nvc www.​drbao-​nvc.​blogspot.com

Do you know Kung Fu?

As you prob­a­bly see in our art­works, we’ve been inspired a lot by any­thing related to mar­tial arts. Spive and I have always been big fans of mar­tial arts. I remem­ber, when I was young (7-8 years old) and just arrived in Canada, my uncles used to bring me to the­atre in Chi­na­town to watch some Shaw Broth­ers movies…. At home, they always rented mar­tial arts movies or series in Viet­namese. I was already sub­merged by that cul­ture!!!!

Later on I started to do tra­di­tional Chi­nese Kung Fu…… It’s actu­ally there that I met Spive for the first time!!!! We did Hung Gar together for about 2 years. In the mean time, I was always pas­sion­ate by Con­tem­po­rary Wushu and then dis­cov­ered that there was a place in Mon­treal that teach Wushu!!!! It was a dream that is coming true for me since I always wanted to do all these jump kicks in the air and do all these acro­batic aerials!!!!

I then con­vince Spive to come with me and we then switch for Con­tem­po­rary Wushu!!! To me, it’s the most com­plete form of mar­tial arts that some­one can practice…. We then stuck with Wushu after that. So we’ve been in Chi­nese mar­tial arts for now 7-8 years!!!! Spive and I did some com­pe­ti­tions in Wushu and have a whole col­lec­tion of medals but now we’re kind of “old” (espe­cially Spive being only 26 years old… hehe­he­hehe!!!!) so I’m con­cen­trat­ing to pass by my knowl­edge to my son. I recently start to train my 4 years old kid!!!!

Now that you know our back­ground, I think that you can easily under­stand our love for mar­tial arts and we even show our pas­sion thru our custom artworks.

If you had unlim­ited money and free­dom; How would you go about cre­at­ing the per­fect vinyl toy?

First if Spive and I would had unlim­ited money, we would open a designer vinyl toy store…. We would make a kind of gallery / toy store. Since I’m paint­ing too and know a lot of urban street artists, it would be easy for us to have some really cool stuff at our place. We would make more than just sell­ing toys…… we would prob­a­bly give some “how to custom toys” class to kids too or do some jam ses­sions with other artists. We would make other people ben­e­fit of our expe­ri­ence as toy cus­tomiz­ers and pro­mote what we con­sider as a form of art.

I would like to have our studio in the back of the store too….. so people that come to the store can visit of work­ing studio too. We would then prob­a­bly try to pro­duce our self by mould­ing our own fig­ures and do a lim­ited run of them and all this in our studio…Of course; we would pro­duce our friends or other artists too.

How much do you refine your designs before cre­at­ing the figures?

Well Spive and I work quite weird!!!!! I have to tell you that we’re freestyling for most of our custom works!!!! What we usu­ally do is we take some time to dis­cuss and brain­storm­ing on an idea or con­cept that we want to work on…. For us, this process is very impor­tant because the suc­cess of the project usu­ally relies on how well we develop our concept…. For us there’s no custom if there’s no con­cept behind it.

We then choose the best toy plat­form that we can use to real­ize the project…. But because it’s quite hard to find some vinyl toy in Mon­treal, we have to work with what we can find in our local toy store… That’s it; we’re ready to start the custom!!! As you can see, we don’t do any sketch before we start to create our figures…… It’s just like we already know how it will look like in our head just by brain­storm­ing and discussing.

Of course, when we’re repro­duc­ing a char­ac­ter that already exist, we have to use pic­tures to help us but that’s almost the only time that we will have to rely on a sketch or pictures.

When I was a writer, I always do a sketch before I was going on the walls!!!!! Once I have my out­line, I then freestyle for the fill­ings!!! So I guess it’s almost the same thing when I do customs….. The toy plat­form is like my out­line and once that I have the toy…I freestyle!!!!

How much did the Shaolin vs Wu Tang project cost you?

Ohhhh….. I have to start by men­tion­ing that this project is not fin­ished yet…. It’s the begin­ning of a huge project for us. We released the 2 first fig­ures because we wanted to be the first in the designer toy indus­try to do a project on that theme. And because it will be a long project for us, we just can’t wait to finish every­thing before show­ing it and taking the risk that some­one has the same idea as us and release it before us!

It’s a project that will cost us a lot of money because it will involve a lot of things…… I just can’t say more on it right now because we want it to be a big sur­prise for every­one once we will finish the project.

I think the person who will buy and own the whole final project will be the most happy person on this earth since it’s gonna be a very unique piece of art!!!! Our dream would be that some­one like RZA from the Wu Tang Clan would buy this project!!!

Apart from Art, illus­tra­tion, Custom toy design and graf­fiti what other things are you into?

If you ask this ques­tion to Spive, he would answer to you that I’m doing too many things!!!!! Well like I said ear­lier, I’m just pas­sion­ate for Wushu. Other than that, I do some magic too…

Actu­ally, I started to do magic when I was 10-11 years old…. I remem­ber a magic store that we had just on the road that went to my school…… and every­day, I went there and tried to learn some­thing from these guys!!!

I’m more into manip­u­la­tion and more tech­ni­cal magic….. I’m more some­one that will do magic to par­tic­i­pate to com­pe­ti­tions rather than to per­form and do com­mer­cial magic….. I still go to magic con­ven­tions and hang­ing with a few.

What I really like and have a cer­tain affin­ity for is inte­rior design…. I’m a freak of vin­tage and modern art furniture…. actu­ally, I just enjoyed dec­o­rat­ing my dental clinic to bring some new look and fresh­ness to the place!!!

And….. hey….. of course I do dentistry… it’s my day­time job!!!

As for Spive, he has a lot of inter­est for any­thing related to music…. He’s very inter­ested by the legal, busi­ness and com­mer­cial­iza­tion side of the music indus­try. He’s also emcee­ing and doing a few record­ing ses­sions with some friends of our.

Who are your favourite artists/illustrators alive today?

There’s a lot of artists that I admire….But I have to admit that the one that truly catch Spive’s and my atten­tion when I first saw her works was Eliz­a­beth McGrath… It’s just so inspir­ing to see what she can do!!!! In the painters, I would say that Greg “Craola” Simkins, Jeff Soto, David Choe, Doze Green,Blaine Fontana and of course Cameron Tiede, just to name a few, are people that we admire a lot… I think that they rep­re­sent well our taste in art.

In the designer toy industry….I started with West­ern artists but more and more I’m turn­ing to these East­ern guys…..guys such as Michael Lau, Jason Siu, Eric So, etc……

Are you involved in any col­lab­o­ra­tive projects at the moment and is there anyone you would like to work with?

I’ve met Cameron Tiede in LA a few months ago for an exhi­bi­tion in which we we’re both participated… It was the We’re All Mad There show at Gallery 1988…and we’ve talked about a pos­si­ble col­lab­o­ra­tion in the future in some kind of custom project.. But because we’re both quite busy… it’s just very hard to find the time to start some­thing. I’ve talked to Mist about some kind of col­labo too…. but again he’s in France, I’m in Montreal…. so will prob­a­bly have to wait for him to come in Mon­treal or me to go to France!!!!

But there’s a lot of artists in the toy scene that I would like to col­lab­o­rate with…. guys such Twee­Qim, Jesse Her­nadez, Jason Jacenko, Brent Nolosco, Liv3r and a few other artists from Kid Robot forum members….. I’ve been an active member on this forum, so I make some friends and some of them are just truly really good artists!!!!

I’m also look­ing to hook up with a few east­ern artists out there…… guys such as Jason Siu, Eric So, Tim Tsui, etc…. I per­son­ally think that they bring some flavor that I just can’t find with the West­ern toy scene. They have that urban street flavor that is very unique to them.

What’s next in the pipeline for the NVC Crew?

Well 2007 will be a quite busy year for us. First, we’ve been already booked for shows and exhi­bi­tions until end of June… Right now, we’re con­cen­trat­ing on a show called Vinyl Ele­ments in April . It’s a show orga­nize by vinylpulse.com. I think it’s gonna be one if not the best custom show ever orga­nized. It will fea­ture the top 40 toy cus­tomiz­ers worldwide….. so you can under­stand how high the level will be. We’re work­ing quite hard for this show because we want to come pre­pare and ready to show to people what we’ve got.

The other major show that we will par­tic­i­pate in will be the 8-Bit show annu­ally orga­nized by Gallery 1988….. As you prob­a­bly know it’s a show in which artists have to do some­thing related to old school 8-bit games. We’re very happy to get invited for this show since we’re big fans of old school videogames…. and the theme fits very well with the car­toony style of char­ac­ter we’re doing too.

But after these shows, we will prob­a­bly take a break of all this to con­cen­trate on devel­op­ing toys that we want to get pro­duced by toy companies…. This is our main goal for 2007… It will keep us quite busy until 2008 since we have to design all the characters.

We’ve been in dis­cus­sion too with a videogames com­pany for a kind of part­ner­ship / col­lab­o­ra­tion of some kind of project thing that is not really define yet, since we’re really at the begin­ning of the discussions.

So as you can see, we’re gonna be quite busy in 2007…..

Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan?

It’s quite a hard ques­tion to answer since Spive and I are both fans of Bruce and Jackie….. I think Bruce Lee played a major role to make mar­tial arts known to west­ern people with his movies…. But Spive and I prefer Jackie Chan… Because of our back­ground in Chi­nese mar­tial arts, we see and under­stand more what kind of mar­tial artist Jackie Chan is. This guy is simply amaz­ing!!!!! Bruce was a super fighter and had lot of charisma…. but Jackie is more versatile…. His mar­tial arts skill is simply amazing…. but he’s got more than that….. He’s also a sick in the head stunt man!!!!! To me he’s truly an artist. What really impress us the most is to see how he blends his mar­tial arts skills with his stunt master skills…

I remem­ber, when Spive was doing Hung Gar, when we wanted him to train harder…. we only have to show to him some Jackie Chan movie or talk about how hard Jackie must train hard to be good as he is… and Spive can train for days after!!!! Hahhaahah!!!!

Tupac Shakur or James Brown?

James Brown 100000%!!!!!! Ohh man, what a man was James Brown….. For us, James Brown is truly the father of soul/funk music. He just did it the way he wanted his music to be and cre­ated some­thing that was really unique to him. It’s just crazy how much he influ­ences the hip hop indus­try with what he did….. Prob­a­bly that hip hop and rap music would not be what it is with­out James Brown since he’s been sam­pled on lots of hip hop clas­sic tracks…..

But I think that for the black amer­i­can com­mu­nity, he’s much more than just a music artist….He’s like a cul­tural icon. You remem­ber his “I’m Black and I’m proud”.

Thanks a lot Darren for the inter­view and wish you all the best for LCSV4!!!

You can see more of NVC Crew’s work at
www.​drbao-​nvc.​blogspot.com

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Tags: Blaine Fontana, Brent Nolosco, Bruce Lee, Cameron Tiede, Canada, Chinatown, David Choe, Elizabeth McGrath, Eric So, France, Greg "Craola" Simkins, Hung Gar, Interviews, Jackie Chan, James Brown, Jason Jacenko, Jason Siu, Jeff Soto, Jesse Hernadez, Michael Lau, Montreal, Tim Tsui, Wu Tang Clan, www.drbao-nvc.blogspot.com