UnderWorld magazine was on the radio a month back click the image to listin to it. We talked about how the magazine got started and what were up to today Recently, I was fortunate enough to meet with the very talented head of Thunderdog Studios; Tristan Eaton. Tristan invited Underworld Magazine into his creation den. Tristan, being the true gentleman that he is, first introduced us to his staff members and then cordially invited us into his office. As we took in what looked like a designer toy store straight out of “Babes in Toyland”, he offered us a seat on his leather couch. Tristan had a seat in his very classy and ergonomic glossy red egg chair. It didn’t take us long to delve into Tristan’s mind, probably because of the enormous Dunny he had on his shelf, which lead to the statement “My agreement with Kidrobot is that they send me every Dunny they create forever”. He then hit me with some very heavy information that even I didn’t know. At the beginning of Kid Robot’s growth, Tristan Eaton designed their logo and the first ever character of the infamous robot next to the logo. Tristan Eaton was born in Los Angeles, California and shortly after being born moved to London, England. He started skateboarding in west London before it was popular and through this he stared doing graffiti. After London, he moved to Detroit, Michigan. If you’re not familiar with Detroit, it’s a town full of poverty and crime. It used to survive because of the auto industry, but because of the failure in United States automobiles all that’s left is empty factories and broken homes. Tristan continued practicing the art of graffiti in the only place in the world shaped like your right hand. Tristan said one of the reasons he liked Detroit so much was because the whole creative world there is so tiny, and once your known, you are known. Through this Tristan got his first job as a professional designer at 18 with a magazine called “Orbit”. Shortly after this, he moved to NYC and enrolled into S.V.A(The School of Visual Arts) for illustration. He told me that he knew he could make a living off illustration. He was referred to Fisher Price while going to school at S.V..A. Tristan designed a lot of the Wizard and Dragon toys that we all probably saw our little brothers, sisters or cousins play with on the living room floor. The most well known toy he designed was “Smokey” a heroic Dalmatian from the Rescue Heroes series. At this point he took the time to unlock his huge cabinet of creations and showed me the Smokey toy. It was through this experience that Tristan developed the philosophy that pushed him to start Thunderdog Studios “Anything can be turned into art”. He did, however, drop out of S.V.A and start freelancing to take care of his bills. He told me “All the time I was broke I was still really fucking busy”. I asked him about his thoughts on Kidrobots rapid success and he said that they are commercializing very quickly, and because of this I asked him if Thunderdog ever planned on opening a store. He responded with “I want Thunderdog to be more precious, stay truer to the roots. I don’t plan on opening a store, maybe a gallery or a possible pop-up store”. Thunderdog really focuses on collaborating with other companies. They are currently collaborating with Scene, 10 Deep, Krooked which is Mark Gonzales’s company. To name a few of the things that Tristan is working on now and that he showed us. Tristan is developing 200 different ways to design a scion logo at www.scionspeak.com. He was also 1 of 3 designers chosen to design 5 faces for Dell laptops. He showed us his 5 designs and we knew right away why Dell choose him. One thing I can say that I really honestly admire about Tristan Eaton is how humble he is. Everytime I would compliment him on one of his many designs he would respond with “ Thanks man, I really appreciate that”. It sounded completely genuine and I totally believed that he cared what I thought. It so happened that the day I met with Tristan, his friend Superdeux was doing an art show in downtown, NYC. He invited me to the show, I went, had a wonderful time and had a greater respect for designer toy designers then I had before I met with Tristan. Please check out the Thunderdog website www.thunderdogstudios.com and trust me when I say Tristan Eaton is one genuine, modest, and talented designer. Candy Coated Jewels released a limited edition crew neck and sent it over to the Underworld Magazine creators. This crewneck had people stopping them in the street asking them where they got something so FRESH. It was because of this reaction that Julio, the magazine’s founder, had to schedule a photoshoot with our very talented photographer Brandon Rude. The two were found in New York Cities art capital SoHo. You can see the photoshoot and the crewneck on Julio directly to the left of this article. We just want to extend our thanks to Candy Coated Jewels. We got the chance to meet with the great toy designer Huck Gee at the Kidrobot location in Soho, NYC. Huck was hosting a Toy signing for his newest design, Kidninja. There were 1000 Kidninjas at the Kidrobot store and they sold them all out by 7:00 P.M. So you can imagine how long the line around the block was. After the fans cleared out we got a chance to speak to Huck and get a few quick photos with him. One of the fans was so excited that he had Huck draw Kidninja on his back. We want to thank both Huck Gee and Kidrobot for giving us their time.