SUCCESS STORIES | BEN HITMAR Visually appealing career

Ben Hitmar works for Hasbro, a company that designs toys based on movies.
By NANCILYNN GATTA
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
Even as a small child, Ben Hitmar knew that he wanted to have a career in visual art. The Lakeview High School graduate pursued his dream at Cleveland Institute of Art. While he was there, he had an internship at Hasbro's former office in Cincinnati.
This led to the Cortland native's becoming one of the senior designers of their boys' toys division in Providence, R.I.
"I didn't actually think I could make a career out of it [art] until I got into my junior and senior years of high school," he said. "I started realizing then that there were entire colleges devoted to that type of thing.
"Around that time -- maybe even earlier than that -- I started realizing it's not just art. There are so many different types of art. It wasn't just comic books or painting. I started realizing that art was also design. There were artists that were designing our furniture and our cars and our houses. I thought that was kind of fascinating."
Expressing himself through visual art was always encouraged at the Hitmar household.
"My dad is a recently retired art teacher from the Warren school district. He taught at the high school level," Hitmar said. "I was lucky. It was such a common thing -- art in my house. We never even talked about it. It was just like eating. So, I was kind of lucky in that way."
Education
Attending Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) as an industrial design major was a natural progression for Hitmar. He liked the school's curriculum, which included two years of basic courses and three years of concentrating on your major.
Unfortunately, Hitmar's main interest of designing effects for movies was not offered at CIA.
"My good friend Tucker Johnson and I were pushing our professors to get an entertainment industry [course] down there," he said. "We had a lot of standard stuff like furniture design and product design and of course car design. They couldn't figure out how to get anybody from the movie industry there. Then they found out that Hasbro was in Cincinnati. After a little bit of pressure from Tuck and I, they got some people from Hasbro.
"The way that Cleveland [Institute of Art] works, they have people from the field doing at least half of the class. With Hasbro, they said, 'Pretend you're working for us. Pick a piece of literature that hasn't had any visuals created for it yet. No movies, no comic books that you feel would make a good toy line. Come up with a toy line that has three different price points.'"
His first foray into toy design involved characters from a science fiction short story, "Against Babylon." It involved futuristic firefighters in Colorado that he equipped in his design line to fight aliens who were causing forest fires.
"At that time I wanted to design spaceships and monsters for movies," Hitmar said.
Toy design process
Hasbro is Hitmar's first job after graduating college. This position has given him the opportunity to combine his two areas of interest -- movies and art. Hasbro works closely with the film industry, offering toy lines to coincide with movie characters, such as the new "Star Wars" line.
"I ended up doing the 'Men In Black II' toys and the 'Batman' toys," he said. "I went out to Los Angeles. When two companies are in something together, each one brings something to the party. They want to bring the entertainment to it, but with anything that involves teenagers or younger kids, they also want to make a profit on the product.
"It's a really joint venture with anything like 'Star Wars' or 'Men in Black II.' We'll be out there when they're making the movie, suggesting, 'It would make a better toy if your ship had better launchers on it or something, 'cause then we could make a toy out of it.' They'll take that into consideration when they're making their movie."
He continued defining Hasbro's participation in the procedure of combining a movie with a toy line.
"They're pretty much into control of their movie," Hitmar said. "It is just a suggestion process. It depends on the movie on how much sway we have. On anything like that, we're there from step one."
Tangible results
In his field of design, Hitmar sees tangible results of his artwork, and he enjoys creating something that other people can experience.
"One of the coolest things I got to see back in Cincinnati is: I went to a toy store, and there was this one little boy walking along, and he was so choosy," Hitmar said. "He was picking up every package. He would look at the front. Then he'd look at the back. I'm not sure if he was old enough to read, but he'd study the back. Then he'd put it down, and then he'd go to the next one. Then he picked up my Batman that I had just done. He studied it. Finally, that's the one he chose. It was kind of cool to see a little boy that was that introspective -- that he had to have just the right one -- and then he picks yours."
His own line
Though he has participated in the design of such products as The Transformers, Pokemon and Batman, Hitmar is extremely excited about a new product line that he has been working on for the past 16 months.
XEVOZ (Zee-Vose) is an in-house line conceived by Hitmar and Tucker Johnson. The new line of action figures is interchangeable battling kits, which are unassembled. Individual parts rotate on ball joints even when assembled with other figures. It will hit store shelves in January 2004. Prices will vary from $6 to $15 for a two-pack.
"This XEVOZ product is unique in that a lot of the brands do come from marketing or an outside source. This came much more from design," Hitmar said.
While Hasbro may have initially questioned the validity of launching a toy line without the benefit of a television show or movie release, Hitmar and Johnson convinced the company of the advantages of the product.
"We kept pushing the management that it's time to push our boundaries with some creative toys," Hitmar said. "Hasbro is branching out. A couple of years ago, everything was based on a TV show or a movie. The thing about that is you always have to pay somebody else money for the royalty."
Rewarding venture
Despite the similarity to other toys in this genre because of the use of classic archetypes, such as a humanlike and buglike characters, Hitmar admitted that creating them was much more challenging and rewarding for him.
"It's simultaneously harder and more fun," he said. "Say you're working on a super-hero brand with a movie, then you've got some guidelines already. This guy has a red cape. Whereas [with] this you're sort of staring at the sky, which is in some ways cool and some ways hard. It is more of a challenge because there are no guardrails. You create your own guardrails."
Hitmar and Johnson gave each of the characters a back-story in the booklet insert. Individual figures and body parts were given a name. Initially, consumers can purchase seven different action figures.
"Kids these days are used to instant gratification, which has already changed from when I was a kid," Hitmar said. "GI Joe would always sell little booster packs of weapons and stuff. These days it seems like kids like to get the entire fantasy out of one box."
Imagination
Hitmar perceives these toys as products that will promote children's imaginations.
"A lot of toys these days are just turning into sculptures, a collectible that represents something that they saw on TV," he said. "With these toys, it's not only a matter of being creative; it's also a matter of ownership of the idea. Once a kid creates something like this, it's his own adventure. He's created a hero that nobody else has."
This latest design is the next step in Hitmar's creative career. He has found success in a field, which many people view as a hobby you enjoy while you work at a "real" job.
"There are a lot of kids out there that don't get the support, and it's not that their parents are bad. It's just that their parents don't think that there is a future in art," he said. "It's important to know that there definitely is. I have a pretty nice car and a pretty nice house, and I'm doing good.
"I'm having fun. It took some work -- art is not just a dreamy land of no food."