...
Talk about timely, I was just getting ready to do a search to try and learn more about Yamomark. A huge thank you for doing this.
Interesting read. I saw a Kaijuken figure in the pic so I'm thinking this might solve the mystery I've never had actually answered that being he is behind that company also.
I second that and as I was suggesting in my retweet of your piece, I was wondering if you had any access to Elegab/Nari. I find his work as fascinating (and thankfully accessible) as Yamomark, RxH or Gargamel. FYI, he responded to my suggestion on twitter with this: "If it is so, I am the fun." - knowing he does English through translator software, I'm guessing that's a yes.
Great interview. I found it funny how he perceives working with other artists as constricting where I find it pretty liberating.
im just chiming in on the english interviews its a great way to hear more from the artists! Thanks sir
Yeah, we need more interview like this. From RxH dude, and this, I've grown a much bigger respect and interest in their work and toys. Awesome stuff, man!
Thanks for sharing. It would have been interesting to know his view on the Kaiju market outside Japan. In comparison to Nari-san, he is not offering direct sales to oversea fans, but gladly joins Dream Rocket & Max Toy on a Wonder Fest booth. Would this be only a language issue ? I am a great fan of his work, but they are sometimes quite difficult to grab.
I got to meet him briefly a while ago. He seems very cheerful and fun. I need to learn to speak Japanese.
He's worked with several companies over the years, but Kaijuken was the first that we was willing to talk about. He only started Yamomark a little over 2 or 3 years ago, but has been making vinyl toys for over 10. Unfortunately, I don't know a lot about Kaijuken, so I wasn't able to ask him a lot of specific questions. We wanted to focus on his work as Yamomark, but he brought along that Kaijuken toy to show some of his earlier work. This was well after the interview when we were just chatting, he talked about how he would really like to sell toys directly to US customers. Apparently he gets a LOT of emails from non-Japanese toy fans asking for international delivery, but because of the logistics, he's not able to. As for an interview with Elegab/Nari-san, he's been on the list for a while, and if everything goes well, you can pretty safely expect an interview from him sometime in the near future. Thanks for all the comments, and glad you guys liked the interview. I have a lot more projects planned for the website, and I appreciate your support.
OK so he sculpted for Kaijuken! I can see that. Alien Inabus does seem like it was made with the same hand that made Mushroom Soup Man. Kind of like how the same person who sculpts exohead sculpts Zollmen.
I was wondering if you would mind setting up some means to share your interview schedule and perhaps we could chime in with questions to ask of them. As you can see from the reactions you're getting, you are already doing a great job as it is, but different people are curious about different things. I'm thinking on your blog, if it has some sort of polling feature, or here on SB, which I know has poll capabilities. I hate turning this into a project and homework for you, so just skip it if it's going overboard, but you're like an Avatar for us..
