Oakland’s "Ghetto Geppetto" talks about hip hop, Heiroglyphics tour documentaries
and the Back In The Dayz toy series
words: Jim Crawford & Adero Gordon, pics: Gregory Blum & courtesy of Warning Label Design, layout: Antoinette Celes
Welcome to Oakland— home of Warning Label Design and the Ghetto Geppetto, Roy Miles, Jr. A true renaissance man, Roy juggles careers as a music video director, rap producer, animator, instructor, cartoonist, and toy designer. Fusing his life-long obsessions for toy collecting and rap music, he has developed a series of hip hop block figures featuring six characters from Back In The DayZ,: B.I.T.DZ for short, a.k.a. The Biddies. Taking the BART to his Oakland studio, STRANGEco caught up with Roy and talked about toys, hip hop, his long-time association with Oakland’s Heiroglyphics rap crew and other assorted topics:
STRANGEco: How did you get into making toys?
Roy Miles: I’m a lifetime toy junkie— collecting, customizing, the whole thing. I always wanted to make toys, but a lot of getting serious about it started when I started doing animation. As I was learning Maya and other 3D modeling software, I’d come up with a character design and think, "check this shit out— you could make a toy out of this." I’d even create 3D display shelves and place the character models on them.
And this led to actually producing your own?
I constantly draw in sketchbooks, and at some point a couple of years ago I started drawing pictures of block toys in my own style. I’ve always loved Playmobil and Lego and was into what Medicom was doing with the Kubricks. So I figured I’d just go find a manufacturer and make them. I mean, how hard could it be, right? This will be the project that will make my wife hate me. (laughs).
What was the inspiration behind the drawings and then the toys?
I know way more about rap music than anyone probably should, and wanted to create something that really celebrated hip hop. It’s a culture that is constantly redefining itself and I wanted to be very specific with what I put out there. So each one of the Biddies represents a style and attitude that was brought on by a particular pioneering MC, capturing them at the time period when they were truly bigger than life. True originals had a style that made a major impact, and lot of kids would emulate them in their attitude, how they dressed, the style they rapped in, etc. I tried to capture all that history in the toys, but the Biddies are hella funny, too. I think they’re like kids dressing up as pirates, with fake beards painted on. And believe me, if I were to make a real Slick Rick figure, it would be totally different. I’m not even going to tell you what it would look like.
"Imperial One sports a toy first -- a 'fade' haircut. The fade is the ultimate luxury haircut for the Black man.
Mastering this cut is an artform in itself."
"Kid Zulu's Native Tongues style include a Black Power
fist, African and Zulu medallions."
Hip hop culture and "urban vinyl" is the big thing in toys now; this must have had an effect on your approach.
Yeah, definitely, but more about what not to do. A lot of these new hip-hop inspired toys from around the world don’t get it right. They will often be in a style or have a set of accessories that either don’t match the time period they’re referencing or are straight up wrong. I’ve seen break-dancer figures with big gold chains. If you’ve got a big ass chain on, you’re not going to be down on the floor, you know what I’m saying? I used to break-dance quite a bit when I was a kid, and I may have been terrible at it, but I know I didn’t see one person wearing a gold chain while they’re break-dancing. That’s like a Kool-Aid commercial type thing.
"Tre's style represents a B-boy from the mid-80's. Details include block-style fatlaces with
his left pant leg rolled up B-Boy style, in reference to the street-phrase 'One leg up'."
 "The 5-finger ring is an iconic hip-hop jewelry item. Daddy is a 'Money to Burn' type of rapper. What's more ostentatious than buying a ring that covers your entire hand? That's hot!" |
 "The microphone is my favorite. It's really tiny, but has interesting details like the groove on the button. A lovely platinum ice cream cone that tastes delicious." |
You also work closely with Oakland rap crew Hieroglyphics.
I’ve always been impressed by their ability to do it all themselves and make great successful music with a real following. I went to high school with Del, so I’ve known Hiero from the beginning. We were in a crew of dudes that were way too into rap music. People would look at us like we were crazy.
Why?
Back in the 80s, it wasn’t cool to know as much about rap music as we did. Everyone knew about Digital Underground because they were local, but back then Bobby Brown was the big thing. Rap was so absurd to mainstream radio that if you knew everything about it, you were a nerd. That’s actually a lot of what the Biddies are about—a real expression of love and knowledge, whether it’s cool or fashionable now or not.
Are you currently working on any Hieroglyphics projects?
Now that my production company (Anti-Division) is online, we’ve been doing a lot with Hiero. We’re currently working on a documentary from their recent tour, which has become something much bigger than just a guy following the band around with a camera. I’m editing it now, so it’ll be out this summer. We shot the documentary in about three weeks all together. Three days here, five days here, I would fly in and fly out. It was tough. Flying into one city and following the group and taking the earliest flight you could get or the latest flight you could get. I would go out there and have two extra cameras so that we could get very specific shots. Hieroglyphics are good collaborators, and all of those guys can draw, too.
You elevate drawing as a favorite art form. What’s this all about?
Anything that’s been manufactured had to have been thought out and drawn on paper first. Even the most mundane things can have great design. I love that people don’t even think about that. I actually took the styrofoam packaging from a bunch of computer monitors we bought and put them up on the wall in our office. I can’t believe everyone throws this kind of stuff away— it looks like Space Invaders.
You’ve also recently produced a series of videos for The Network, which may or may not be a spin-off of a certain East Bay pop punk band…
I can neither confirm nor deny those rumors. We cranked out 8 finished videos in 2 weeks, though. Pretty extreme. It’s out as a DVD now and is selling pretty well. One of the videos features the Biddies.
What else is Warning Label Design up to?
A lot of things in the works. I’m working on a set of Hieroglyphics Biddies, as well as ones of a few other notable rappers— licensed stuff. I’m also in production on the FOOIES, a collaborative project with Achy Breaky Toys and the Superfun Company. It’s an anti-valentine toy series and the first three characters (Yuck!, Blah! And Ich!) all use the Biddies bodies. They’re done in a Goth style, which is cool because it shows the range of the Biddies toys. They’ll be ready for Comic Con this July.
links:
» BIDDIES.us