Kit Rae Interview

Back in May 2010, Sword&Axe.com, your source for japanese Samurai swords and more, got the chance to speak to Kit Rae in an excusive interview. Find out what this legend had to say below!

S&A: Kit, for those who haven't formally met you, can you give us a little of your background, as well as some insight into what your current roles are pertaining to Swords and Fantasy Art?

Kit Rae: I am a fantasy knife and sword designer, as well as a fantasy artist. I also do replica design work for film, television, and video game weapons, supervising the development of collectible versions. I got into knife designing while still in high school, working for a friend who owned a large knife retail company back in the mid 1980s. He started United Cutlery with some other partners not long after and I was hired as a product designer. United was an importer that specialized in their own exclusive designs. From there I realized I had no idea what I was doing in the engineering area, so I schooled myself in drafting and the production methods involved in manufacturing swords and knives. Sporting and hunting knife design were my primary responsibilities back then, but that was not what I really wanted to do. I started putting more of my own twist on designs, and introduced more of a fantasy aspect to some of United's collectible designs. I had always been a fan of Lord of the Rings, fantasy artists of the late 1970s, and was heavily into historical European and oriental blades. One thing led to another, and I began doing full blown fantasy weapon designs for United. I started to get a large following for some of my early work. People were asking for my knives by name, so I created my own brand in the early 1990s, doing the design and engineering work on the side. It was exclusively distributed by United Cutlery. I was also the lead product designer for their other brands and supervised the UC design department at the time. That was my day job. I designed for United's fantasy lines, Gil Hibben, Harley-Davidson knives, Colt, and many others. We were heavily into replicating blades from films also, so United acquired a reputation as the go to company for licensed sword and knife replicas. I supervised replicas for dozens of films, with the Lord of the Rings trilogy probably being United's biggest project. My own brand kept getting bigger and bigger during this time, so I left UC in 2006 to focus exclusively on my own designs. I still do film and video game knife and sword replica work through my Design Studio business, but my own blades and my fantasy artwork are my primary gig now.

S&A: How long have you been designing Fantasy weapons and what was the inspiration that channeled your artwork into this direction of designing Swords and weapons?

Kit Rae: I have probably been drawing swords and knives since I was a child. Fantasy books and cover artists like Frank Frazetta, the Hildebrandt brothers, and the early Boris Vallejo work were what inspired me. I was always into designing swords, but outside of the custom knife market, there really was no outlet to sell them. At UC, we discussed ways to get them out there into the sword collector market, and one of those early ideas was to design a line of licensed Lord of the Rings swords, working with the Tolkien estate. This was long before the films were ever discussed. They would have been my interpretations of the various blades in the books. I drafted designs for Narsil, Sting, and a few others. We sent a proposal to the estate. We were turned down, and not long after we found out that they had already done a deal with the Hildebrandt brothers for the same thing! They already had a rep as Tolkien illustrators, doing book covers and calendars, so they won out. In the end it was a blessing, because we decided to proceed with production of my designs and marketed them under my own name. Those were my very first swords, the Sword of Vaelen and Sword of Darkness, and those first swords came with a print of my fantasy artwork featuring the swords.

S&A: Have any of your weapons actually appeared in Movies? If so, Which ones? Kit Rae: More of my fantasy knives have appeared in television shows than anything else. I was keeping a list of them many years ago, but I gave up trying to keep up with them. Shows like the X-Files, Millennium, Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel used my stuff often. Most of my knives that have appeared in films and tv have been knife designs I made for the Gil Hibben line. I designed for his line all throughout the 1990s. My Hibben Highlander/Serpentine bowie was in Natural Born Killers. My Jackal, Double Shadow, and Raven designs were in several of the Star Trek films. Too many to remember. I had several of my designs in the Chronicles of Riddick film. The last film I remember seeing one of my swords in was The Spirit. The dagger Harry Osbourne had in those first two Spider Man films was my Knights Dagger, from United's Legends in Steel line. My BlackJet throwing daggers are in the tv show Burn Notice now.

S&A: Our personal favorite trilogy was Lord of The Rings. Of all the movies from which you've designed swords, what did you enjoy most about designing the Lord of the Rings collection? How has the fan response been to the LOTR collection?

Kit Rae: I did not design any of the LOTR weapons, at least the outside designs. Those were all created by Peter Jackson's team at Weta. I came into that project about a year before Fellowship came out. I took the props from Weta and reverse engineered them so United could make production versions, which involve the engineering and tooling design to make a real world replica that could be manufactured. It was quite a challenge for some of those pieces. I supervised the program, and being a huge fan of the books, and eventually the films, I directed which products UC chose to make. I also supervised the display and packaging design, and was involved in the marketing. The fan response was phenomenal. With me being the #1 fan of the material, it was a dream project, and I took it as seriously as I have ever taken anything in my career. I wanted it to be the most incredible collection of film replicas ever made. We did not always succeed, but the majority of the time we did, and we made some incredible replicas. Some of those pieces, like Anduril, or the Sauron helm, are absolutely stunning. I look back at that and can't believe we pulled off as many different pieces as we did.

S&A: As one who has seen these swords up close and personal, the Lord of the Rings swords are very detailed and authentic. But can you tell us what went into designing these replicas so that they look so much like the LOTR blades in the film?

Kit Rae: It was basically a matter of making exact patterns of the Weta props and creating drafting drawings for tooling to replicate the parts shapes and decoration as close as possible. Where modern production methods could not recreate some parts of the hand made weapon designs we had to figure out the best way to accomplish making the pieces without any major compromise to the designs. Then there was a lot of research on different materials and finishes to get the right looks. Overall I think we created the largest lines of film prop replicas in the history of film prop replicas, and about 90% of them were very successful.

S&A: Besides movies, I understand you have designed some weapons for video games. Can you tell us about that? Tell us about your most recent releases in the video game line.

Kit Rae: Actually, game companies come to me to use my existing designs from my Swords of the Ancients Collection in their games. Two Worlds was the last major game. They featured about seven of my designs as primary weapons. LOTR Online used my Vaelen sword last year, and many times I just see my designs being used without permission. Hopefully at some point we can get Sony or Capcom interested in creating a game based on the SOTA mythology and use all of my weapons designs.

S&A: One of your most popular Fantasy sword collections is the Swords of the Ancients. Can you give us a bit of background from this collection? What can we expect from this collection in the future?

Kit Rae: That is the one that started as my interpretation of LOTR swords that I mentioned earlier. When it became my own line, I wanted to include a piece of my artwork with each one, and I also started creating a short mythology behind each piece. Initially it was to be a line of ten swords, and this sprawling 10,000 year mythology behind them. When the ten swords were complete I started doing weapons from other parts of the mythology, like the Mithrodin sword and Black Legion Axes. There are so many places in the story now from which to draw from and make new designs that I plan on continuing that collection for a long while. I don't think my collectors will let me stop! The latest sword, Vorthelok, was just released, along with reissues of a few older SOTA swords that I had discontinued a few years back. Many new collectors are trying to get every piece, which is hard because I can't keep everything in production forever, so I stop making older pieces to make way for the new designs. The requests to bring back the older pieces were getting louder and louder, so we decided to bring back 2-3 of those for a short time every year. Molotoch was rereleased last year and Vorthelok and Anathros are the two I brought back this year. There are also Damascus bladed versions in the works for later this year, and hopefully the next new sword will be ready by Christmas.

S&A: Many people don't realize that when they come across a Kit Rae sword, it may be one of only 100 or 1000. Tell us what makes your Limited Edition collections so special?

Kit Rae: I try to keep the editions numbers low so they actually have some true collector value. If you run too many of them, and everyone can get them, they really don't have any special value to my die hard collectors. Sometimes I run too few though. I underestimated the demand for the small 100 piece runs of my Damascus bladed swords last years and those sold out fast, and a lot of people were unhappy that they could not get one. I try and do Gold editions of most of the swords as well, and keep the editions around 300. The swords are individually serial numbered, and include a certificate or art print that I personally hand sign. The first 1000-1500 production run of any new sword I create always comes with an autographed art print of one of my paintings. I have been doing that since 1997. Some people just collect my art, so I also sell the prints separately.

S&A: Can you tell us more about the history of the original Vorthelok sword. I understand you have been working on a re-design of this sword, which will be made available for sale very soon. What can we expect, and when will it be available?

Kit Rae: It is out now, and the gold limited edition will be coming out sometime mid 2010. Vorthelok is an original, not a redesign, but it is the first sword of the character Evruc from the SOTA mythology. His most well known sword was Kilgorin, the Sword of Darkness, one of my very first swords, from 13 years ago. I am going to retire that sword from production soon. 13 years is a long time to be selling one sword. Vorthelok will fill the void that one will leave, and it's design harkens back to some of those early swords.

S&A: There are very few people that have the artistic talent to do what you have done in this industry. What would you tell a young artist who aspires to, one day, follow in your footsteps?

Kit Rae: Study swords from throughout history as a basis to design from, learn about sword making, drafting, modern engineering, metal working, casting, and tool making. All of those are valuable assets for what I do. Learn to work long hard hours, and don't expect to be rich! As far as the fantasy art element, I don't know how you can learn that, other than by studying other fantasy artists and weapon designers. My inspiration came from seeing the art of people like Frank Frazetta when I was a kid. I wanted to make weapons that characters in his painting would use.

S&A: For those who want more information about you and, do you have a website where people can get to know more about your artwork and your collections, past and present?

A:Kit Rae: www.kitrae.net We just launched an all new, completely revamped website, with all past and present weapons, limited editions, the SOTA mythology, as well as all of my SOTA artwork. There are also sections showcasing some of my other interests, like my Zippo art lighters, and hidden pages of some of my other interests.

Sword&Axe.com would like to personally thank Kit Rae for taking time with us, and we are proud to be a Licensed dealers for the United Cutlery Kit Rae collection. Thanks again! Swordandaxe.com