We recently connected with Sam Heimer and have shared our conversation below.

Sam, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

Becoming a toy-maker has been a long road of experimentation, research, and oddly for having no experience in that realm, success, I’ve been a full-time freelance Illustrator for several years now, and toy-making was one of those projects I always wanted to pursue but had no idea how to approach till the stars aligned. I knew I could design the toys, but working in 3D is beyond my ability. I was in Chicago, it was a snowy New Years Eve, I met up with an Artist I hadn’t seen in a few years for drinks and she gave me the contact info for my first sculptor. I think the very first design was doodle on a bar napkin that night. I know that’s a silly trope, but I knew if I didn’t move fast, I’d start to regret investing time and money into something I had no experience in. A week later I had my first sculpt in hand, a jack-o-lantern headed fella with a collar of dead leaves and wormy fingers, about two inches tall, carved from jewelers wax. The magic of it was that the sculpt actually resembled my line-language, it read as my art. The next hurdle was production. I was lucky enough to have a friend who is an incredible resin artist, Jason McKittrick (The Cryptocurium), who was kind enough to walk me through the basics of silicone mold making and resin pouring. The first batch were made in a corner of my studio in-between inks drying, as my original intention was to use toy-making as a down-time and slow season project. Being an illustrator that focuses on Halloween, I knew I had a built-in audience for this figure. The edition was a few dozen, bagged with an illustrated header, and they sold out in a matter of seconds. To this day we still hand-pour smaller editions, but as soon as that first figure sold out immediately, I knew I’d need to look into over-seas factory production. My idea, Mythos; Lovecraftian Minifigures, was a melding of public-domain weird-fiction and horror with an aesthetic rooted in toys from my childhood; MUSCLE Men and Monster In My Pocket. Even though factory production costs as much as a used car, I was positive this gamble would pay off and there was no way I could produce the number I would need by hand. It was also at this time I was starting to probe and learn about the DIY and Art Toy industry. I was honestly kinda horrified at the amount of back-biting, grudges, and gatekeeping I witnessed and experienced in this niche community of creatives. Even when offering cash for consulting, nobody would help me along, let alone answer my e-mails. Because of this, anyone on a similar journey who reaches out for help, I take pride in offering what information I can. I found a factory, completely by chance, and when they sent me photos of similar projects to what I was asking, it happened to be shot of toys by one of the companies that refused to speak with me. Funny how that happens. At this point I was receiving a lot of help from the incredibly talented artist and toy-maker Trashbury. He prototyped my first factory run and walked me through some of the process, and about six months later, I had several dozens crates of packaged toys headed to me on the literal slow boat from China. I could talk at length about dealing with factories and learning how to navigate that process, but it would be a little dry. That first factory run of toys, when finally released, broke even the first weekend they were available. Since then I’ve done several factory runs with more planned in the future. Again, I intended Toy-making to be a time-kill inbetween illustration jobs, but it was quickly clear that the money was viable and the project should be taken a little more seriously. It’s now been several years, and over 100 individual sculpts, but as far as education in toy-making goes, I’m still a freshman.

Sam, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a Philadelphia based freelance illustrator, designer and toy-maker. I’ve been an illustrator for a dozen or so years, specializing in an incredibly niche market; Halloween. I’ve worked in the music industry, editorial, book covers, beer and liquor labels, clothing design, coffee and other food products and other various outlets. My most popular work, my personal Halloween work, is the core of my profession, and I’m incredibly lucky to have found a way to make a decent living off illustrating pumpkin-headed ghouls and costumed children. The people that created the most iconic Halloween imagery were 9 to 5 employees of places like Biestle and Ben Cooper, are largely unknown and had no idea at the time they were creating things that would be cherished and replicated for years to come. I’d like to reverse that; My end-goal as an artist is to be the first name that comes to mind when someone says “Halloween Artist”.

The toy-making facet of what I do only started a few years ago, but the desire to see my work translated into 3D has been there all along. I just had no idea where to start, and honestly I was worried it would be a slippery slope. DIY Toy making is rife with intellectual property theft, both of pop-culture mainstays all the way down to smaller artists work. As someone constantly battling with my work being stolen and bootlegged, I wanted nothing to do with this portion of the culture. What we produce is a fine blend of Halloween, Americana, Occultisim and Horror with nods to the toys folks in their 30s to 50s had growing up. Anything not fully created by us is culled from Public Domain or officially licensed. I already had a captive audience via my healthy art Instagram account, so the only hurdle was making the product. HH Toys started out as another leg of what I was already doing, but quickly grew into it’s own entity. It slowly got big enough for me to start showcasing other artists voices as well as my own work.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

NFT’s are a cancer that needs to be cut out at the root and burned. At face-value they’re digital trading cards for idiots, but delve a little deeper and they’re tied to libertarian ideology that runs racist in some facets, is connected to various shady entities and pyramid schemes, have artificially inflated trading values, and were they regulated, the whole magilla would come crashing down. And built on a monetary system that can be crippled by a single tweet from an idiot like Elon Musk. Any artist I happened to follow that started creating NFTs has been unfollowed and blocked. The art connected to NFTs is largely trash, sloppily created en-mass, and have no real value to art culture, serve no purpose, and any artist offering them is a con-man trying to make a quick buck. The art is secondary to the crypto and if you created something beautiful, don’t tie it to something so damaging and repulsive.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Creating an audience on social media should be approached like target marketing. Racking up numbers is nice, but you want quality over quantity, a demographic that identifies with and will hopefully invest in the work, be it a purchase, hire, or just a re-post. Target Marketing will help achieve this. I can only outline vague steps here, as everyone will have a wildly different approach depending on platform, market and or brand, product or content, but the basics apply. Never leave home without a moleskin in your back pocket. Any time you see an application for what you do, or something parallel enough you could adjust to fit in, jot it down. Get names, numbers, e-mails, products and publications, events. Anywhere you could see yourself thriving and any entity that commands an audience that would find your ideas and content appealing, write it down. Create your work as you see fit, but keep in mind your target market and fine-tailor it to maintain application to the entries in your moleskin. As your body of work grows, develop methods to attract your list, be it physical mailers to art-directors, e-mails to brands, or just utilizing hashtags properly. Over the years I’ve been pretty stubborn about only creating work in my wheelhouse and working with brands that directly connect to my target marketing. Every client, company, collaborator you work with is inevitability handing you the keys to their audience, and if the finished product brought to those people is thoughtful and artfully created, they’ll inevitably join your sphere of influence. Just make sure they know you expect to be credited at every turn, as they should do anyway, but you’d be surprised how many folks don’t.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.samheimer.com / hhtoyco.com
• Instagram: @sam_heimer / @HH_Toys_INC

Image Credits
All toys and illustrations created by Sam Heimer. Paint Application on ‘Lucky’ (figure with dice) by Third Eye Creations.