[00:00:13] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Rick Marshall of the Daily Gazette, and this is the martial arts podcast in which I talk to artists around New York's capital region about their work, their inspiration, and the experiences that connect us all, regardless of where we call home.
In the last episode, I spoke to Saratoga based filmmaker Spencer Sherry, the writer, director and producer of the Monkey, an adaptation of a Stephen King story. In this episode, I talk to Clifton park based sculptor and designer Paul Harding, who has become one of the leading artists in the world of toy and action figure design.
I visited Harding in his home studio to record our interview, surrounded by toys, statues and other collectibles hes designed over the years, from Marvel and DC superheroes to GI Joe and Star wars figures, even toys based on movie, television and music icons. You can view a brief video tour of Harding
[email protected]. but first, be sure to listen to our chat about the role he plays in creating the amazing toys you can find on shelves around the world.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Paul, sitting here in your studio is a little like finding yourself in Willy Wonka's factory, except instead of candy, it's toys. There are toys everywhere, from stuff you and I grew up with and older than that to a few things I'm pretty sure were never released, I've certainly never seen before. You and I have known each other a while now. Getting to know you and what you do has been fascinating because it's like taking a look behind the curtain at something. We're all familiar with toys and collectibles and such, but most people know very little about how they're created. How did you get into designing toys and collectibles?
[00:02:04] Speaker C: Hey, Rick, it all started around 2001 or 2002. I was a few years out of illustration school, and I was working as a designer in Manhattan and the.com bubble had burst and I was left with just my instincts, and my instincts were for illustration. So I started working for magazines, doing editorial work, and then I met some toy people in New York City, which eventually led to working for a small toy company, designing my own characters, as well as working on licensed characters, sculpting them, too. So soon after that, I was introduced to a great sculptor who was working for Marvel, and he allowed me into his studio to help him out while I was working on my own projects. And, you know, a year or two later, I was able to contact Marvel and companies like that myself. And that's, that's basically how it all started.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: What's the process like these days? Because I don't think a lot of people understand what goes into moving a project from concept to something you can hold in your hands?
[00:03:23] Speaker C: Well, you said it there, Rick. It's, the concept is what starts it. And when we talk about concept, that's a piece of art or an image. And in my world, that would mean anything from comic books to old toys that we might want to make fresh again, or movies, video games, cartoons, and tv shows. So after we have the concept, it'll go in. The next stage of development is the sculpting stage, and that's where I like to focus. Even though I can do concept artwork and I can do the phases after this, sculpting is really where I like to be.
So we'll that the sculpting will take a few weeks to maybe up to two months on a for a crazy project. And after that, we'll 3d print it, we'll have them hand painted, and then we'll move from development to production, which is when we'll send the 3d prints or the 3d files to China to have produced. And while all that's going on, you know, packaging is being designed, and then distribution is being figured out, and then it's shipping back to the states. So all in all, it has about a nine month gestation period, up to a year.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: When you say sculpting, do you mean physical, like actual sculpting with clay or some sort of material like that?
[00:04:50] Speaker C: So about 15 years ago, I made the difficult decision to switch from traditional sculpting in clay and wax, which I would do action figures and statues in, to digital. So everything is done in the computer. Now, I've talked to a lot of.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: Artists who have worked in three D and two D, and I've heard it can be a little difficult to bounce back and forth between those perspectives early on, but also that doing so can really affect your overall approach to art. Has that been true for you? Because you're someone who really does work in multiple dimensions here.
[00:05:26] Speaker C: Right? As a trained illustrator, there's no question that that background helps out in the 3d realm or the sculpting realm. I think most good sculptors can also draw pretty well.
Now, that being said, I think since I spend most of my time sculpting now, I'm able to see my characters, and what I do essentially is completely figural. So I draw and I sculpt creatures or people and characters. So sculpting them, sculpting from different angles all the time, really does make me feel like I've drawn, even though I haven't been drawing. So it makes. I can go back and drawing is. Is easier.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: It feels like that gives you a new perspective on everything that you're creating.
[00:06:24] Speaker C: Right? Exactly.
It makes drawing easier, and I think staying loose as a 2d artist, that can help the sculpting phase, too. And the way I sculpt is, it's with a stylus on a giant tablet, kind of like a humongous iPad.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: I.
[00:06:44] Speaker C: So it does feel like drawing, even though I'm actually sculpting.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: What are some of the unique challenges you've encountered in translating certain characters or projects into a 3d articulated form? I can imagine that not all characters translate well into 3d. Has that been true for you?
[00:07:04] Speaker C: Yeah, it has been true. I think the general public or the collector thinks that a very stylized drawing from a. Like a unique, stylized artist is more difficult to capture three dimensionally. But in fact, for me, the very stylized artists are the easiest ones to capture. Now, the. Now, there's this whole set of famous artists that I work with who lean realistically with just a little bit of stylization here and there. And those are the ones that can be difficult to capture.
So that being said, when I'm designing my own characters or famous, licensed characters with my own take on it, then I'll go and sculpt them. You know, I still want to give the collector and the general public what they think that character should look like while still using my own style.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: I feel like that's got to be a very tricky aspect of things, is meeting the expectations of a fan base that many of these characters have. Is that. Is that a struggle sometimes is sort of capturing something that is both original that the license holders, you know, of these characters want, but also something that the fans are going to have very strong opinions of.
[00:08:29] Speaker C: You better believe it. It's constant meeting of expectations where it's my own expectations, a collector, as a childhood collector of 40 plus years. Then there's the expectations of the toy company I work for, the licensor, whether that be DC, Marvel, Disney, you know, Gi Joe, the Ninja Turtles. And then the most important expectations are the collector. Now, are any of these expectations from these individual individuals correct? Well, we all think it's correct in our own head, so we try. I do the best I can.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: We all know what's best for our favorite characters.
[00:09:10] Speaker C: Yes, exactly.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: What do you consider some of the highlights in your career so far? Because looking around your studio here, there are so many amazing characters that are near and dear to my heart, but would have been some of your favorite projects or moments in doing what you do.
[00:09:29] Speaker C: There can't be any doubt that I have been so lucky to be able to work on my favorite childhood characters and licenses, and in some cases, over and over again, I just feel blessed to be able to do that. So since I've been able to work on so many characters that I've loved, and almost, I can say almost every single character that I've ever wanted to work on almost now. At this point, it's just really like the new and interesting things that have come in. I've been so lucky to be able to do like a personal sculpture commission for the amazing director Guillermo del Toro, or now I'm able to do the larger than life statues for a Disney musical that's happening right now. So really it's at this point, it's doing different things along with the norm.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Hi, it's Rick again. The rest of this interview is coming up, but I just wanted to take a short break to tell you that if you like this podcast and want to support it, please make sure to subscribe on your podcast platform of choice and leave a review.
This isn't the only Gazette podcast either. Gazette sports editor Ken Schott has been interviewing people in and around the capital region sports scene for more than 400 episodes now in his parting shots podcast. And if you'd like to stay up to date with everything happening in the region and beyond, be sure to subscribe to the Daily Gazette or sign up for the Gazette's newsletters, which deliver links to the top stories across the Gazette family of newspapers directly to your email. Okay, now back to this episode of the Martial arts podcast.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Well, one project of yours that really caught my eye and also generated a lot of buzz in the last few years was something I'm pretty sure you did, kind of just for fun. Your marvel in the seventies series you shared on Instagram, you were redesigning various well known characters with sort of a seventies era aesthetic. Where did that project come from, and what was the response? Like on your side? Because I saw people talking about it everywhere.
[00:11:49] Speaker C: So the marvel in the seventies mini project was so much fun for me. And it all started during the summer of the pandemic, when I thought the collectibles industry was completely finished. There was no work for me, and in the end it only lasted a couple months of no work. And after that it picked up. The collectibles boom has been bigger than ever post pandemic.
But I was sitting at home and I decided, maybe I'll do five characters. And they were portrait studies. Maybe I'll do five of those over the. Over the next week. And now the sixties were the most important characters, but the seventies were the weird ones. So I just started, just for fun, to see where that leads. And it just ended up being about over 50, 60 of them every day. And they were like, sketches, portraiture. Now, the really cool thing about that was that Marvel was watching the whole time, and my old friend Jesse Falcon saw all these portraits I was doing, and he asked Hasbro to put me on and to do all the, you know, a lot of the head sculpts and portraits for the famous, long running Marvel legends action figure line.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: Well, that's amazing to go from something that was just for fun during the pandemic to something we're actually going to see. There's a book, right? I realized about a year after I met you that an action figure I'd kept on my office desks over the years was one that you designed. And it was wild to suddenly discover that. And it brought up this great realization for me that one thing that keeps coming up is that we know the artists behind movies, behind a lot of different other pieces of art, whether it be movies, music, whether it be books, comic books, even. But the people who design toys, the people who design collectibles, are often operating in the background. We don't know who they are. We don't know who designed some of our favorite toys growing up. How do you feel about the recognition artists like yourself receive, or should receive for the work they do?
[00:14:01] Speaker C: Anybody that knows me knows that over the past 20 years, I've talked a lot about credit, and specifically crediting the artists and the sculptors that work on the action figures that you buy, or the statues and collectibles that you buy.
Let's put it in perspective. If you had a favorite actor, wouldn't you go to see whatever movie that actor was in? Or if you had a favorite comic book artist, wouldn't you follow that artist from Batman to, say, Spider man or. So this is how I see it. There are a few wonderful companies that put the sculptor's name on the side of the box or on the bottom of the box, and then there's.
Then there's companies, especially the larger companies, that would never give credit for that. So to me and watching as the industry changes, collectors want to know more and more who sculpted it. And that's why I like to be the sculptor. That's why, rather than the previous part of.
Of the development of toys, I like to be the sculptor or the. Or what happens after the sculpting phase? To me, that's a very important part of it. So I just think that credit is important and it's something that people are interested in.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: Yeah, it feels like we have people who follow certain authors or illustrators from book to book to book. We have people who will follow producers. Even movies have a long list of credits after them. But I have started looking at toy boxes and things like that, and I never see who created them. Like, I don't know who created some of my favorite toys growing up whatsoever.
That feels very wrong. Is that something that you feel the industry is trending towards, or do you think that's something that we'll be able to see down the road, where we start having more presence for people who do what you do?
[00:16:08] Speaker C: That's really important to me. And I, you know, I can see myself as an old artist who's maybe washed up and hoping that people understand what impact I've had on the business. So looking back to the seventies and eighties and nineties, yeah, that's. I mean, that's a project that would take a lot of a person's time. But I, to me, that seems like something that could be important to bring those artists back into the spotlight. So people know, you know, these are the people that made kids happy and continue to.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: Well, the industry has changed so much over the years, as you've mentioned. Do you see it changing and evolving in the future in some ways that you can, maybe the rest of us don't realize are happening, because I would be interested to know what your insider perspective is on toys and collectibles and where things are headed.
[00:17:06] Speaker C: I think something interesting that would be exciting to see would be bringing the power to the desktop. We currently have 3d programs that we can sculpt in. We have 3d printers that are affordable now, and you can print out anything that you sculpted. But the actual, maybe the actual manufacturing.
Let's say you want to do 103 d prints. Well, it's not that easy at this point. And say you want to. You want us, you know, create a little business of toy making? That would be fun. So we could sidestep the going to China to have these produced and just be able to take the power back to the artist.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: Well, Pauldin, thank you so much for talking with me, welcoming me into your studio as well. This has been a real treat for my first time doing one of these episodes remotely. This is going to be a high bar for the future right now. It really is one of the most amazing places I've ever conducted an interview in, and that's saying a lot. In addition to store shelves, places like that, where can people learn more about you and get what you're working on?
[00:18:20] Speaker C: The easiest way to find me is on social media and Instagram and Facebook. It's Harding studios and Twitter. A harding art fantastic.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: Well, thank you for talking with me, Paul.
[00:18:32] Speaker C: Thanks Rick. Pleasure.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: This has been the martial arts podcast with guest Paul Harding. You can find more information about his work and where to find it at Harding Studios on Instagram and Hardingart on Twitter. Thanks for listening to this episode of martial arts. If you like what you heard and want to hear more, make sure to subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. And for more coverage of the regions, arts and entertainment scene, head to DailyGazette.com and Nipper Town. This episode was produced by me, Rick Marshall for the Daily Gazette. If there's a local art story or artist you'd like to hear more about on this podcast, you can contact me at r. Marshallailygazette.net or via social media. Thanks again for listening.
