20 Questions with Dark Carnival / Needful Things kit maker, Robb Rotondi
This interview was a year in the making, but it sure was worth it. If you want to know how the kit hobby works from inside out, here's the word from a 15 year vet.
1. Robb, you've been doing this now for more than a decade. How did you get started?
Robb: Well, to tell you the truth . . . when I came across this hobby, it was in the year 1992 with an issue of Kitbuilders Magazine. I was amazed at what I saw inside and couldn't believe that this stuff existed. What I saw in those pages brought sheer joy back to me from my childhood and my collection of Aurora monster models. These models were like that but better.!! And a lot more expensive!
I became a huge collector of resin kits for close to 2-3 years buying everything that caught my eye . . . spending lots and lots of money. Then I met someone in the special effects field. An artist who worked on Saturday Night Live, and showed me his talent in sculpting and showed me how to mold and cast. Well . . . we worked out a deal and I paid him for the sculpt and mold for my first "Garage Kit"--Gary Oldman as the "old man Dracula" from BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA.
2. What were the first kits you produced? What do you remember about putting out those first kits?Robb: My first kit, Old Man Dracula, was followed up by Luke Skywalker on a Taun Taun from THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK . . . along with Louis (Brad Pitt) from INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE and John Travolta & Samuel Jackson from PULP FICTION. These kits put me on the map of model making in the garage kit field. Sales were swift (but that was a different time than now).
I really enjoyed the beginning experiences I had when first starting my company. I guess you can say I enjoyed it so much that I turned a once in a while hobby to a side business that I still love to this day.
3. What is the biggest change you have seen in your own company since the beginning years?
Robb: The biggest change I would have to say is the amount of production that now goes into our products. Before we did it as a type of "school project" kind of trial and error process. Then it got really serious. I think mostly just to "keep up with the Joneses" so to say. The great products that other companies were putting out were incredible and we felt we didn't want to fall behind in quality, which eventually would have hurt our sales and hurt our customer base. So we bought all the machinery need to become a full service model producing company. That included everything from pressure pots, to vacuum chambers and a roto-casting machine. Its these things that make a huge difference in production value.
4. Are any of your original artists still doing sculpts for you?
Robb: Well, the early days to me were the early 1990's. My first kit "Old Man Dracula" was sculpted by a special effects artist named Paul Rielly. Then came David Grant . . . who is currently still one of my sculptors and also my business partner.
5. Today, you have a wide variety of talented sculptors creating kits. Can you walk us through that part of the process a little? First of all, what happens before you get the final sculpt? Do sculptors just pitch their work to you? Do you suggest or commission a piece, etc.?Robb: Well most of the time there is a creative influence in the making of the planned kit. But let me not blow any smoke, this hobby is driven by fans of movies, science fiction, horror and fantasy and super heroes. These are things that are really easy to like in my opinion.
The planning of a new kit is normally the only artistic part of the job that I take part in myself. I have planned out most of the kits we have done but I have also been approached by many talented artists with ideas of their own when it comes to sculpting.
Usually I pick a subject matter that I think needs to be done and draw a rough sketch what the model should look like when complete (even if it looks like Mr. Bill . . .). Then we see what sculptors have an open schedule to commit to the job, as this amount of time can vary anywhere from months to sometimes over a year. Yes, I said a year!
Usually we offer the job to only artists who are interested in the subject matter. We feel that someone who is into the subject matter will give us a much better model . . . more so then someone who is just going through the motions for the paycheck. We have the artist send us in progress pics so that if any changes need to be made they can be applied before it is finalized.
Then we bring it into production with molding and casting. From there the sculptor gets his copies and the first casting goes out to an artist for the Paint Master. This model when painted will most likely become the model on the box art and on our website.
6. What else do you have to do to get this to the final stages?
Robb: Well, we try to figure out the cost of the production before we begin a project (sculpting fees, molding, casting). If this number is too high for us to reasonably produce it, we try to streamline it an bring the price down. After all . . . even though we produce kits, we were at one time collectors like everyone else, so we try to give our kits the most bang for your buck.
Lets face it--the resin kit hobby is expensive for everyone involved, producers and collectors, but this is a hobby that is expensive in sculpting talent and you get what you pay for. The craftsmanship and talent in this hobby is an art form. When you buy a kit, you are owning something that most of the world will never own nor ever see. This is truly a unique hobby.
After the kit is finally cast, we will send it out to our painters--Steve Riojas, Thad Rhodes, Danno Cope and Ric Cantu to name a few. In my opinion these are some of the best artists working in the hobby today. Once it is done, we photograph it and then look at the piece in different angles and then choose what we like best and then it goes into Photoshop for the box art page that will eventually be printed and put on the front of every box.
And there you have it.....the process of kit production. Now you all can become model giants in the hobby. One word of advice-- don't do this to make money. Do this because you love the idea of this hobby and the collection you will build through years of enjoyment, and the many friends you will encounter that share the same subjects you do. This alone is priceless in return for what you invest into this venture.
7. How do you go about casting the kits?
Robb: All of our kits are pressure cast and vacuumed for perfection. We believe that kits are to be sold to people to glue together and paint . . . not to re-sculpt. We as customers always felt let down by purchasing a kit that needed major work to get it to the finish stages. So we try our hardest to make kits easy to glue and begin painting the way we would like it.
8. If I am not mistaken, you have a "regular" full time job too. What does the kit business mean in terms of your daily life?
Robb: Yes, I have a regular job, but my job is what really allowed me the time to invest into bringing Needful Things (the original company name) to life. It also allowed me the money I needed to start the company. I started it in 1993 with $2000.00 and a dream . . . .
Sometimes I question if I should have kept going with all the subject matter I have brought to resin form, but then I snap out of it and look at all the stuff that I have accomplished. Looking at our studio walls, to this date I think we are at somewhere around 50-60 kits we have done. This number is not a lot to me but I think most people would have quit a lot sooner. Not me! This is my hobby and I love doing this. Some people like golf, some like bike riding . . . I like movies . . . and I LOVE MODELS of the movies that I love. This was the whole reasoning behind the start of Needful Things--to own a piece of 3-D art from a movie you really like.
The kit business involves a lot more than most people truly see. For instance, before you sell kits, you have to learn to advertise your goods in print and visual form (magazines, websites). And website sites have to be updated on a regular basis. Then there is processing orders that come in on a daily basis, and checking the molds to make sure the quality of your kits is up to par. You want all the customers who send you money to get what they are paying for. You must put yourself in that customers shoes and see if you would be happy with what is in the box and that pretty much keeps your checks and balances going in the right direction.
Then once the kits are boxed up and ready for shipping then you have to haul them down to your shipper (UPS, USPS or Fed Ex) and send those works of art to your salivating resin heads. Then, in between that ,try to get at least 8 hours of sleep so you can go back to your job that gives you your W2 form at the end of the year. And in between getting kits ready and attending model shows, try to spend some time with your wife or girlfriend (I'm lucky my girlfriend is into movies like I am so she gets a kick out of what I do) and / or kids. And it is important to just pace yourself, a lot of times I feel like I don't do that enough. But for the future I'm really trying to go a lot slower.
9. Some kit makers choose to simply portray a character in general, but Dark Carnival has a lot of kits that seem to capture a particular subject in a single frame of a film. Am I right in thinking that these models are designed to capture the best moments in the films they represent--like for instance the Grrrr bust or the Monster kit (31inch tall kit)? Why do you make that choice?
Robb: I think its just a simple answer. These are the moments that stick in all of our heads and are usually the parts we are the most fond of. I think we have tried to capture the parts of a film that have left a lasting memory.
But then again, we have made kits of stuff that wasn't so commercially successful either. I think we have made kits that WE thought needed to be made for one reason or another, normally because we liked those films. There are a lot of movies we think are worthy of kits--
films like SHOGUN ASSASSIN, THE FLY . . . and films we would still love to do stuff from such as BRAZIL, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE WILD BUNCH, PULP FICTION and tons of others.
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10. You have a lot of Nosferatu style vampires in your kits. Could you discuss this subject a little for us?
Robb: Yes, for some reason we did end up with a lot of Nosferatus! I really don't know how it happened, especially since I love werewolves more then the blood sucking undead. Mainly, I think its just a very appealing character no matter who designs it or sculpts it. The picture of Max Schreck has been burned into most of our minds from when we were younger and I know the first time I ever saw that image of him on the bow of that ship I was like my grandfather after he got out off the couch too fast. My legs locked and my mouth was open waiting for insects to fly in. That Max Schreck was a scary looking individual.
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We had the pleasure of acquiring a great version of this from Tony Cipriano . . . which to me is still one of the best, and then we commissioned Guy Archer to do us a new vision of him carrying his coffin trailed by his horde of filthy vermin. We were very happy with this kit and from the response we got from our customers they are also. We now have two new versions our now and coming soon. As you mentioned, one is called "Staked" and its David Grant's version of the Nosferatu. It is a huge piece (18 inches tall) and comes with a base and optional wooden stake for impaling and some dirty rodents to finish up this great design. Dave has always been into vampires and its easy to see his love for this character in the sculpting that went into this kit.
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The next one we will have (ready to ship soon) is the 1/1 scale Nosferatu bust sculpted by Mike Lorenzo. I cannot wait to see this piece painted. We are going to use real glass eyes and hair on this model to truly bring the King of Undead back to life . . . so keep your eyes open for this upcoming new piece.
11. Some of my favorite kits from Needful Things/ Dark Carnival are the interpretations and originals--Dinner Time, Maneater, Delgadasaurus, The King and I. Is it more of a risk to do kits like this, since people like familiar subjects? What do you look for in a sculpt that makes you want to produce a kit of an original or interpretive design?
Robb: Thanks. We have had some of the best opportunities to work with some of Hollywood's most creative, and talented creature designers. Yes, the guys whose imagination bring us, the movie-going public, some of the best and memorable movie creatures in our nightmares.
The Delgadosuarus was done in coordination with special effects artists Ricardo Delgado (THE MATRIX, DINOSAUR, MEN IN BLACK). This project was brought to us and we had the opportunity to finally meet this talented artist. He had informed us that the designs he did for Godzilla were done for the Jan Debont movie which were scrapped for the new version we saw in the film with the direction of Roland Emmerich. We liked Delgado's design a lot more and so did a lot of other people, we thought it was more true to the original Godzilla concept instead of the iguana style they chose for the film.
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The Maneater was done due to an awesome piece of artwork that we saw of this shark creature that was done by the talented Mark "Crash" McCreery. ( RELIC, TERMINATOR, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN). We did this piece and sent him a copy of it and he was very happy with what we did. It was designed for a movie called CREATURE based on a Peter Benchly book (half shark-half man creatures that were bred to use during warfare). Too bad it wasn't as good as Jaws. I really liked the story and Crash did an awesome conceptual design for this creature that was truly amazing.
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The Dinner Time kit was sculpted from a design by an incredible artist, Miles Teves (TOTAL RECALL, ROBO-COP, LEGEND). He is so talented in design, sculpting and drawing, you have to see his work to believe what one man is capable of. Dinner Time was taken from his design concept of a werewolf he came up with. It is one of my favorite pieces to date that we ever did.
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So, even if the original designs are not our most popular pieces, it has given us a chance to work with some of Hollywood's finest artists. And we look forward to doing some more work with them in the near future.
12. I also want to address a really interesting kit--the Black Rhino. Most people would say, "well, that's a weird idea," but really there is a cool story behind this one. Can you share it with folks?
Robb: Sure. My partner, Dave Grant, and I had the opportunity of working with an art studio which promoted one artist's work in particular that was all about animals in Africa and the money his paintings raised was for awareness and rescue dollars for endangered species. We were already in the process of doing our own line of wild life animals that we thought people might like to paint and display.
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Our first was a Black Rhino, sculpted by the very talented Dinosaur Sculptor Shane Foulkes. He did an amazing job--the sculpt is beautiful. We had a lot of irons in the fire when we commissioned the piece from him and it sat in our studio for quite sometime until we had the chance to work with this art studio.
The sculpt will be sold as a limited edition bronze statue along with a special print of a black rhino. We are also allowed to sell castings of the sculpt as a model to collectors, and partial proceeds from the sale of the bronze and the resin copies will be sent to the Rhino Rescue Fund to help keep these beautiful animals protected to walk the face of the earth forever. Me and my partner feel very happy about the goal that this project has allowed us to contribute to. We are currently talking to the art company about doing other animals and helping raise awareness about them also.
We are really eager to get started.
13. Are you ever surprised at what sells well and what doesn't?
Robb: No-- I would have to say, we would all like to make kits that sell well all the time, but if we knew how to do that I would think that most of us with that power would be somewhere picking horses in a race rather than the next kit idea.
Honestly, I would have to say that most people who do kits, do them out of love for the movie, film, comics, etc. Its a way of sharing your love for something and sharing it with others to enjoy just as much as you do. And to give something to others to collect that would not have existed if you didn't take a chance and made your original piece of artwork.
14. From a sales stand point, what do you think was the most risky kit you ever produced?
Robb: I would have to say Ed Harris from THE ABYSS. This was a movie that I loved so much when it came out and I am still a very big fan of this film. So, this was a model that I wanted to produce no matter if I didn't sell any at all. I wanted to have this piece in my personal collection.
We have not sold as many as I would have liked to, but Japanese collectors are very fond of this piece and I have sold a lot overseas, getting letters of "Thanks". So to me, as an ABYSS fan to come across this kit, I would be in my glory to see that it even exists, something I'm sure a lot of people feel when they see something that they are very fond of.
The overall engineering of this piece, along with the casting of it was a job in itself. The water base and marine alien were all cast in clear resins. This was so the modeler could light the model up for it to glow. It is truly one of the hardest pieces to date that I have ever worked on, and I learned a lot by doing it. This project took almost 2 years to complete. I had a great sculptor tackle this task--Guy Archer is his name--and I don't think anyone else could have done the detail work and had the patience that surfaced on that kit. Every piece was hand sculpted and fabricated, right down to the hoses and the helmet. I was totally blown away when I saw the final piece. Then to have Rick Cantu painting it...was like having two Golden Tickets! He did a great job and really brought everything to life for me. Take a look....
15. It seems Dark Carnival has done a great job of cultivating loyal customers with discounts and special deals. Does this pay off in terms of loyalty?
Robb: I would say yes to this, as anyone loves a deal when they can buy something for a discount that they really enjoy as a hobby. My partner and I were also very big collectors at one time, so we know the meaning of a discount. There are times when we can't give because we have bills to pay but when we can we like to treat everyone the way we would like to be treated at one time or another.
And let me say...a "BIG THANK YOU" to all the people who have bought our models in the past and helped support us as a company in this community that we all love. It has helped us continue now for the past thirteen years. And we really thank you for that. We have a big fan base I would say, and I'm know if you give people what they pay for in a reasonable amount of time, they appreciate the service. They just want to be treated the same way you or I would.
16. So, after thirteen years in the business, what advice would you have for people who want to enter the business end of the hobby?
Robb: I would say be original--do stuff that makes your blood flow. Go to shows, support other artists, but before you do this, learn how a small business is run. Because the first time you say you are open and someone wants to send you money for one of your products you are obligated to that person. Business is not about when your ready to do the work, or when you have free time or no school. Its a commitment to that customer, someone who may become a future customer, someone who helps chip in for you to continue producing your ideas and art work in the future.
17. What do you think the general state of the hobby is right now? What could be done to improve the health of the hobby?
I have been doing this for thirteen years and I have to say this is the worst I have seen it ever sales wise. I'm not speaking for all the producers--just myself. The shows are where most of us go to display our work (for me, the internet doesn't show this art form in the proper light it needs to be shown). Shows are our major outlet, yet shows are not being supported by modelers the way they used to . . . I believe . . . because going to a show is very expensive for a lot of people. I have one hobby so if this one hobby was having a show once a year I would be there to attend. Apparently, a lot of people don't feel that way in this hobby.
Another problem I have seen is that fact that the economy has been doing very badly in the past four years and a lot of people are losing jobs, and you know when you have to take care of your family and house, the models are not that important when you look at the priorities.
Plus another killer is gas prices going up so much. Everything we use to make these great models is a derivative of a petroleum product. So all the silicon, resin and etc. has gone up around 20% in the past 2-3 years. I'm sure that even if gas prices come down, resin prices won't come down. I have never seen it happen. I'm no economist . . . this is just my opinion. An opinion I have shared with other producers who all agree with me on this one.
18. So, what is the best part of the business for you?
The best part to me is to be part of a community that only a small part of the population is aware of. I'm sure if a larger part of fans of this type material knew it existed we would all be envied for our collections and our art form.
Besides that, the number one thing is all the great friends I have made since I was first introduced to this business. I am happy to say that after all these years of business that I have many friends today that I would not have had if I decided not to go into business. To see these people at shows every now and then talk to them on the phone, email, etc. makes it all worth while to me. And for what other reason in common then for the love of monsters?! Pretty funny thought, don't you think?
19. What sort of things do you have planned for the next year? When will new products be available?
Well, we always have things in the works but to tell you when they will be ready is pretty hard to say. A lot of our sculptors do this as side jobs and do it part time for us so when they get the chance to work on stuff for us they do. We will have a lot to add to your shelves and closets so keep checking our website I promise you wont be disappointed.
20. Finally, what would you like to say that we have not yet gotten to?
I would like to say a BIG THANK YOU once again to all my friends (you know who you are!!) and most of all the people who have supported me. Without them, I could not have continued to make these models in the first place for the past 13 years. I hope to be here another 13 with all of you coming with me for the ride. So as long as people want to collect my models, I will continue to produce.
I also want to say "Thank You" to Sean and this chance to be interviewed by this great on-line magazine, CreatureScape. Thanks for thinking about me and my company. I really appreciate it.
10-4 Over & Out!! Wanderers Forever!!!
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