Secret Origins II: DC Direct Art Department
Last year, I had the opportunity to sit down and interview Georg Brewer (VP Design and Retail Product Development), Ed Bolkus (Sr. Art Director)and Syndee Barwick (Director of Product development) about the inner workings of the DC Direct team. At the time of that interview Associate Art Director Shawn Knapp was overseas checking on the progress of upcoming DC Direct product, something he does several times a year. A month after the interview Ed Bolkus left DC Direct to work for New Line licensing. Ed’s hand-picked replacement is Jim Fletcher.
This year while in New York for Toy Fair I had the opportunity to sit down with Jim Fletcher and Shawn Knapp and talk to them about their involvement in the massive amounts of product DC Direct puts out each year. This is a lengthy interview that will be broken into three or parts. It is my great hope to post on part each week for the next several weeks. In part one we get to know our two subjects and their sorted past...
Feb 2005
PART I-
Julius: So Jim, just to catch you up on why you are here, this the second part of an interview I did last year at this time.
Jim: Boy! These people have been waiting awhile!
Julius: I know, I know.
Jim: It’s like the Star Wars trilogy.
Julius: Last year I sat down and interviewed Georg, Syndee and Ed was still here at that time.
Jim: I can play Ed for a while.
Julius: And Shawn was oversees checking on product last time I was in town. I wanted to give the fans of DC Direct an idea of the people behind the product and that make the decisions. I know Georg takes a lot of heat for everything on the message boards for being in charge…
Jim: As well he should! *laughter*
Julius: So let’s start off with some background and history on you guys. Where did you come from? How long have you been doing this sort of thing? How did you end up here? What did you do before DCD? And maybe give us an idea of how your two jobs differ.
Jim: Shawn and I had been dating for a long time before we got here.
Shawn: That’s right, we actually slept our way to the top.
Jim: Shawn and I have a interesting history together. We had actually worked together before at a different company. The way this all ended up, when Ed left DC... when I came here to interview it was kind of neat because Shawn worked with me at Irwin toys on the Dragonball Z line. I never expected that I would have ended up here too because I was the one that sent him here in the first place.
Shawn: It was defiantly a weird, incestuous series of events. I first met Jim I was living up in Toronto doing freelance for a company called Industrial Zoo back when I used to do sculpting. I happened to be at a convention that he was at with “I-toys”…
Jim: I-Toys: the “new” Irwin.
Shawn: And, I was getting ready to move back to Columbus at the time and he caught me literally day before I was getting ready to leave. He called me up and said “Hey I showed your portfolio to the leadership at I-toys. Come on in.” And I started working for him as soon as they said “ok.”
Julius: Was that pre-Resuarus for you?
Shawn: No that was after Resuarus. Then when I-Toys went under that’s when Jim said “you should give Ed a call” and that’s when I started here. And then he comes back. We’re like bad pennies. You just can’t get rid of us.
*laughs*
Julius: Now Jim you had a history with Ed also?
Jim: I used to work for these guys for about 10-12 years before I ever came here working with Ed and David Irwin with the licensing stuff. I used to do their style guides and all that stuff. It’s been a real long relationship.
Julius: Shawn: Tell us a little about your history with Resaurus. Were you sculpting for them?
Shawn: Yeah, yeah. It’s actually a little funny story of how I started with them…
Jim: *snoring*
*laughing*
Julius: Not SO funny!
Shawn: Not so funny or so short.
*laughs*
I had read in several of the trade magazines about Resaurus, which was in Columbus where I was living… I had gone to Columbus College of and Design focusing on industrial design and just doing all sorts of other stuff unrelated to toys at the time.
But, I was reading about this new company called Resaurus that started in Columbus and I though “all right! I need to get my portfolio together, I need to give them some samples that are relevant and meaningful."
While I was doing all of that, I used to hang out at a place called “Skyline Chili.” I just happened to be in there one day while the two owners of Resaurus were having lunch and I sat in the booth right next to them. And they were sitting there talking about all of these toy lines that they wanted to develop and things like that. So, I went home and took it as a freelance job to come up with the concepts that they were talking about. So, consequently when I got a meeting with them I presented EXACTALLY what they were looking for.
*laughter*
So, after they saw my drawing stuff and my 3-D stuff they hired me on as a sculptor and I was there t…I was the… I think I was the third sculptor that they hired full-time/in-house and I was there until the bitter end.
Then after that I started my own company called “Industrial Zoo” and worked with all sorts of clients such as: Palisades, Diamond, Toy Biz. I did freelance jobs for them doing vehicles, accessories that sort of stuff. Not anything sculptural as far as an action figures, but all the things besides that.
That’s how I got into it.
Julius: When you went into design school was it with the intention that would someday work in the toy industry?
Shawn: No. Actually I wanted to go into special effects. By the time I graduated, the new buzz was that everything was going CGI, computer work, and I always liked the hands-on stuff. I thought what is the point of going out there, maybe struggling for a year or a two, eventually becoming hopelessly unemployed and then having to come back and figure out a new career.
I was reading more and more that a lot of guys doing that were now starting to do toy sculpting. I thought to myself, "I’ll just cut out that middle part of two or three years of unemployment and strive and go directly into toys," and it’s been fabulous ever since.
Jim: That’s funny because I wanted to go into that too for a while, but I thought the same thing. I thought “well, if it’s all just on my computer…” I mean that’s alright, but it’s much more fun to build things and blow them up.
Julius: And you’ve been with DC Direct how long?
Shawn: Coming up on two years now.
Jim: I’m on about eight months.
Julius: I’d like for you both to talk about what your job titles are and what that means in the overall process of making the product.
Shawn: My official title is Associate Art Director. Basically we are such a tight-nit group here, we're a great design team in the fact that anybody… if anyone is "taking point" on something and they don’t have time to take care of a detail we all jump on it. If we have a job description it’s basically that everything gets out the door. We deal with the sculptor, we do quote sheets, we make sure we do the research, and we do the design.. So, it’s like everyone of us is responsible for that. Would you say that’s fair?
Jim: That’s pretty much it. We get a broad span of objectives that we have to meet every year. Georg manages a lot of other divisions at DC Comics, not just DC Direct and what we do. So, a lot of the stuff that filters down from him, he gives over to me and we make sure it gets out of here as fast as humanly possible. That’s pretty much the deal. A lot of times he’ll go into these big meetings with a lot of corporate people and they have all of these goals and missions, they want to generate a lot of money, “how are we going to do it?” And then he’ll come back and call a meeting and we all sit down and figure out how we are going to do all of that stuff.
 Shawn has brought a lot of cool ideas to the table since he has been here, so he’s been a very valuable asset to us the last couple of years. Like that new line of Rogues Gallery Figures. That is a personal favorite of Shawn’s, which he’s not adverse to telling anyone about! *laughter*
But it’s a cool looking line of stuff and it really came out beautifully. So, we’re hoping for a really good reception on those.
One of the things I think is the most fun here is trying to match up the right sculptor with the right artist. Like when we did the Turner line we needed to find someone who could do that…We cant’ use Tim Bruckner for everything. So, we have to find a bunch of other people, we like to use Jonathan Matthews … all our contracted guys are great. They have really stepped up to the plate, big time. James Shoop we signed. Actually, I can tell you, we just officially re-signed Jonathan Matthews. His paperwork is in the mail, so unless it some how gets burned up on the way here... That’s really cool and we’re really happy to keep him on board. The work he did on the last Hush wave is really great.
Shawn: He’s really awesome. You know, I have been working with him since our days at Resaurus. It’s a great relief to be working with him again. He’s a phenomenal talent and a really good person.
Julius: How many exclusive, contracted sculptors do you have on staff right now?
Jim: Right now we have four. Jonathan Matthews, Jack G. Mathews, Jim Shoop and Tim Bruckner. They take the bulk of the work that we do, we just kind of run them mercilessly through the cycle. It’s great to have people like that because even though they are not in-house but they work for us exclusively. So, if we have to, we can call them up and say, "stop working on that and start working on this." We are juggling them constantly. Half the battle is trying to get our stuff out the door.
Julius: I’m curious how you chose which projects go to which sculptor based on their strengths. Is it based more on their previous work you have seen or does it rely more on schedules and timing?
Jim: Timing does play a big part in it. There is never a time where there is just NOTHING to do. We can always go to them and say “why don't you give this a try?” Someone is always coming off of a job and we are always trying to get the right fit.
Shawn: There are always things you keep in the back of your head like Tim Bruckner is amazing at portraitures, well basically he can do anything but his Alex Ross stuff is phenomenal.
Jim: Actually, that was kind of neat too, even with Tim we tried out two new people with the new wave of Alex Ross; Karen Palinko and one of our other contract guys Jack Mathews, we threw them at a couple because Tim’s schedule was so crunchy. And Alex loved their stuff. There were no changes, they came right in, so that was great.
End of Part I
Coming next week Part II- Jim and Shawn discuss artist themed lines, favorite characters and "the scale issue."
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