Artist-Feature: Zakane (from Issue #1 of *I LIKE TOYS*)
I met Tan Hong Xiang AKA Zakane when he had won a contest prize for me, and we met for the first time when I passed him the prize (and we attended the Iron Man Hot Toys CollARTbo exhibition here in Singapore). To my knowledge, he is the only papertoy designer I have literally met face-to-face in Singapore, and he is only but an alarmingly small handful of practitioners here in our island state, where ironically "money" is a singular commodity whereby most things are judged with and against. Ironic as well is that Zakane offers up his original papertoy builds for FREE to download, from his own website.
One aspect of his creation: PixelBlox - is that you do not require "glue" to hold the folded pieces together too! We are delighted he has for the inaugural issue of I LIKE TOYS a PixelBlox-build named "Gosho Power" for folks to cut-n-fold to make their own! I had a quick chat with Zakane about his impressions of the papertoy-scene, and hopefully in time, more folks will catch-on to this phenomenon which has quietly taken on the world!
TOYSREVIL: What do you think of the local papertoy scene in Singapore? Thriving or Trying? Papertoy-scene in Asia, versus the world?
ZAKANE: Local papertoy scene is still quite small as the demand is not high but designers here have been working hard to push up the scene. Other countries in Asia such as Indonesia, had made quite a scene in papertoys as the demand for designer toys have been significantly increasing to a level which I believe is comparable to the rest of the world.
TOYSREVIL: TOYSREVIL: What do you think needs to be done or has to be done to improve the scene?
ZAKANE: To improve the scene of papertoys, we need to get more people know the existence and understand the art of papertoys. One way to achieve this is through workshops and exhibitions. Hopefully it will trigger the interest of more locals to get involved and who knows, this could become a new trend here.
TOYSREVIL: TOYSREVIL: Absolutely agree with you there! How was your workshop in 2011? Do you think something like this can work in the long run in Singapore?
ZAKANE: The workshop was a great success! There was a non-stop flow of participants from all ages. Everyone had a good time squeezing out their creative juices and bringing home something that they can say is uniquely theirs. It was also a good exposure for us as we get a chance to show the masses what a papertoy is in real life through a mini exhibition that was set up beside the workshop. Something like this would definitely work in the long run as it is an simple yet effective way to let more people learn about papertoys.
[Zakane along with Hard Yeo (another practitioner
of papertoys in Singapore) held a workshop titled:
JustUs x Pakubunny Papertoy Workshop at MAAD]
TOYSREVIL: TOYSREVIL: What's the plan for 2012? What can folks look forward to from Zakane?
ZAKANE: Currently I am working on some request that I received earlier on this year. I will continue to work more on PixelBlox along with my latest series, PawPals. Hopefully by the second half of the year the second set of JustUsProduct button badges will be complete. Watch out for it!
Look for Zakane's work at www.justusproduct.webs.com and his Facebook Artist-Page!
WHAT: In the month of June, I will be posting select articles from the first issue of my Sold Out self-published fanzine *I LIKE TOYS* - in anticipation of the release of the second issue in July-ish, and as well for folks who might have missed out on scoring the 1st ish, and for folks to see what I'm going on about with my Zine. Hope you enjoy the reads, folks!
One aspect of his creation: PixelBlox - is that you do not require "glue" to hold the folded pieces together too! We are delighted he has for the inaugural issue of I LIKE TOYS a PixelBlox-build named "Gosho Power" for folks to cut-n-fold to make their own! I had a quick chat with Zakane about his impressions of the papertoy-scene, and hopefully in time, more folks will catch-on to this phenomenon which has quietly taken on the world!
TOYSREVIL: What do you think of the local papertoy scene in Singapore? Thriving or Trying? Papertoy-scene in Asia, versus the world?
ZAKANE: Local papertoy scene is still quite small as the demand is not high but designers here have been working hard to push up the scene. Other countries in Asia such as Indonesia, had made quite a scene in papertoys as the demand for designer toys have been significantly increasing to a level which I believe is comparable to the rest of the world.
TOYSREVIL: TOYSREVIL: What do you think needs to be done or has to be done to improve the scene?
ZAKANE: To improve the scene of papertoys, we need to get more people know the existence and understand the art of papertoys. One way to achieve this is through workshops and exhibitions. Hopefully it will trigger the interest of more locals to get involved and who knows, this could become a new trend here.
TOYSREVIL: TOYSREVIL: Absolutely agree with you there! How was your workshop in 2011? Do you think something like this can work in the long run in Singapore?
ZAKANE: The workshop was a great success! There was a non-stop flow of participants from all ages. Everyone had a good time squeezing out their creative juices and bringing home something that they can say is uniquely theirs. It was also a good exposure for us as we get a chance to show the masses what a papertoy is in real life through a mini exhibition that was set up beside the workshop. Something like this would definitely work in the long run as it is an simple yet effective way to let more people learn about papertoys.
[Zakane along with Hard Yeo (another practitioner
of papertoys in Singapore) held a workshop titled:
JustUs x Pakubunny Papertoy Workshop at MAAD]
TOYSREVIL: TOYSREVIL: What's the plan for 2012? What can folks look forward to from Zakane?
ZAKANE: Currently I am working on some request that I received earlier on this year. I will continue to work more on PixelBlox along with my latest series, PawPals. Hopefully by the second half of the year the second set of JustUsProduct button badges will be complete. Watch out for it!
Look for Zakane's work at www.justusproduct.webs.com and his Facebook Artist-Page!
WHAT: In the month of June, I will be posting select articles from the first issue of my Sold Out self-published fanzine *I LIKE TOYS* - in anticipation of the release of the second issue in July-ish, and as well for folks who might have missed out on scoring the 1st ish, and for folks to see what I'm going on about with my Zine. Hope you enjoy the reads, folks!
