 Hi, I'm Josh DeVine. I'm a toy designer and artist from Longmont, Colorado. I guess this kind of started, I was doing illustration and stuff for books and some friends who had a small publishing company and I started sort of giving myself jobs to build up a portfolio. You know, I would say kind of to myself, what's my dream job? And then I would pretend I had it and do it and put it up as a portfolio. From there, I found out that Kid Robot had moved to Boulder and Kid Robot is a designer toy company. They did all kinds of apparel. They worked with all kinds of artists and were sort of pioneers, you know, in the designer toy industry. This is their figure, the dunny. And basically it's just a blank figure that any artist can put their work on. So I was really excited to hear that. It's sort of what I wanted to do. It was like my dream job. And I applied there, had an interview, and it went really well. And so I started working as a concept artist there. So my job basically when I started was to design toys to draw digitally or on pieces of paper. You know, my first day I got there, there was a big stack of paper and it just said start drawing on the top. I eventually learned more stuff, became a senior concept designer, and then company kind of was expanding, had more people. And eventually I became art director there. Worked there for about five years, produced probably thousands of toys. You know, I have this one here. This is another Kid Robot piece I did. But there's so many, I kind of lost track. My very first assignment there was to design toys based on a Christmas story, Polish toys. And so the first thing I drew was Ralphie in his bunny suit, which was a dumb kind of little toy, but it's always sort of special to me now. You know, I have it up on my shelf because I felt like that's when I started doing what I really thought I should be doing, you know. And I think working those kind of hours, like eight to five doing art stuff and drawing, is like beyond any art school experience you can have. You know, there's just no way you would do it if you weren't sort of forced to or paid to. And so I became better. You know, I learned a lot from the people I worked with. I worked with some really great people and great artists who taught me a lot. But I also learned not just about the art and coming up with the ideas, but also how to make things ready for production. And how to, as opposed to just drawing, how to design sort of while you draw. So yeah, that's how it started. And when I left, I started a company just called Josh Devine Studio. It was just me. I did everything from that I'd learned a kid robot from concept design to packaging to working with factories, everything. And I produced this biting vase that has been pretty popular. They sold out pretty quickly and it sort of becomes sought after. So I decided I was going to make more colors of that and sort of based off of the success of this and these Mario crashes, you know, I started getting noticed a little more and I needed more money basically to keep producing toys. It's expensive and it takes a long time. So if you can only do one toy at a time, it can take like up to a year before you actually see it and start making any money. So with my friend Bradley Frank, we decided to start our own company. We got an investor and just this year stuff is starting to come out from that. So, you know, we've been working for about a year, but we're just starting to see products come out. This is a figure for Playboy. It's called Miss May. I designed it with a Chinese company who had been working with Playboy and I had done actually some cartoons for Playboy as part of my illustrative sort of past some of my cartooning. So they let me go ahead and do this piece. It was it's sort of supposed to be kind of the girl next door look. And if you look from the side, you can see it's like the Playboy logo with her little hair piece there. And so yeah, this is something I designed. I sculpted it digitally and it was sent to China. And this is the nugget that I designed. It's sort of a sort of satirical military sort of piece about I don't know. I mean, I could go into what it's about for a long time. I don't want to sound too pretentious, but I guess the thought is it kind of the stupidity and the fast food sort of imperialism of America sort of coming to you. It's also, you know, something about cowardice. So this is a super crash bro. It is sort of vinyl toy. This is the face sort of like Mario took a dive or missed. It's sort of chose to do Mario because he's so agile and you know, we all know Mario. But he's this is sort of a sequel toy to Astro Boy I did called Astro Crash. That was basically Astro Boy who can I don't know if you're familiar with Astro Boy, but he you know my thought on that was Astro Boy who I was kind of obsessed with for a while was if he was real, it would be probably one of the scariest things that you could imagine. It's this machine which is basically a drone with a little kid's brain and sense of morality that could destroy things. It would actually be pretty scary. Moving on. This is the biting base, which I kind of show this was in Juxtapose, which is an art magazine and did really well. A lot of people about this and are into it. So there's more colors coming. This is Sugar Booger, which is a character designed by Kevin Scalzo, who's an artist working out in New York. And this is also through Heavy Cream, a toy company that I started with Bradley Frank. And we started we wanted to work with artists that we liked. And he was sort of my first choice for who to work with, you know, because stuff was crazy and fun and colorful and cute. And that's what toy collectors are into, I guess. This is a SpongeBob I did for his 20 year anniversary. I think it was 20. Anyway, so I designed this to be a clear case with an actual sponge inside to sort of deconstruct SpongeBob. This is one of my favorite things I did. Actually, I love SpongeBob anyway. So it was cool to be a part of that. I guess where it all started for me was pretty much Mad Magazine. I know a lot of people started there. But yeah, I just still in my mind, I will never forget like being in Lyons and going back into the back of the grocery store and seeing that. And then all I did was try to draw like those guys like I still do, you know, there was such genius work in there that was, you know, stuff by Mort Drucker and Al Jaffe and such great stuff. And then as I got a little older, I got into comics and some superhero comics. But I thought they were kind of boring. And one day this kid whose parents were kind of hippies, he brought in all these comics like Robert Crumb and Underground Comics. And again, like my mind was just totally blown when I saw Robert Crumb. I don't I don't know why those things affected me so much seeing cartoons on paper, but they feel like really big events in my life. You know, I remember just I was sitting in some science class like reading Robert Crumb and I was just laughing and people were looking at me like I was an idiot, you know, like what are you doing? And I was just it was like uncontrollable reaction, I guess. So yeah, from there I went on, I did a comic strip called Duck Town that this was sort of I went to art school and I actually hated it. I went for a year and ended up dropping out. Basically, after that, I was struggling to find something to do with my artwork. And right around the time my son was born, he was about a year old. I started doing this cartoon called Duck Town. I sent it to the the Colorado Daily and a few papers and they wrote me back and said they actually wanted to run it and I could not believe it. So I told them I would do it. It was a daily strip. I drew one every day for not not too long, maybe six to eight months, I think. The problem was they couldn't pay me and I had a new son and we were totally broke. And so, you know, I asked the editor there who really was great who really championed the strip. It got a got a lot of hate mail. He had people come in off the street and yell at him about the comics because some of them were tasteless and sort of crass and, you know, stuff I thought was funny when I was like 23, you know, and people would write hate mail and I would like respond with a custom comic. And it was really it was pretty fun. But it became, you know, a lot of work. It's a lot of work every day to come up with something like that. And after begging like some money that came to me and said, hey, we I was able to get you something and we don't really pay anybody. I was like, awesome, how much and he said 60 bucks a month. So basically, I had to quit my career there. I got a letter that said, sorry, here you go, you had a good run, you're being replaced by Sudoku. So that was the end of that. And for a while, I was just working sort of jobs, you know, I was a bartender for a long time. And eventually, I got contacted by this small press company, I guess called broken sword publications. They wrote to me and they said, like, we love Ducktown, we want to make a book. And, you know, we'll give you some money for it. Which I thought was strange. And then I worked with them designed the book did a cover. And it had sort of a cult following people contacted me to buy like original artwork. So yeah, I just sort of drew in my free time when I could I was working at the bar. And some of the people would come in the bar with the comic strips and be like, hey, will you sign this, you know, and I'm like, hey, I have to scrub the toilet right now, you know, I am broke. And it was fun while lasted. So from there, let's see, I tried really hard to make it doing illustration, I was able to do some spot illustrations for books and book cover or two. But yeah, it was really difficult. And there's so many rejections, like so many. But I'm too far gone now with art stuff, I can't just stop. Even if nobody ever paid attention to me, I would still be doing it. You know, there's just, it's almost sad, you know, that I, it's just more of a compulsion, I guess, than a really a career at this point. But I ended up sending some comics to Playboy because that was something that I always wanted to do. I thought the comics were really cool and really well done. They were like full paintings. So I sent one in and didn't hear anything back, I sent another one in. And they bought that. So I was really shocked and surprised at that. So I did another one and they ran that. And that was the time that I think my dad really noticed like that art had a purpose. He really, it made sense to him then, you know, when he saw my work at Playboy, he's like, oh, art, I, you know, I get it. I noticed this about myself, like I've always wanted to be bohemian and crazy and, you know, free floating, I don't know. But I'm just not like that. I'm, turns out I'm just really technical. I want to control every aspect of things. You know, I learned how to sculpt so I could make sure everything came out just like I wanted it. Somehow I've just become this really nitpicky artist. So Heavy Cream is the company I just started, you know, Josh Devine Studio kind of became Heavy Cream. I now have a partner that I work with. And it's really just two of us doing everything before it was just me doing everything. So there's two of us. He does, Bradley does marketing and, you know, talking with companies and talking on the phone and stuff that I am not really good at. And I'm design and, you know, I do everything design, packaging, sculpts, promotional art, videos, you know, renders. And Bradley takes care of selling the stuff. And he's really good at that. So we're just getting started. We just had our first products come out. And I guess as far as Heavy Cream, the name is kind of a strange name. I know Heavy Cream, but it was based on what the vinyl looks like when it's melted and being put into a mold, you know. So that's where that came from. We had like a hundred names and somehow we ended up on that. And we said, we've just got to move forward. It's time to go. You know, if you're a huge company like Bear Brick or something, maybe you've seen Bear Brick's, you know, people will just either buy whatever comes out or they'll know about it. They're into it. You know, it's not, it's established. It's not kind of the same level as doing something independent like this. You know, this is something where people aren't going to buy it based on your brand's credibility or coolness or, you know, because some rapper likes it. So we're trying to build that up so that our brand says that. So we make sure everything we put out is designed well and produced with good quality. And hopefully, you know, we can get people to take the chance because they love what they see and not just because some sort of clout is attached. Of course, the dream is someday the clout will be attached. But I guess that remains to be seen. And, you know, there's a lot of small toy companies out there who are doing their thing. There are a lot of companies that are just artists driven now. You know, I think the time and place for a big company like Kid Robot is kind of past and people are looking more for individual artists and smaller companies to see what they produce. I mean, it's tough is in any art form, your peers are also your competitors, you know. So this may be kind of an uneasy relationship. I don't really feel that way. I feel like we're all sort of helping and pitching into this big idea, you know, and we're all doing what we love really without, you know, the monetary reward that we need. People doing it now are people who are doing it because it's what they love, you know. It's almost reassuring to see other people's work and inspiring. And a lot of times painful when you could say, God, I wish I had thought of that or done that or how can you do that? You know, it's I'm hoping that what will happen is the level of work will keep going up, you know, amongst everybody, kind of like if you're, I don't know, a skater and you're skating with a person who's really good, it kind of being around them will help elevate, you know, everyone. So that's my hope, you know, and I'm always studying and looking at what's new and looking, you know, reading about design, reading about art and artists and just it's a constant presence in my life really is, you know, not maybe not just the toys on the plastic, but the ideas sort of behind them. I feel like it would be difficult for somebody to do is just for fun or just for a hobby. There needs to be a level of obsession to keep, to go through on something that takes six months to a year and to produce and has to be, you know, made in a factory across the ocean and the communication you have to keep up and just to get the piece made just to have it in your hand is an amazing thing. I guess the target market is changing. You know, I don't have statistical paperwork or anything that tells me what's going on, but I know that it sort of began with guys sort of my age, you know, I think in the beginning it was sort of a male dominated sort of graffiti and kind of street art themes and it's really mutated and changed a lot. It has different, you know, geographically, there's different styles. There's, you know, Southeast Asia, which is really blowing up right now. There's, you know, this American style that I kind of am part of. There's Japan that has different forms of plastic and I guess the market is just, like I said before, you buy it because you sort of have to have it. You think it's cute. You really want it to put on your desk or something, you know. So in that sense, the market could really be anyone, but there are collectors who are the main, you know, force behind everything. It's like a genre. It's like an art genre in a way, you know. A lot of it plays with pop culture. I don't know. My hope is to make things that become their own sort of IP and not rely on the IP of other people like this guy here or this one. But yeah, that's my goal. I don't think, you know, it's going to be hypocritical because, you know, I've made this, but I think people should be creating their own IPs and their own Mario for the future, you know. A lot of people are focused on nostalgia right now and it feels a little dead-ended to me, you know, because it's just a repetitive sort of cyclical process. Are we going to say like in 20 years, like remember 2020 when we thought Mario from 1980 was cool? You know, it can't keep going. And I mean, I've seen so many great artists who can really do great stuff and have created their own. And I want that, you know, personally for myself and I think it's a good goal for a lot of people. As far as the future, I guess my plan is to really keep growing heavy cream. We have a lot of cool projects that are going to be coming out. We have probably the next year slated and it's going to be some really cool stuff. And yeah, I would love to see that grow and, you know, become something bigger. I mean, I guess ultimately I want to be able to keep doing this as long as I can, you know, and if I know if it doesn't work out, I'll still be drawing, painting, doing something somewhere, even just alone in my basement would probably be good enough for me. Some of these are available now through heavy cream. This sugar booger is available in three colors. That's at heavycream.ltd. These are sold out and they're available. You can find them on StockX if you're willing to pay. We don't have plans to produce this one any longer, so it's kind of done. There are four colorways of this that are available. These are colorways of the Nugget and they're available also. Just the Golden Oil is available right now at heavycream.ltd. Ms. May is available at the ZCWO website and you can find us online on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook at heavycreamltd. Thanks to Christian, Ryan, Vince, Satchel, and Michael behind the cameras and have a good night.