Of Cthulu Mashups & 'Pocalypse Horsies: An Interview With Klim Kozinevich of Bigshot Toyworks
Tis been a while since we had Klim Kozinevich of Bigshot Toyworks on the TOYSREVIL-blog, and today we put him the "hot seat", and delve into the ins-and-outs about his Little Maddie and the Four Horsies of the 'Pocalypse, currently on Kickstarter (FYI: Project ends Friday June 20 2014, so get your pledges in ASAP!).
TOYSREVIL: Let's start at the "Beginning" of the "End" … how did Maddie and the Four Horsies came about? What was the genesis? And how did it go from concept to kickstarter?
KLIM KOZINEVICH: In the beginning…. As you know Bigshot Toyworks is a commercial design and development studio and most of the client work that we do is always under strict NDAs and highly classified.
It may be months or even years before the images and art can be shared and sometimes there are projects that take months of work and are incredibly cool that can never be shown for various reasons.
This put me in an odd spot. How do you promote your business if you cant show your work to the world? So I decided to just create original stuff for fun and create a showcase of some great looking character design and cool visuals. This always spawns amazing creative brainstorms for us.
KLIM KOZINEVICH: About 3 years ago I thought that it would be cool to do some mash ups of cute horsies and Cthulu, and that is how Maddie was born. Then I created cute kid versions of the Horses of the four Horsemen of the apocalypse and that is how the Horsies were born.
Maddie was on my Behance portfolio and website since mid 2012, with many people liking it. It was not till early this year that someone liked the images on my Tumblr and then my FB that the internet blew up with the Maddie Maddnes. At that point I knew I should just go for it and try to make this into a real toy.
TOYSREVIL: Who came first? Maddie? Or the 4 Horsies?
KLIM KOZINEVICH: Maddie came first then soon after the horsies were created.
TOYSREVIL: How did Maddie come about? What's Maddies's story?
KLIM KOZINEVICH: Maddie ties the Four Horsies together, she is their Splinter, their Mr. Miyagi, Morpheus and Yoda rolled into one. They are basically kids dealing with the insanity of the expectations placed on them by their parents and their surroundings. They area always trying to bring about the “Pocalypse but fail miserably because they can never get along and work together. There are also a of funny ongoing gags that take advantage of their “powers” and how they interact with their world.
TOYSREVIL: Is this project any different from regular "Bigshot Toyworks" projects? If yes, how and why?
KLIM KOZINEVICH: In this case the client is me, Sometimes you have to invest time and energy into the building blocks of your brand. Client work comes and goes and you are always under creative direction of others. You can't simply make some things cooler or redesign them your way because it is a licensed property and you need to get the work approved by a number of people before it goes to production. There is room to be awesome but you need to contain that awesomeness within the parameters of the gig. Personal projects are freedom you can do anything. You can add or change or adjust anything you want and this is why the in house projects are so much fun for us.
It is a lot more collaborative; I can ask my team for input, have them add things that we normally are not allowed to do.
TOYSREVIL: Tell us a bit about the kickstarter. Is his BSTW's first?
KLIM KOZINEVICH: This is our first Kickstarter. While we can and did do everything we normally do for a project like this. Tooling and production costs are a risk and we wanted to see if we can gather some support through crowd funding.
TOYSREVIL: Any other plans beyond the Kickstarter?
KLIM KOZINEVICH: If this works I have other characters in this line and about a dozen solid brands and projects that we will launch in a similar manner.
(Mock-ups of packaging)
TOYSREVIL: Tell us a bit about yourself, Klim, and BSTW.
KLIM KOZINEVICH: Over the years many friends clients and colleagues have looked through my personal sketchbooks and often said that I should be creating my own projects.
I have been building quite a library of new brands, concepts and characters and Maddie and the Four Horsies of the ‘pocalypse is the first of what we hope will be many fun projects down the line.
KLIM KOZINEVICH: Bigshot Is a full service creative shop with a deep focus on character design and brand development for advertising, toy and entertainment industries. We create memorable characters and help our clients utilize those characters in Print, and TV advertising campaigns, and also use our highly refined development pipeline to turn those characters into toys, gifts and other high end merchandise.
Basically over the past 18 + years we have been building a network of some of the best artists working in the industry and pull them in on a project to project basis. This has been a great success and we are always expanding and growing.
TOYSREVIL: Anything more you'd like to share about this project?
• Kurt Barbee
• Kym Canon
• Justin Kamerer
• Benny Kline
• Zane Kozinevich
• Jon Lambe
• Anthony Mestas
• Diego Rodriguez
• Tyler Trautman
• Glen and the Sunshine Gang
• To you Andy, and everyone that supported us and this project
