Shin Tanaka and His Paper Toys Design

A maestro of paper arts, Shin Tanaka is a native of Fukuoka, Japan. Shin's style is easily recognize because of his combination of one-of-a-kind paper design with strong graffiti elelments. His passion for paper began with the familiar disposition of having no money as a student. He couldn’t afford his favorite sneakers so he made life-size paper versions of them. This caught the attention of many people, most notably the shoe companies he was imitating. Since then, he has collaborated with big brands such as Nike and Adidas…and should no longer have a problem procuring his favorite shoe.

Shin went on to design templates for paper figures. His most well-known figure is T-Boy followed by Spiky. These figures were an ideal blank canvas for Shin and other creative minds and naturally lead to many collaborations with fellow artists and designers.

Shin Tanaka will be converting one of his innovative paper toy designs into vinyl form. Shin and Play Imaginative will be dropping a 7-inch version of T-Boy, a shy and curious character from his paper toy series. T-Boy will sport a tee with Shin’s signature graphics, and his arms will have some articulation as well. Currently, Shin Tanaka has a downloadable Spiky Baby designer series as well as a worldwide Boxy collaboration with artists from many countries.

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