Riot68 He puts down his spraycan and pens to give VA the lowdown.
	Tristan Eaton We picked the brains of the man behind THUNDERDOG.
	Nanospore Nanospore's Paul and Ben tells us why they do what they do.
	Mr Clement VA interviews Mr Clement. Creator of Mr. Yeah Kou
	Tesselate Produced his own toys named "Heart Head" and tells VA how he did it!

Hello Peskimo! Could you set the scene at your end?

Okay, David is typing whilst browsing the interweb highway; Jodie is just behind me, making things. We live in Cheltenham, in a lovely regency flat that costs too much and has a big ceiling fixture that has been cut in half. Jodie’s brother is here flicking through TV channels; otherwise we would be listening to some music.

What music would that be?

Current top 5 songs on iTunes is:
1-stereo total
2-the hives
3-scissor sisters
4-the bravery
5-the dead 60's

I don't know how they all made it up there, Although Stereo Total is deservedly so! We also like Le Tigre, Zoot Woman and have recently seen a lot of Kid Carpet (toy guitar wielding Bristolian).

Music’s very important to us, as we dj'd a bit here, but no one came to our night.

No one at all?

Well we had a regular handful, but had to resort to playing cheese (but good cheese) to get the punters in. My favourite moment was watching a drunken tramp going nuts on his own to Ace of Spades.

So, Peskimo... how did it come into... existence?

Um, Jodie and me met at Uni in Leeds but we were on different courses so never got the chance to work together. I did multimedia technology - web design - sound production video production - 3D animation - geek fest. Jodie was on the graphic arts and design course. Then we moved in together a year after Uni finished and set about doing Peskimo stuff, which started off designing t-shirts for a shop Jodie worked in. Peskimo as a name was made up in Leeds and kept secret until we needed it. It's the only secret we’ve EVER managed to keep. We have a hamster; I forgot to say, so Peskimo is three.

One thing I’ve always wanted to know with duos is how do you split the work??

It depends on the picture, but generally, we start together and work out what we want to do. Jodie will work on the backgrounds and composition and I’ll do the character designs, but it's all a very democratic process, but then sometimes Jodie does the characters.

So you've got it down to a fine art now? Or do you still argue over things?

Oh we have plenty of 'discussions' over how big a monster’s teeth should be or how close it should be to a certain bunny, but that’s why it works.

What else keeps you busy other than music and Peskimo?

We both work full time at the moments; I am a designer at a local design company, lots of corporate stuff, brochures, websites and the like. Jodie is starting a new job in a couple of weeks after temping for a year or so, but Jodie does a lot of making and has a Jewellery business with a friend that is about a year old. So we are quite busy what with packing Peskimo into evenings and weekends.

What’s the situation with Peskimo? What would you describe yourselves as??

I think we would say we are primarily character designers, although that is even broader and lends itself to so much. I think we would love to do animation as a core profession.

So right now do you not see a future in the world of toys?

Oh yeah, we have toy designs here waiting to go, and we love doing customs... ummmm nothing has been produced, we made some sketchels for the Jeremyville show, that was really cool! And lots of people liked them.

We have made some designs for a platform toy we'd like to make, especially after seeing tesselates hearthead production lines and they are really nice toys.

Some designs for Qees have gone down well with Raymond also, but he's completely stacked out at the moment, Qees getting pretty busy.

We are probably quite odd in that we don't collect toys too much, but we don't really have enough disposable income yet. Most of our toys are acquired, if you know what I mean!? We'd always liked toys and bought loads in Leeds, but then we stumbled into Playlounge and were blown away. I think we've been quite sensible and we just buy a bit from the releases that we like, we definitely don't collect series at a time!

You mentioned Ray at Toy2r, is there anybody else you’d like to work with?

Well, we are working with you (razzle) so that’s number one chalked of the list. Above all we'd absolutely die if we ever got to work with Genndy Tartakovsky. He's great; Samurai Jack is our favourite thing ever. We love cartoons more than anything.

How would you describe your style... would you call it cute??

Um, yeah I think it is cute. Our friend made an interesting comment (he wrote the little article on us in playtimes) that we are both from nice areas of England and that is why we have a generally nice feel to our work with a hint of mad eccentricity to it. There’s definitely more of a madness creeping in. We've recently put together a portfolio and some of the work we did a year ago is sickly sweet.

I know a lot of people compare you to mike and Katie (TADO)... is this a compliment? Or do you see it as a bad thing?

We are chuffed to bits as they are great artists and friends! But it’s nice to be respected in your own right too! I think that's just an immediate thing, as time goes on and we are finding our own style more, I think we are getting more distinctive, like having signature things in our pieces and distinctive elements that run throughout. We definitely aren't as obsessed with nipples as they are. I think monsters etc are popular themes amongst a lot of artists that we see around at the moment.

It’s like Christianity... Peskimo is Catholic, TADO is Protestant... and erm Mimic is some other crazy religion... all teaching the same message but in a different way!! (Genius)

That’s very perceptive, but we'd be Buddhists. In fact we don't even like religion, it causes too many problems.

Who or what inspires you?

Cartoons, and more cartoons. Aside from squaring out our eyes we also like picking up junk at car boot sales, we often see things at car boots, which we adapt to our own characters. We have a hell of a lot of bric-a-brac!

What’s next for Peskimo? Is your biggest goal to make Peskimo a full time job??

That’s pretty much it in a nutshell, but in terms of the bigger picture we want a Peskimo cartoon series with full on merchandise wars! Then we kill the animation and vinyl birds with one stone.

Random Peskimo facts (when the interview went sour!)

David’s favourite colour is sky blue
If he were a biscuit he'd be a chocolate chip
Jodie's Favourite food is Pudding (especially profiteroles)
If she were an animal she'd be a squirrel (She was one in a school play when she was 5, and the idea stuck)