- Date: 10/28/2023
- Location: Lightbox Expo 2023
Anime Herald: What’s the story behind the New York City rats?
Clover Complex: My friend and I, Ant, went to New York for MoCCAfest. It was inspired by our trip, and the subway. Also, the viral videos and the TikToks.
Anime Herald: I see that you’ve done the rats in a variety of classic poses. The Da Vinci Vitruvian Man with the pizza as the fig leaf.
Toodlingart: That one was one of my ideas. We did two inspired rats. The Golden Ratio Rat and the Vitruvian Rat. We made all of our rats based around things in the New York City area. Art museums, food, superheroes, famous characters. Trying to capture the essence of New York with the rats.
Anime Herald: Is it the same with the LA Seagulls?
Toodlingart: Yeah, that too. Although, I’m local to LA. That’s a bit closer to home for me. A similar idea, popular entertainment characters. Surfing. We have In-n-Out seagulls. The Barbie Movie recently came out. Barbie was by the Santa Monica pier, so we included a Barbie Seagull.
Anime Herald: I’ve noticed you have a biblically accurate frog.
Toodlingart: That’s our t-shirt design. Is there anything you’d like to know about it?
Anime Herald: Why did you choose to do a biblically accurate frog?
Toodlingart: I am a fan of mythology, and angels in particular. There’s also a popular meme where people make “biblically accurate” versions of anything. Six wings, tons of eyes, flaming wheels. How angels are designed in the bible.
(Editor’s note: You don’t say?)
Toodlingart: That was a design I made when I still a student. I was taking a screen printing class. I came up with a four-color biblically accurate frog design because I like frogs, and I wanted to do my own spin on the biblically accurate trend.
Anime Herald: This might be a bit inside baseball in terms of Talmudic studies, but some rabbis have noted it’s not clear if it’s plague of frogs or plague of frog.
Toodlingart: Is that true?
Anime Herald: It’s hard to know for sure, but in some of the records it’s “plague of frog” (tzefardeah).
Toodlingart: I’ll have to look that up.
Anime Herald: Someone did an image of one enormous frog walking in Egypt.
Anime Herald: So, what are your origin stories?
Clover Complex: My name is Shyaoman, but I go by Clover Complex online. I went to art school, and now I’m tabling.
Toodlingart: My name is Ant. I go by Toodlingart online. I also went to art school. I met Shyaoman in art school. I’m a character designer and in my free time I make merch and do fanart. I’ve started tabling at conventions.
Anime Herald: What school was that?
Clover Complex: Rhode Island School of Design.
Anime Herald: My editor is from Rhode Island. She’ll know all about it. I’ve heard of it as well. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Clover Complex: If you can just check us out I think that would be really nice.
Toodlingart: It’s been very cool seeing anime become more mainstream into Western animation and media. Especially, now that the younger generation that grew up on anime are entering the industry and advancing up the ranks. It will be cool seeing where things evolve now that things are moving more towards anime.
You can find Clover Complex and Toodlingart at their respective Instagram or webpages.
You can find a lot of the work they displayed at Lightbox Expo on their Etsy store.
Thanks to Clover Complex and Toodlingart for sitting down with us, and to Lightbox Expo for making this interview possible.
