Interview: Mister Cartoon Talks New Sanctiond Car Products, L.A. Car Culture and His Artistic Roots

Mister Cartoon is a king in the street artist scene. He has roots as a tattoo and grafitti artist and is well known for using cars and trucks as his canvases. He's not stopping there, though. Cartoon wants an empire, so he's expanding his brand with a new line of car wax and detailing products to help maintain his vehicular masterpieces. Complex spoke to him about his passions as an artist, his new product line, and Los Angeles car culture.

Interview by Jeff Sanico

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How did you get started on this venture?

Sanctiond was a name that I created and it was basically our team coming up with a brand name that we could use in different areas to start it out. So it's like stripping telephones, doing MetroPCS, and it was this idea of doing “Sanctioned TV” with all these different areas. A lot of it was a lot more than just me, so I wanted to come up with a brand my whole team could push. That meant we'd have a marketing agency, we'd have a design agency, and then we'd have free-hand art and Estevan Oriol would do photography.

So, I came up with the idea, and I was dreaming of being in the car business. I asked myself how I could get in knowing I didn't want to build cars for a living for other people and I didn’t want to do another rim company because that market is over-saturated. So, I thought, damn, I was always buying wax and detailing my car. We want to make everything we do, whether it is apparel, shoes, electronics or whatever. Our own cars, socks, underwear, you know? Everything we do, we want to design it our way.

The whole concept of doing a wax was crazy to me, because I was walking into the auto store and it was years away from where apparel is now. In apparel you have vinyl toys, you got the labels on the jeans, you can get creative with the packaging, all that stuff. With automotives, NASCAR was probably the hippest thing that was out, at least that I’ve seen. Now I’m not saying to make “hip-hop car wax," but my case goes from so many different styles of cars. From vintage Impala’s to vintage Porsche’s, Mercedes to the 1939 Bugattis, the most beautiful car in the world.

What ties all these cars, these cultures, and the lifestyle together? It's detailing them, keeping them clean and shiny and crispy. So, that was my brainstorm, sitting in my living room, drawing, hitting the computer. I just started sketching models, but I didn’t want to hook up with a major corporation. I wanted to do it with my friends and family, people I already knew through the connects I’ve made through tattooing and our business. We did it without a big brother corporate company behind us.

What is the main product line you're focusing on?

Picture Turtle Wax. We’re making our own version of that. That company just sold to a major corporation for somewhere around $700 million. There’s a huge market there, and our love goes all over the place. We love all kinds of different colors, and you know we’ve traveled all over the world. I got my pen and I started drawing these crazy bottles out.

I wanted the bottle to look like a spray gun, so it looked like I was painting a car. I started wylin' on all the different bottles, really getting creative with it. But then the next part of it was sitting with an engineer and really making the stuff work. So the bottles turn into molds, and then you get the molds and you have to make sure that the balance is right. It’s a long process. It took about a year just to get from beginning sketches to a physical sample in front of me. But most things take a year.

Are these bottles going to be collector's items?

Exactly, I hand drew every one. In the age of computers and everyone digitally taking pictures of cars in like fish eye lenses and stuff like that? It was important to me to hand draw each car, to do a letter font that’s mine, to create the colors, coming from basically a painter, you know?

Doing my old school drawing takes me back to when I was a kid painting the wall. There are no shortcuts. You gotta detail it and put the colors and the shade. I used to sit there for hours on each bottle. We have spray detailer, tire gloss, leather conditioner, car wash in a bottle. There are 13 products total.

Why wax?

People want to take care of what they got. They wanna take care of their car. Some of my partners just waxed their drum sets and their guitar, or classic Schwinn bicycle. It's amazing, because I've been drawing my whole life and going to car shows since I was a kid, but I never thought a spray wax would launch me. I dream of a day when somebody's goin', “Hey man, you know the guy that owns that company? He used to tattoo back in the day!” “Nahhhhh.” “Yeah, Cartoon man, he used to tattoo.” “Yeah, man for real!”

So, the way they think of me right now, I was thinking about tattoos. But I actually was muraling cars and toying with these car shows with my father when I was a kid, way before I knew how to tattoo.

It was kind of the first love, but I’m not quitting my day job, because that’s how I’m able to get cool people into the tattoo shop. My tattoo shop is like my mini museum of cars for people that actually come when they get tattoos. They also get my private collection of cars.

What advantages do you have going for you?

We’re aggressive. We take chances. Our weather is the greatest weather in the world. There’s no humidity, there’s no need to put salt on cars in the winter. You always want to buy a California car, because even if it’s been outside everyday, it’s basically babied. I grew up as a little kid looking at guys with tattoos driving rag top Impalas. So, we have a head start over everybody else.

Our painters and our colors that we choose with our cars are different too. Through the Internet I can almost go to any place in the U.S. and find guys that build custom cars. Of course there’s always been these older guys, but they’re like dinosaurs, fossils, you know what I’m sayin? We’re the youth, we’re coming up, we’re the next. We put more aggressive, bigger rims on our cars. We put louder music. We take more chances.

My buddies will rip apart a Bugatti and not paint it. You got a $1.5 million car and you’re tearing it apart to put everything carbon fiber, put these wheels on, and a bigger sound system. They’re crazy. I think a lot of the younger guys today are driving the cars that old, rich fossils used to drive. You have the old man that’s finally got the money for his car, and you got 30-year-old kids in Rolls-Royces. Times are different. We’re getting all the cool stuff.

We’re expected to be businessmen at young ages. A rapper’s gotta be a rapper, plus he gotta understand marketing, plus he’s gotta be able to do interviews, plus he’s gotta make merch, plus he’s gotta push himself. Same with us. We gotta do the same stuff too, so it’s a process.

Who has had a car that has impressed you?

Slim Thug has good taste when it comes to a car collection.

What's an example of a car you liked that he has?

Slim just has one of everything. He has like an off-road truck that’s pimped out. He has the European cars, and he’ll have a swanger from out there. Then you got someone like Akon or Baby that will just have so many new expensive European cars, so filthy. There's somebody named Chris Mills from the Clippers who has a ridiculous car game. If anybody visits Los Angeles, you gotta go to Platinum Motor Sports in Hollywood to see the wildest private cars on the craziest wheels.

Is there any particular year or make that’s really special to you?

I’m pretty much stuck in the '50s and '60s. I listen to classic soul music, the Motown Sound, the Philadelphia sound. That music goes with those cars. My wife listens to that music, my kids listen to that music, and my father, too. They’re generational for us out here.

We listen to Funk Parliament, old west coast hip-hop, like Tati T and King T. Just crazy, "Hard times'" by Run DMC coming out in the lowriders retarded. That’s us. We still do that. We still cruise Hollywood Boulevard in lowriders. Then, we follow with two Phantoms and an Aston Martin. Then, we’ll just drive a car to a public school and do an art class or go to a college with the lowrider and speak to a class about car club culture. It's how car clubs work. We’re always doing something.

Did that open up a lot of eyes for people as far you doing cars?

Yeah I think so. I had two cars in there, so you know you’re not gonna compete against Revok and Risk and Ryan doing Graffiti. You might as well just forget that shit. I just had to go to what I know. I know cars, man, so I mixed my graffiti with my cars. I’m still a graffiti artist at heart, so I attack my car building in that frame of mind.

How long did it take you to do that ice cream truck?

The ice cream truck would take me a process that probably comes close to 13 years from the day I started it. It was missing for six years, too. So for six years, it was MIA and going from random shop to shop, completely unfinished in pieces. It’s amazing that it never got finished. It's already been in two museums and it started off as a joke, just clowning. We thought it’d be funny to have that mural on that ice cream truck going through the hood selling all types of products to people. I was halfway done when that movie Friday came out. I wanted to go catch Big Worm slipping on the street and hit the switch on him.

Where is the truck now?

It’s in my studio. I have a whole installation.

What's in store?

We’re gonna debut everything. We’re gonna have the wax, we’ll have the products here, demonstrations, the ice cream truck, and about 35 other hand-picked show cars from every realm. From stock muscle car to classic European cars, to lowrider of the year to an SLR convertible to a Bugatti. We’ll have everything here. It’s a celebration of this launch to let everybody know what it is.

The thing is that people will be able to get their hands on this. This is my household product. Everyone will be able to raise their kids on it. Show your kids how to take some pride and say, "Hey son, go help hook up the wheels." Even if they're stock wheels, you want them to be clean.

We'll also have a starter kit, so we’ll be able to show what we’re gonna do. I'm taking my experience from all the apparel and collaborations I’ve done and putting mouths behind it. At the same time, we’ll still be doing obscure collabos that only a few people will get; stuff that’s hard to find. I also want people to get this stuff. We’re gonna go with Vans on tour and sell products.

Are the cars at the unveiling going to have art and detailing that you did on them?

Not all of them. There’s a mix. They couldn't put all my cars in, because I lean heavy towards lowriders and this brand's about everybody. I want everybody to embrace and love it, because I love all cars. I pretty much have a style from every style that there is. This is just the tip of the iceberg. When they let me and Estevan loose on the project, we’re gonna go crazy.

Where can people find your products?

The first year we were very picky. We hand picked strategic stores that are not majors. We don’t go to majors. We want to build it our way first. You know if you go to majors, they try of dictate the way you should do your product, the way you should build it, you know what I mean?

So, we tried to stay away from them, do it our own way. When they do approach us, we’ll already have our own way to do stuff. They’ll pretty much want us because we’re hot. We won’t be conforming to anybody’s styles. We’re doing everything different about this company.

It sounds like you might have to know somebody who knows someboy to find your stuff.

It's gonna be out there. We’re gonna be hitting them hard, especially in Southern California. The product is incredible. The actual synthetic wax and all the stuff that’s inside the bottle is amazing, and I’m real real picky with car stuff. I thought OCD and all that stuff was just protection. I want the stuff tight, and I use it myself, so that’s the main thing. We're always trying to improve our stuff in every way. It's gonna be interesting to be able to really hit 'em.

There are so many car shows out here that no one cares about, that nobody caters to. No major corporation has made an attempt to go to the Compton College Car Show. I’m the only person that does that. I'm willing to go and set up my booth there. Even though, maybe next week, I might be in Miami on South Beach at an invite-only event.

We still love to go down home to Whittier Boulevard, East L.A., San Pedro, Tanoma, we’re all over the place. It’s really important that we own Los Angeles first, and then people will find where our stuff is located. We’ll be in some chains, but a lot of them are mom and pop style and that’s what we want. I’m not worried about majors picking up on it. That’s gonna be the easy part. My thing is how to go and make the family that’s doing the business, helping them out. There are still those types of places.