[ WEEKEND ]
Kikaida gets the PhotoShop and Illustrator treatment, above, to emphasize his mechanical origins.
HERO ART NEVER underestimate the impact of powerful icons on the path lives take. Who'dve guessed that plastic toys and colorful Japanese superheroes would have lit off a marriage made, if not in heaven, then in the oversaturated, overstimulated universe of pop culture.
Sanford and Rae Huo Mock turn
tiny toys into heroes of epic proportionsBy Burl Burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.comGraphic designer Sanford Mock and photographer Rae Huo Mock kept running into each other at collector expos. They've been married about a decade now but have been mixing their collections of Japanese toys a bit longer.
A while ago, they started making colorful still lifes of their toy collection, and a stairwell exhibit now at Borders Books & Music Honolulu shows off their handiwork. We've reprinted a few here, but the original colors have to be seen first-hand.
The Mocks at top in a self-portrait.
Huo Mock is a commercial photographer who takes a "pretty whimsical approach in advertising photography too.
"This project started as a personal photo essay of our beloved collection of Japanese monster toys, which turned into a featured article that was published in the latest issue of Venture Magazine," she explained.
"All the pictures were taken digitally in the studio, in high-resolution 35mm and two-and-a-quarter formats, with our Canon D60 and a variety of lenses, and my Megavision digital back on both a medium-format and a large-format camera. We really wanted to show the bright colors and the fun these toys exude.
Robocon, left, and Dash Seven Rainbowman, right, stand still long enough for a portrait.
"Sanford punched up certain images in PhotoShop, but generally, if you light them right, the colors really pop naturally. If you have a good image to begin with, you'll get a good print; the trick is getting it out of the computer onto paper. Our friends at Graphic Pictures Hawaii did a great job outputting our digital files, but you know, the larger the image, the less intense the color gets. Reds and blacks get muddy. Something to watch out for."
HUO MOCK describes the ongoing project as "so much fun! Sanford and myself really like the playful nature of the toys, and we love collecting them. I guess we're adult kids! We are expanding our project into other areas of our collections, and hope to stay excited about our diverse interests. We just want to have a lot of fun in life!
Kikaida and Kikaida 01 swirl in a universe of primary colors in Mock's collage. "I wanted a kind of optical, 3-D effect," said Mock. Kikaida fans were excited this week by the release of the first five episodes on DVD by JN Productions.
"The toys take on a life of their own, and people identify with certain elements," said Huo Mock, who collects toy cameras and banks too. "They just haven't seen them represented in this way, like important little icons of pop culture.
That's Zaboga, a robot character.
"Sanford's interpretations and mine are varied yet blend well into the now photographic pieces we are showing. My approach was more photographic whereas his was more artistic and surreal."
Mock, who's been collecting these toys for two decades, said that, "as a graphic artist, I've always been attracted to the look of the things. All I do in PhotoShop is try to enhance our visualization of the image. They're almost surreal, with their vibrant, primary colors -- like aliens sent to play among us."
The couple are always on the lookout for more toys, as well as graphics and photo work. They're available at 383-2226.
Ultra Seven and a generic Japanese monster share a jar of bubblegum jawbreakers, in what Mock calls "a childhood image; all those bright colors, trapped."
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