Paul Budnitz Unverified Artist Portfolio
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Background:

Paul Budnitz is the founder of Kidrobot, the world's premiere creator of art toys, fashion apparel and accessories.

Budnitz studied photography, sculpture, and film at Yale University, earning honors and a degree in Art in 1990. As Budnitz's energies became increasingly devoted to moving images he became aware of gaps in existing technology. "Since there weren't any affordable ways to edit a film on a computer in 1995, I hacked my own hardware system to edit my films," he says. He made the first feature film to be edited on a home computer, an achievement chronicled in Wired magazine in 1996.

Budnitz's career took another unexpected turn in 2002 when he came across images of edgy vinyl toys that were coming out of China and Japan. These toys included "vinyl toys based on cereal box characters, and remixed GI-Joes turned into stylized B-boys."

He recognized the quirky, intricate toys as works of popular-art, pieces that mixed many aesthetic movements he loved -- including fashion, cartoons, graffiti, comics, music, and fine art. Budnitz sold Minidisco and sunk the proceeds into founding Kidrobot in a California garage in 2002. Leveraging the technology he'd developed for his older businesses and moved the new company to New York City in 2003, and then to Boulder, CO in 2010.

Budnitz called upon the talents of friend Tristan Eaton, the illustrator he'd worked with on his previous animated films. Together they created Dunny and Munny, two of Kidrobot's best selling characters. With a philosophy of collaboration, Budnitz brought in dozens of other fine artists, graffiti artists, and illustrators to work on toy projects with him. Kidrobot produces roughly 60 new toy projects each year and its toys are sold in thousands of stores worldwide.

In 2006 Budnitz co-designed much of Kidrobot's acclaimed limited edition apparel line. With clothing pieces priced between $175 and $3000, Kidrobot apparel can be found in Barneys New York and many other high-end retailers worldwide.

In December 2007, 10 Dunny toys and 3 Munny toys created by Budnitz & Eaton, with paints by various artists, were accepted into the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Kidrobot's innovative toys were also the centerpiece of the 2006 Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Museum Design Triennial.

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