Rob Flowers

0:00Let's put these down a second.

0:23So yeah, my name is Rob Flowers and I'm an illustrator and toy collector. This evening I'm going to be talking to you about my toy collection, some of my favourite toys and how it influences my work. So as you can see, this is a shot of my studio.

0:40This is about probably about 60% of my toy collection. Quite a lot of it is in boxes because I haven't really got any room for it anymore. And I collect lots of different stuff, mostly sort of 80s toys is kind of where I tend to get most of stuff, most of the stuff is because it's not as expensive as well. I've always been into toys. As you can see, this is for me as a child.

1:04A lot of my collection is based on stuff I still have from when I was a kid. I probably say about 30% of it. The basis of my toy collection is that I was also a massive fan of wearing tea towels as capes as a child, as well as you can see there as well. There's a lot of photos of me running around like that. One of the biggest influences on my work are my favourite toy lines, advertising campaigns, sort of created worlds is an advertising campaign that McDonald's did. It started in the 1970s, finished in the early 80s because they got sued, which I'll go on to later.

1:40But it was called McDonaldland. I'm going to show you a short clip in a moment and it gives you a nice introduction to what McDonaldland is. But you can see some of the characters here, some of which you may recognise as characters that you still see from time to time, such as the Grimace, who originally had forearms and was an evil character who stole milkshakes. There's a hamburger who looked very different from his modern incarnation. Officer Big Mac on the right there and Mayor McCheese, two of my favourite characters.

2:14Anyone sitting in my work before, they tend to be quite burger based. There's Captain Crook there as well. And the idea behind this was all these guys were sort of personifications or characters based on particular menu items. So Captain Crook was the fillet of fish. Obviously Officer Big Mac was the Big Mac. Mayor McCheese was the cheeseburger and so on.

2:36I think Grimace was the milkshakes. So just I'll give you a little. Moment to enjoy this. It takes a second to load. Get yourself ready for a trip through McDonald's land. Take a love of rent and grab a hold of Ronald's hand. Follow Ronald McDonald through the land of apple pie trees. And don't be surprised if you meet Big Mac and Big Cheese.

3:14There's thick shake volcanoes. You'll even find a french fry at that edge. Now just turn around and see if you won't find a hamburger patch. As you're heading for... McDonald's in McDonald's land of McDonald's. In McDonald's land of McDonald's. There you go. There's many adverts like that. I would highly recommend you find out.

3:51So this is some of my McDonald's merchandise collection. I've got a few more bits and pieces.

3:58I think this is quite an old photo from it. So you've got the Officer Big Mac and Mayor Mac Cheese toys. Some of the... Which you might remember, the Nuggets guys. Which are great.

4:10And then you can see some early game carnations of the Hamburglar. Which he looks really menacing. Not pictured here, which I brought along with me, is my favourite McDonald's toy, which I recently bought. Which is Officer Big Mac Puppet. Which was very hard to get. And I've been looking for one of these for a really long time. He did originally have pupils, but they've rubbed off. So he looks even more disconcerting.

4:35So this is some examples of how this sort of stuff directly influences my work.

4:40So I do a lot of work with a burger restaurant called Burger Shack. And for that, they commissioned me to create a whole series of characters. Which I obviously based on my love of McDonald's land. And all McDonald's related merchandise.

4:56So I kind of... The characters that I used in it, you've got obviously the Burger Rat guy. Which was actually originally created by John Bowe.

5:02And then I took over the mentor drawing him. There's a similar sort of burger grabber guy. And the idea is that they also inhabit a world. There's actually an exhibition at the moment at Burger Shack. Which is at the social, if anyone wants to see any of these illustrations. In the large format.

5:20So I hinted a little bit as to why McDonald's don't use any of these characters before.

5:25This is a 1970's children's show called HR Puff and Stuff. Which was created by two brothers called Sid and Marty Croft. Who are two of my favourite sort of creators of stuff ever. And the premise for this was actually, originally McDonald's approached Sid and Marty Croft. Asking if they could use these characters for McDonald's land. Or an equivalent for it. They said no. So McDonald's stole the idea. Which is what McDonald's land is.

5:53So the reason you don't see it is Sid and Marty Croft decided to sue them. And as part of the deal they were never allowed to use those characters ever again.

6:00So they're only allowed to use the original ones. Which will obviously run on McDonald's. But not.

6:05This is the HR Puff and Stuff. The guy with the big yellow head. Is a dragon and he's a mayor of a mythical town. Which is where they got the idea from now which he's from.

6:15So I'm going to show you a little clip from HR Puff and Stuff. I'm going to show you a little clip from HR Puff. So if you've never seen any of Sid and Marty Croft shows, I'd highly recommend you find them out. Because they are amazing and demented. All like that. Which I really enjoy. So costume as evidenced by some of those examples that I showed. And odd characters is something I'm really influenced by. And is a major part of my work. Something I always refer to when I'm working.

7:36So these are some projects that I've worked on for various clients. The one on the top left of Snooki's Wood is for Converse.

7:42We designed, with a friend of mine, designed a whole series of characters and silly costumes who do ridiculous things in little eye dents. These are some characters that I designed for HTC based on the iPhone game called Candy Crush.

7:58So these guys popped out and menaced people at Liverpool Street and squashed them. And the idea was they tried to get away from them.

8:04I think in the end they faked quite a lot of it. Because people just kept running away and looked really scared. And also I think they were worried that someone might hit someone. And these are a couple of characters that I use quite often in my work. The top guy is based on Playsaxe.

8:18I think everyone's note is familiar with Fred and Shapur's work. Playsaxe are one of my favourite things in the world. Luckily for Anorak's 10th anniversary during Imagine Area, I was lucky enough to get them to produce a series of Playsaxe.

8:33So this is a mushroom guy that I produced for that. So food and food related toys are something that I refer to quite a lot in my work. Appears quite a lot in my work.

8:45So these are some of my favourite food related toys from my collection. The guy on the top left is actually a dog toy. Which for research for this I discovered I've got quite a lot of dog toys. They tend to be quite well designed. What I love about that little guy is his buttering himself and he's incredibly happy about that. So another one of the guys on the top right, my favourite thing about that character is actually really small. His mouth is made of ham, which I really enjoy about that guy. And there's a mushroom guy, two mushroom guys. Mushrooms are quite often appearing in my work.

9:17I actually brought this guy's called Wacky Watermelon. And he's a 60s pool toy. I actually brought him with me because you can't see him all his glory in real life. He actually has wings come out and he's a weird insect hybrid. He squeaks really off-puttingly when you roll it along the floor as well. It makes it even more disturbing, which I quite enjoy. These are a couple of toy lines in particular that I influenced my work. The bottom guys are all Mr. Potato Head.

9:47I think everyone is probably familiar with Mr. Potato Head. But originally he was a lot more dangerous as a toy. And you didn't actually get a plastic potato. You just got the bits and you had to supply your own potato.

9:59So there's a Katie Carrot and this is a bootleg toy called Mr. Egghead. As you can see, they're quite broken because the points at them are actually really sharp needle points because they're designed to go into a potato. So incredibly dangerous if you're a child and you could easily swallow them and die. Hence why the design is a little bit different now. The guys at the top are called Food Fighters. Both of these toys are made by Mattel. And these are sort of the idea was they were a platoon of soldiers. Each one a different food stuff, mostly junk food.

10:33So there's a hamburger, a hot dog, a cookie and various other guys.

10:40So these are some of my food based work that often appears in stuff that I do. Very much junk food based. Some vegetables in there. Some mushroom guys, which are always appearing in my work. One of the direct influences from my toy collection is the 3D stuff that I do.

10:58So I've actually produced some toys before and some 3D based stuff, sort of diorama based things.

11:07So these are a couple of my favorite toy lines. So as I mentioned earlier, 80s toys and especially in the 80s there was a sort of fad in toy design called the sort of Grossat toys, which were discussed in sort of pus filled guys coming out. So one of the most prevalent toy lines was Mad Bulls. You can see some of my collection there. These guys' heads pop up and fly in the air.

11:29And they're all, each one's a different character. There's an eyeball, a skull. And they are very disgusting. Another one's not strictly a toy, but is one of my favorite sort of designs. There's a lot of amazing artists involved in the inception of Art's Beacon. We actually came up with the idea for Garbage Power Kids. So these are each one's a different character.

11:50So I'm sure if you grew up in the 80s you probably remember what Garbage Power Kids are. And this stuff sort of has an influence on my work. Actually, by the way, Garbage Power Kids is responsible for one of the worst films ever made. If anyone's ever not seen that, I don't recommend checking it out.

12:05But if you want to spend two hours with one of the worst films ever, maybe have a look. So some of my work tends to be a little bit grotesque, I guess, on the grotesque side without sort of being past filled in that way. So almost sort of like Punch and Judy style stuff is what I go for, sort of long noses and disgusting guys. So next, I just wanted to talk you through one project that I worked on recently for Maynard's Bassets who recently emerged to form a super sweet company. And I directed an advert for them for one of their particular new sweets called Juicy Choose.

12:44So this is my initial idea for the campaign. I don't know if everyone's ever seen that Grace Jones video, but there's an enormous head in it that opens up. That was my original idea for it and the idea was that there was going to be juice coming out of the shining elevator scene. In the end, they wanted it animated, which I was a little bit disappointed for.

13:05But I think the budget wasn't there to make a huge 20-foot head.

13:10So the next stage of this process was then sort of fleshing out the idea once it was selected.

13:15So this is me with some notes that got sent to client, figuring out what I was going to do and how it was going to flow. From there, it was keyframes. All these are based on the flavors of Juicy Choose that you can get.

13:30And then once that, it was supplied to the animators who we worked together and produced an animatic for the flow of it.

13:41So the idea was this is to sort of pace it out, figure out what we can do. The client wanted to get each of the flavors in the ad, so it was sort of figuring out how many transitions can we do.

13:54So this is the final advert that I produced. And now, a Juicy Intermission from Maynard's Bassids. Oh! Oh, sorry! Juicy Choose. Juicy.

14:19So I was really pleased that they let us get the sorry in there as well.

14:23I didn't think that was going to last in the soundtrack. So finally, I just want to leave you with one more McDonald's advert, just because it's amazing.

14:30But this is, I listened closely to the dialogue because it's really great. You have to say to yourself, A likely story. He's guilty! And I quote, This court sentences you to one week without McDonald's cheeseburgers. Isn't that rather severe? Oh well, one week. Without really makers then, you know. Now, let's all adjourn. To McDonald's for cheeseburgers. To get a cheeseburgers, you know. And there you go.