JEFFERSON NG is no stranger to those who frequent conventions featuring designer toys. You can often find him manning the booth. His boyish looks make him stand out as the youngest in a group of experienced character and toy designers.
If you have not met the man, then you might have seen his signature toy, Ah Boy (also known as A.H. Boy or AHBOY), a blank or painted figure made of resin, with a round head, Muppet-like facial features, and a mole at the corner of its mouth.
“Everyone thought that Ah Boy resembles me!” said 26-year-old Ng. And how could they not? He has the same mole in the same spot, and he always looks like a kid when surrounded by his peers.
“Whenever I travel around for holidays or work, I notice many people who have the same features as my Ah Boy,” he said. “Some people who bought my toy at events said that they got one because they have, or know someone who has a mole at the side of their mouth.”
“Some even got the toy because it reminds them of a mole they had removed,” added Ng, who is originally from Sabah.
Ah Boy began as Imagino, an evolution of Ng’s final year project, which was a light bulb shaped character.
“My parents have called me Ah Boy since I was small. It is very common for a boy to be called Ah Boy and for a girl to be called Ah Girl in Malaysia. So, why not just name this character Ah Boy to represent the country?,” said Ng.
He explains that the name could also be written as A.H. Boy, which stands for ‘A Humorous Boy’ because it was “funny-looking”.
“Now whenever someone calls me Ah Boy, it is a reminder for myself to keep the dream going,” said Ng, who has been chasing the dream of making it big in the designer toy world since 2011.
However, creating and customising designer toys isn’t the only form of art that he has dabbled in. For his final year project, he did a mind map to plan out his project. But when the lecturer saw his work, it was dismissed as doodle work.
“That was in 2011. Malaysia was not big into doodles at the time. But international artists like Jon Burgerman, Wanton Doodles, and Gary Baseman inspired me.
“That same year, at the Malaysia International Toy Fair (MITF 2011), a designer saw some of my doodle work while I was manning a booth. He then asked me to continue doodle work while we were having a conversation.
“I still remember doodling a little Ultraman for a kid who came over to my booth with his mum,” said Ng.
In 2012 and 2014, he released two collection books containing his first doodle project called the unTITLEd project.
The complete collection contained 100 pieces of artwork done under his visual art-based brand called Jeffersonism.
In the past few years, Ng has participated in several art exhibitions, including an exhibition in Japan, the Bruce Lee tour exhibition in Malaysia, and the Malaysia Coca Cola Fans club video mashup exhibition.
“I also got commissioned to custom paint 300 golf balls with my doodle art in 2014. The balls were meant to be given away as gifts to 300 golfers.
“I still can’t forget how crazy it was at that time, because I had to complete the project within one month because the golf tournament was just around the corner,” said Ng.
That meant that he had to paint 10 golf balls a day, for 30 days, to complete the task.
“For now, I am focusing more on my character toy design. Sometimes I still doodle, not full-time, but as commissioned work, or as a mind-mapping exercise for my toy design,” he added.
Recently Ng hinted at a new character on his Instagram (@jeffnjf), a dog that he called Long Long. It was the result of him having more time during the pandemic to experiment with art by making videos, or doing acrylic painting and wood carving.
“Many toy events were cancelled or postponed. Long Long came about while I was doing wood carving.
“One of the knives I was using broke. The blade and the handle came apart. The handle looked like the spine of a character to me, so I took out my sketchbook and found an old sketch of a puppy that I did during the Year of the Dog.
“I took the handle, modified the puppy design that I had, and it became Long Long,” said Ng.
He explained that the name came from the fact that he had the knife for a long, long time. Also, in the expression ‘long, long ago’, the word ‘a go’ means puppy in Mandarin. In Cantonese, Long Long puppy (chong chong gao gao) sounds like “forever and ever”.
“That is how the full name of the character ‘Long Long a Go’, a long body puppy, came to be,” said Ng.
