Maker Chats: Q&A Return with GAF
Q&A Return with GAF
Editor: rmendis
All photos and images: Kudos, Koala, rmendis
Published: May 31, 2024
Some of you have been in the hobby long enough to see makers return after a long absence. In the past few years, we have been fortunate enough to experience the re-emergence of well-known artists from the early days of the hobby, like Kult Worship Kaps and Nubbinator, and in the case of the latter, leave again as life changes inevitably take priority. While most collectors would welcome the opportunity to buy art directly from their favorite makers and interact with them, sometimes those opportunities are short lived, or may have never come at all if you discovered a maker who became inactive before you started collecting.
For those of you who joined in the past few years and came across some amazing GAF keycaps, or perhaps admired some of Kudos' earlier KeyKollective work, but wish you were around when he was active, I am excited to announce that he is returning to the hobby and eager to release art again! Kudos made a surprise appearance on the closing artisan panel session at KeyCon 2024, to answer a few questions and tease a couple new sculpts. I had the opportunity to chat with him about some personal and art-related topics and am excited to share the conversation here. I hope you’ll join me in celebrating the return of a maker whose work had an undeniable and significant influence on our hobby.
Please share whatever you are comfortable with regarding why you chose to take a break, and where you focused the past few years after leaving.
My kid was born in 2019 and during that time I decided to take that time to focus on my newborn baby. 2020, I made a short return that was back in September, I believe. But it was short-lived due to circumstances at home.
We had suspected very early on that our daughter, Coco, might have been on the spectrum, as she’d struggled with sensory issues and colic almost as soon as she was born.
The mental health of the family wasn’t that great at the time during the pandemic. We also didn’t have much help at all. My parents were helping my sister with her newborn son on the opposite side of the country—and my wife’s parents had their hands full with a major personal crisis. So all of it was just kind of a perfect storm I decided that I needed to focus on, so I took a temporary break at the time to sort some things out.
In that time my daughter was finally formally diagnosed with autism, and I’ve been spending much of the years enrolling her in programs like early interventions and occupational therapies. Also because of all that, you know, we just didn’t have the resources or the bandwidth to even be thinking about casting until relatively recently.
What were the challenges of returning to art after a significant break?
I definitely worried that it had left me behind since I felt like when we started, we developed these unique techniques and processes, and when another maker would ask us how we did something, we would be either somewhat vague or evasive because we didn’t necessarily want to share these trades secrets.
Honestly, back then, the world of resin casting felt a lot like alchemy. There was a degree of secrecy. Coming back, I definitely felt very intimidated that I might've been left behind or that I would become forgotten.
So that was the initial challenge—conceptualizing this idea that I would even return to doing this. Overcoming this fear that I had lost some of those skills, which luckily I was able to get past with some help from my family and friends.
You know prior to taking a break with my family, I was doing this work daily, and you develop a certain muscle memory for what you do when it comes to casting materials and ratios. I really worried I might have lost that. There was a time where I had the techniques to fulfill my ideas, and then suddenly I realized three years had passed and I was storing a lot of unfulfilled ideas and concepts. Fortunately, looking back on the past few months, I was finally able to bring a lot of that to life.
I would say that I’m a stronger sculpture artist overall than when I left, and overall that has been a very positive experience for me as an artist.
How has your family life influenced your art now compared to before your break?
Raising a stubborn girl—over time your tolerance for bullshit definitely improves. You're able to filter out what pisses you off versus what’s just mildly annoying.
I used to rage quite a bit while driving, but I can't do that anymore. My kid knows the F word so you know, eventually have to learn to temper that rage and in the process, naturally you become a lot more unfazed, because you learn to prioritize certain things better.
I believe that overall change in mindset definitely affects the way that you create any kind of art as well. Going back to what I said previously about being exposed to children's toys—there’s obviously a lot more color in my environment now, and my work has undeniably changed as a result of that.
Have you adopted new techniques or mediums since your return?
As an artist, the limiting factor is sometimes public expectation. Let's just say you put out a sculpt every month, every two months—or you release a new color way every week or two weeks—people become accustomed to your pace. As a result, you might have either internal or external pressure to present something within that timeframe. I think what happens out of all that is you prioritize your releases and sales more than you prioritize your natural inclination to explore and experiment. That's not to say that people don't try new methods, but they might do it less as a result.
After having spent three and a half years coming back, I want to push my work but I also have the capacity to experiment and push the envelope because if something fails, it fails. You're not missing out on any sales if you’re not expecting a sale, right? So, for the last few months I've been able to experiment with new techniques and new processes, but I've been dumpstering a week’s worth of work if necessary. It’s given me a lot of knowledge on how to approach things moving forward.
I can only really speak on sculpting so far, because I haven't experimented a whole lot with resin casting recently. But as far as sculpting goes, I have learned a lot of things that were previously a mystery to me—which I didn't think was possible, so yeah I would definitely say I have evolved in that capacity.
Has your creative process or routine changed since returning to art?
The problem now is—well, I wouldn't say a problem—but I'm a family man now. I don't have the luxury of spending hours upon hours in my office and if I do, it is a strain on my wife—and also frankly, I miss my wife and kid.
So, if we're speaking in terms of like daily routines? Yes, absolutely—there is a level of sadness when I'm working. It's bittersweet. On one hand I have the capacity to explore creative outlets, but on the other, you know, I miss spending time with my family.
As far as my creative process goes, I have so many ideas and concepts to explore, but just not enough time to do so. So now I find myself working on two, three, sometimes even four sculpts at the same time to try to really maximize my time.
Though it might seem counterproductive, having multiple projects at the same time has actually been very positive for me. I’ve gotten to try new tools and methods—like, let’s just say, I know sculpt A is the important one, and sculpt B is just something I’m fucking around with. I might be more inclined to try something more risky on the second sculpt, and then realize I can use the same process on the first one. I can use the same technique for a lot more exploration, at least for me.
I also find that my attention span for art is very short, so there are times where I will dumpster a design before it's done. But by doing that to refine your work, you get to be more discerning about what the public will eventually see. So, I would say overall it’s a net positive.
What was it like revisiting previous sculpts?
Before picking up my tools, I had to really consider characteristics that really defined each sculpt. Aside from the “grimey aesthetic”, there were other fundamental aspects that each sculpt needed to embody.
Absurd, abstract, unsettling. To me, what stood out was this juxtaposition between cute/funny and disgust/discomfort. My goal was to preserve this dichotomy while still changing things enough to say this is a new sculpt.
I didn’t want people to say “oh, it’s a better Garbo.” I wanted people to say “I know it’s a Garbo but it looks different.” I came from a graffiti background. Namely, the stuff coming from late 80’s to 90’s era art. There’s this distinct form called wildstyle. Letters are stretched and bent. Forms are deformed to an almost illegible level. It’s like abstract art meets letters. This wildstyle approach is how I wanted to tackle each of my sculpts.
To me, grimace embodies that wildstyle approach. Take a skull. Bend it. Drops his eyes, raise his nose. Yank out his mandible and deform him until he’s barely recognizable as a skull. With every iteration, Grimace looks less and less of a skull.
Grimace has always been the easiest sculpt to work with. It’s always been very Freeform with me because there’s no “end goal”. The result was always open ended so I had the freedom to just sculpt from the heart. Version 3 was done in one take. No revisions were made (aside from small technical issues). To me, grimace is grimey in its truest form.
Garbo wasn’t nearly as easy. Took at least 5 revisions to nail it down. For many of the older fans, Garbo was what brought them to gaf. That added pressure weighed on me. He had to have 3 eyes, he had to have the puke. The idea of making fans happy restricted my ability to really experiment.
In the end, I had 4 revisions that “passed” but I wasn’t happy with the results. I’m sure there will be collectors who would’ve happily accepted them, but I felt nothing. And if I felt nothing, then I’ve made nothing of value. Finally, I said fuck it. I wanted to work with some verticality of the sculpt. I opted for an isometric view of the sculpt. Extended the puke so it looked like he made a huge mess. And that empty soulless madness in his eyes…. I leaned hard into that. Final revision was done in one take.
Do you see your recent work as a continuation of your earlier artistic journey, or do you envision a new direction moving forward?
I would say that—though I would consider myself farther away from GAF and I was back in 2020, in terms of my personal style and aesthetic—there's still a lot of unfinished business.
A lot of stuff that bothered me from previous iterations is stuff that I want to address before I can move on. So when I think of a timeline in terms of where GAF or Kudos, or KeyKollectiv or any of these “brands” are moving, I would say I've changed my perspective on that. I've definitely got some unfinished business that I would like to address before I allow myself to move on.
Do I know what that looks like? No. Will be a gigantic departure from previous work? Maybe. But I would say that if you knew me over a span of time, it wouldn't be surprising. Some people have seen the connection between KeyKollectiv and GAF, so it won't be that huge of a shift for people who have been with us for a long time.
But yeah, change is on the horizon.
