Holiday Gift Guide: Brad McGinty Holiday Cards Interview

 Brad McGinty an artist, illustrator and grandchild of a very strange grandfather knows how to get you in the holiday spirit with his series of Kaiju holiday cards. I've featured them a few time already, but I had a chance to talk with Brad abou them and some of his other projects.

You can get the holiday cards here. Use coupon code SANTIS with your order and get free shipping this week.

Jonathan:Your last year's line of Christmas postcards were the perfect bit of gross-out humor with holiday season novelty, where did the idea for them come from? I love the background story about your grandfather having them made by Japanese workers who did not understand who Santa was.

Brad McGinty:I get a lot of questions about that story , but as far as I know is it completely true.

What can we look forward to this holiday season? I know it's too late, but I was hoping for something in the vain of Communist Christmas cards. If you look on eBay there's some great cards from their space agency, which is odd as I thought Christmas was banned under Communism. 

This years cards come courtesy of a Japanese film collector named Ichiro Tanaka, who contacted me shortly after receiving last years card as a holiday greeting from his niece.
He thought there might have been a connection between my Grandfathers’ card  and a Japanese monster movie from 1966, which was originally titled USA Holiday Devil Battles Jewish Lamp.
I have no idea if there is a connection, but he sent me a bunch of cool posters, lobby cards, and the last remaining footage. Which I posted at my site. It is pretty crazy stuff!

Do you know of anyone whose made a costume based on your American Christmas Devil?
 

No costumes, but someone last year said that their sister was making a plush version, but I’ve yet to see any pictures!

What does your house look like for Christmas? Do you make a lot of you own decorations?

I don’t own a single Christmas decoration. I think the last time I decorated (or had) a tree was when I was 19 and living in barn with a bunch of hippies. We had a tiny fake tree that we put on top of a stolen road construction barrel and all the ornaments were Newcastle coasters we took form a pizza place. It was pretty great.

What are your favorite Christmas and Horror movies and why? I'd think you'd really enjoy Rare Exports which kind of mixes the two.

Diehard is a pretty good Christmas movie. All those Rankin Bass specials are great, but I haven’t watched any of that stuff since I was a kid. Other than Nightmare before Christmas I can’t think of any Christmas movie I actually would go out of my way to see. Maybe Home Alone? I dunno.... I’m really not into to Christmas stuff. 

I saw Rare Exports in the theater last year and totally dug it. I was pretty surprised how serious they kept it.

As far as horror movies go I like kind of older stuff. Nothing too crazy; Dead Alive, Return of the Evil Dead (the first two), Killer Clowns from Outer Space, Friday the 13^th. The basic stuff I guess. I like horror movies with some fun to them. I don’t like any of the new “torture porn”type of horror movies. I like monsters in my scary movies.

A lot of you work is based on the anatomical posters of Japanese monsters, why do you like this reoccurring theme and when was it first presented to you?

I remember seeing a photo of that Gamera image in an old Sci-Fi magazine I had as a kid. I always liked drawing guts as a kid, but I gave that up, since it got me in trouble on a few occasions. I had to come up with something for an illustration blog I was doing with some friends, and I decided to zone out and draw some Xenomorph guts. I had a lot of fun with it, and did a few more. I try to make each one a little weirder and different than the last one.

If a fan of Japanese culture what have been your influences and are you into any current anime or manga?

I’m not really into too much Manga. I do constantly flip through all 9 volumes of AKIRA. I think that is an absolute masterpiece. It’s 100% pure inspiration for me.   I really enjoy those Drawn and Quarterly collections of Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s work. The Push Man and other stories is great. The total opposite end of the spectrum form AKIRA that’s for sure.

Your about page states, "He now resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and never wants to leave." Why not go the normal animator route of finding work in LA or New York most likely joining Titmouse at first then switching between the major animation companies for the rest of your life until Google or some other company creates more animation jobs?

People ask me that a lot for some reason. It’s a nice compliment for sure, but I want to do my own thing. I do work for big companies here and there, and sure the pay is great, but I’d rather put as much energy and time into my stuff for as long as I can before I go off and work for someone else full time.
I’ve only been 100% freelance since March, but so far I have been able to make more money than I was at my job as an animator. Sure, I work a lot more hours but I knew that would be the case.
Hopefully this next year will be just as good, and I can continue to do my own thing!

From your other work you seem to be into a lot of sci-fi and action films are you looking or thinking about any future projects based on any upcoming films?
 

I’ve got 2 Sci-Fi projects that I’ve been working on. One has been in the works for a year or two. It’s a comic project that I hope I can find the time to do this year. The other one is a sci-fi apparel type of thing that should be cool. Nothing based on a particular movie or anything at the moment though! I’m going to try and stick to purely original concepts for this. It’s a tougher sell, but I hope it can find the right people.
Sci-Fi is all about big ideas!