We were lucky to catch up with Dennis Chan recently and have shared our conversation below.

Dennis, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I got to design an action figure that was used on-camera for Kelvin Yu’s “American Born Chinese” TV show, based on Gene Luen Yang’s groundbreaking graphic novel of the same name. I had the awesome responsibility of designing, engineering, sculpting, 3D printing, assembling, and painting these pieces by hand. Within the story, the toy holds multiple meanings as a gesture of care between a parent and child, as well as a kind of bridge between cultures and generations. For us personally, the concept for this action figure really came from a place of personal experience too, directly inspired by sentiment around the toys that connected us to our family backgrounds. Kelvin and Gene gave me so much creative freedom with the design and graciously treated me like a real collaborator rather than just another hired hand, and I’ll always be so grateful for that. I got to make the coolest thing, with such world-class professional, inspiring, and genuine people, in service of a story that speaks right from the heart. I think that’s pretty rare.

Dennis, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

The thing I enjoy most is making articulated action figures. Basically, most of my client work is digitally sculpting an action figure complete with movable joints ready to be 3D printed. Figure sculpting is this niche intersection of design, traditional sculpture, and mechanical engineering that results in a physical object about the size of your hand that serves no other purpose than to be fun. It requires a unique artistic voice, classical sculpture training, 3D modeling expertise, a serious level of craftsmanship in making things by hand, professional communication and organizational skills, and an organic understanding of what makes toys fun to play with. To me, toys have something in common with drawing. Kids like to draw for fun, but most adults eventually lose interest because they become afraid of what other people think and begin saying things like, “I’m just not a creative person.” Similarly, I think growing up causes people to think that toys are just for kids, but I’ve heard creative professionals of all sorts–cartoonists, writers, actors, directors– say that toys inspired them, and that makes sense to me. Toys encourage imagination, seeing things from another angle or a different scale, and help us envision different versions of ourselves and put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. I think these are meaningful habits at any age.
I got started in this field my junior year of college– I am probably among the last wave of students who were taught by the team at Hasbro to sculpt toys by hand, with a wax pen and dental tools and sandpaper. Even by the following year, everything was switched over to digital 3D modeling, but I’m so glad I got those hundreds of repetitions of traditional sculpting, silicone mold making, and resin casting before diving into the digital world. There’s no replacement for firsthand awareness of how physical parts are made, and in a sense my preparation for this path started when I was much younger, customizing action figures as a teenager by modifying, puttying, and painting existing toys to look like other ones that I wished existed but didn’t yet.
These days, almost everything is connected to a movie or TV show character, but that’s no bad thing. There are a lot of new characters created by working artists today, and it’s exciting to make a 3D version of them for the first time. It’s also humbling to work on legacy brands with iconic characters that have been around longer than I have, in some cases by decades. Among my favorite projects were the Beast Wars Transformers. The original figures first came out when I was in grade school, and a few years ago I was asked to do some brand new sculpts– all in all I got to work on five of the original fourteen characters, some of which were included in an official Transformers book published by Hobby Japan.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I don’t think my aspirations are too different from many artists; namely, to make cool things while working with enthusiastic and respectful peers. But part of that involves sharing my passion with others, and right now there isn’t really even the vocabulary to describe an adult enthusiast of toys and action figures. Most of the language we have, like “geek” or “collector”, either have negative connotations or are more about buying and hoarding rather than appreciating toys and the artistry behind them. Some people like having art on their walls, in the form of paintings or prints (or I suppose sculptures if your house is big enough), and that doesn’t really need to be explained. Similarly, I think toys can be like small sculptures that are meant to be moved around. There is a traditional Japanese craft called jizai okimono, which are these beautifully intricate articulated metal sculptures. But they’re so fine that I imagine you’d almost certainly have to be royalty or royalty-adjacent to see one in person. I think it’s great that there are toy versions of just about any character (or animal or whatever) designed by some of the best artists in the world, and they are affordable to a much wider audience than art collectors and literal lords and nobles. I see it as an amazing testament to human ingenuity that something like a motorized mechanical saber-toothed tiger with hundreds of parts can be mass produced with near-perfect precision. Appreciating toys is a simple, physically tangible, and positive outlet that can take many forms.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I obviously wouldn’t know for sure, but I think a successful approach would include broadening our appreciation for all kinds of art and design to encourage more curiosity about how things are made. To that end I have two ideas– first, have more people try more often to make or fix things for themselves, by supporting arts education in every form. And second, to expand what kind of art we celebrate– schools and galleries shouldn’t just lift up thousand year old paintings and sculptures, they should also feature works from living, contemporary artists in areas like game art, animation, industrial design, and comics! And maybe some articulated robot toys too.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.chandennis.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alwaysbumping/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennis-chan-b320654b/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/alwaysbumping

Image Credits
Dennis Chan