Meet Luc Hudson | Toy Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Luc Hudson and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Luc, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I met my business partner when we both worked as designers at Hasbro in the UK. I was a Concept Designer for the games team on brands including Monopoly, Clue, Twister and Connect 4. Although I had some creative freedom in my role – which was predominantly either to revitalise existing household-name board games or come up with games mechanics, themes, character designs and branding for new ones – after 4 years in the role, I began to get the same projects I had worked on at the start of my time there and since my business partner had chosen to take redundancy after 10 years in the boys’ toys team on brands including Action Man, Transformers and G.I. Joe, we put into place a plan we had been discussing for a while and both left to start our Design Consultancy, Triclops Studio Limited.
We had discussed the notion but not really the practicalities of setting up our own business, when I look back, it was a huge leap of faith, Rob (Business partner) and I had never even worked together on a Hasbro project but we got on like a house on fire when we shared the commute to and from work and that felt enough of a test of our compatibility!
We both see our time at Hasbro as a solid apprenticehip in the toy industry but we felt that it would be more rewarding to work for a broad range of clients rather than being limited to the brands and IPs of just one of them.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I am a firm believer that if you are creative, you should be able to apply your creativity to any artistic endeavour. I certainly thrive on engaging in lots of different creative projects – I make custom toys for the designer toy scene, I do a lot of illustration, I have recently been doing more digital animation and I am just starting to explore 3D modelling with a view to 3D printing my creations. I am a singer and songwriter, I play drums in a covers band, I play guitar and I also like to make my own guitars using old mantel clocks as the custom bodies. I love to cook veggie food and I am also a keen baker.

I guess the 10,000 hours thing is relevant to where I am as an illustrator today. In my professional work as a concept designer, I often have to very quickly generate a lot of concept sketches which convey form and mechanical function, it is only by drawing very regularly that your confidence and clarity improves and there is nothing like a tight deadline to increase workflow!

The King of Rhye project has given me a chance to hone my personal illustration style – before then the only real outlet was cartoon commissions for friends and perhaps annual Christmas cards! At work I am often working on licensed product so must emulate the existing style and characters but with TKOR I can have much more creative freedom and Craig’s writing seems to be very good at putting pictures into my head!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I am afraid that my knowledge of LA is rather limited as the couple of times I have visited have been business trips. I remember hanging out at the Farmer’s Market and really enjoying the atmosphere though! I would really like to check out Roger Taylor (Queen drummer) and Adam Lambert’s new(ish) LGBTQ+ bar ‘The Wild’ and I would probably have to suggest we stop by The Rainbow for the decades of rock and roll history which have no doubt been absorbed by the walls (and carpets).

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I would like to give a shoutout to the anonymous architect who is the Macguffin in my career path. When I first moved to London, I worked as a retail assistant in the Harvey Nichols department store selling Philippe Starck and Armani homewares. One day I got chatting to an architect who was shopping and I told him about my preferred line of work as an illustrator of Childrens’ Books, he said “I know the people who make Action Man (kind of the UK equivalent of G.I. Joe) are hiring, you should apply!” So I somehow found Hasbro’s ad for a Concept Designer and applied and won the role out of 300 applicants. Hasbro were a little bemused when I told them how I had heard about the job but it was probably the luckiest chance meeting I have ever had. If I am allowed two shoutouts, the other one must jointly go to my dear friends Craig Mulhall and The Fat Bottomed Boys, who are also the result of serendipitous encounters but this time via the Queen fan community online. Craig has written 2 novels so far inspired by Freddie Mercury’s imaginary land of Rhye and I have been engaged as illustrator to help bring his wonderful words to life visually. I have collaborated with Elash, Thibaut and the rest of the Fat Bottomed Boys on music, cover art and animated videos. They have all become great friends and they are very supportive of my artistic endeavours outside of my work for Triclops in the day job.

Website: www.triclopsstudio.com

Instagram: @triclopsluc

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luc-hudson-76b3115/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTDNsuyF6iA Sweet Dirge video song written by me, performed (and enhanced!) by Fat Bottomed Boys, video created by me.

Other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhxKsQqm2bs ‘Tiffany’ song written and performed by me and ‘Miceberg’ my old band sadly now defunct! https://soundcloud.com/micebergband Some more of the songs I wrote for Miceberg https://soundcloud.com/luc-hudson Original demos of the songs I contributed to Fat Bottomed Boys’ album The King of Rhye