From Sketchels to Vinyl toys, K-swiss customs to idents for E4, Jellymon apply their loveable style across all your favourite media! We posed a few questions to the London based duo (Sam and Lin-Lin Jacobs), who took time out from working with the people they love, doing what they love, for the love of it! There was an awful lot of love…

Welcome to the wonderful world of Thunder Chunky, how are you today?

S+L: We just had a really chilled-out Sunday, came back from a Korean Barbecue place, burping away… burrrrrrrrrr… opps.

For those that aren’t familiar with your work, tell us a bit about yourselves and what you do?

S: We met at Chelsea school of Art 4 years ago. After Uni we decided to start our little practice ‘Jellymon’. The immediate plan was to make a living by doing crazy work for fun-loving people in all areas of design: Graphics, toys, animation, interiors ect…

L: We often work with people we love, and we’re very lucky to have them support us, party with us, and free sneakers; love freebies!!

Your idents for E4 were cracking. It seems you’ve done a range of work. What media do you consider most exciting and fun to work with?

S: We don’t really have a favorite, I think they all stem from the same disciplines and we love them all. I do love animation though. The whole process is so time consuming but the end result is really rewarding.

L: I enjoy working with mixed mediums; so far my most exciting experience has been designing ‘Choking Hazard’¬ù. Taking it from just a few scribbles to a set of inter-connected working toys.

Ah! your new toy ‘Choking Hazard’¬ù! That’s due for release within the coming months right? How did that all come about and what were the processes you went through to realize the characters?

S: We had the initial idea about a year ago. It was basically from thinking about what the function of design toys are, and could they do more? Since then we have been to Hong Kong to work on the prototype and we’re off to Japan next week to finalize the production.

L: It was a great learning curve but also great fun. We worked with the engineer in Hong Kong who set up a parallel circuit to connect all four figures, and enable them to connect in any order. We shouted at each other many times on the phone and love each other to death.

What do you think of the current UK vinyl toy scene?

S: It’s really booming. Before we had James Jarvis and Pete Fowler, they where the scene! There’s more of us now and even more on the horizon, which can only be a good thing!

L: The UK vinyl toy scene has a very open-minded audience. It’s very encouraging for homegrown artists and designers. We are looking forward to seeing more exciting toys!

With the two person team approach you have been likened to those other scamps TADO and Peskimo. How do you feel about that comparison?

S: Who? Only joking, we love both Tado and Peskimo’s work and to be compared is an honour. I think we’re all very different really but we have similar influences. We haven’t met Peskimo but Mike and Katie are lovely chaps, even stranger is the one Chinese girl, one English guy approach that both Tado and us have gone for!

L: Yeah! I love the yellow and white combo, like custard bun, hahahaha!! We hung out with Mike and Katie when they were in London last time, we drank and we ate some food that made Sammy go to toilet 7 times, it was Jon’s (Burgerman) suggestion though, hahaha!!

What’s inspiring you at the moment?

S: The Banksy exhibition just down the road is amazing!! Live rats all over the place. Also Lin inspires me a lot, it’s great to have someone like her to argue with about almost everything!

L: Hey, Confucius said, “To convince not to argue”.¬ù I like Seonna Hong a lot at the moment, her work gives me a dreamy feeling, beautiful control of colours and textures. Ok ok, Sammy inspires me all these years, not only artistically but also his beautiful dance moves and cauliflower-hair… can you cook dinner tonight Sammy?

What music is spinning down at Jellymon HQ?

S+L: Roots Manuva, A Tribe Called Quest, Pharcyde, The Magic Numbers, and Marvin Gaye ‘What’s going on?’¬ù We can go on and on!

What will you be working on as this year draws to a close?

S: We will be working on preparation of the Launch of Choking Hazard in UK and US. More idents for TV and some other secret projects, please check out our news on the website.

L: Maybe an online dating service called Sex Monkeys, hahahah! ! Ok,ok, maybe not.

As the festive period is looming, will you be looking forward to Halloween (Ed: I know, we’re slow off the mark!) or Christmas more? and what will you be doing to kick back and relax?

S: Ahhh, there’s no rest for the wicked; we will work like dogs as Father Christmas whips us into a frenzy. I plan to eat a lot of good stuff though! I’m not really a Halloween fan after years of my mum telling me ‘it’s just organized begging’¬ù, not sure I agree but in this country it just doesn’t seem to work.

L: I always love giving out sweets, as I often buy too much and I have bad teeth. I like Halloween, but there is nothing like Christmas. We will have Christmas Karaoke, I will dress up as a peanut butter jellybean!

Finally, what’s the one thing everybody should do today?

S + L: Do a Poo Poo, it is good for your bowels.

Check out more of Jellymon’s work at www.jellymon.com