DopePope is a Brooklyn-based illustrator and digital sculptor responsible for some of the coolest creature designs we see in videogames and Hollywood films today. DopePope has teamed up with Seismic toys to honor the Shin Ultraman movie with a stunning new Shin Gomess soft vinyl figure, and we cannot wait to get our hands on it!
UC got a chance to interview DopePope about the figure and his experience doing one of the coolest jobs ever, and here’s what he had to say —
DopePope: “My love for creatures started when I was born. I’ve been drawing monsters on the backs of library books since I was two years old.”
Gomess truly is a figure made with care, considering DopePope’s boundless passion for his craft. For the past 11 years. DopePope has been sculpting creatures daily on the application zBrush, building an epic index of monsters. He is heavily influenced by tokusatsu-style rubber suit design, imagining a human distribution of gravity beneath any form to give it the weight and presence that bring Kaiju to life on screen.
DopePope: “From a young age I fell in love with the Japanese sensibility of giant-monster design. The rubber suits allow for you to see the gravity, the way the form is pulled towards the ground, the firmness of the stance, the big rubbery wrinkles in the skin and the rolls of fat. They looked organic, way more organic than stop-motion or real lizards like they were using in the West. That’s what made those monsters real to me. That was my biggest inspiration.”
DopePope brought his expertise to the table while preserving the distinct look and feel of the Seismic toy aesthetic. The texture information alone would put Shin Gomess at the top of Seismic’s charts in terms of figure quality. With deliberate attention to detail, nuanced coloring, and a delicate sense of realism, this Shin Gomess figure wields so much power it almost looks like he could stomp towards you at any moment.
DopePope: “The Gomess design in Shin Ultraman is just amazing. It’s exactly how I would make a monster. There are so many crazy fun elements, he’s loaded with spikes and scutes and sharp teeth. It’s very cool.”
The figure is articulated at the arms and legs, standing tall in a classic A-pose, maintaining a striking likeness to his appearance in the film with a DopePope-Seismic spin. The original cinematic Shin Gomess design was developed in zBrush, the same application DopePope used in the figure modeling process, giving the product as much integrity as possible.
“Everything I’ve seen of it so far has just made me smile. I want it so bad! Even the box looks awesome.”
DopePope’s creation of the Shin Gomess figure, and all his monster creations, stems from the same love that we all have for the fantastical, the wild, the interdimensional, and the larger-than-life. What better craftsman than one who understands the beauty of escaping into other worlds the way we do?
DopePope: “Monsters are everything to me. I don’t look at them as terrible or evil. The scarier or weirder they look, the happier I am. When I don’t want to think about the negatives of life, my mind looks to monsters.”
Dope Pope’s work can be found on Instagram and on his website, and the Gomess soft vinyl figure can be found here. For more information on amazing Ultraman Series merchandise like this, stay close to Ultraman Connection!
