June 29th-July 3rd

This week was my last week at work. I didn't really start any new projects, I just kind of helped people on what they were working on and I put some graphics on what I was working on the previous week. I spent most of my time at work this week scanning in drawings and organizing my files. Our computers at work had hardly any ram on them so instead of our company buying more memory, they had us swap computers with one that no one was using. In total I had information on 5 computers! Which was really difficult to keep track of what files are on which computer. Before I left on Friday, I wrote a key to where they can find the files and on which computer they were on, so hopefully that helps who ever is searching for my files.

june 22nd-26th

This week I was working on EVA furniture that we will be pitching to LEGO. Many of our projects lately have been involving EVA for some reason. We got a sample of a table and chair set made from EVA about a month ago and ever since then the industrial designers have been plugging away at it. Its really a strange material, it is very lite weight,but durable at the same time.

I did about 5 drawings of some furniture concepts that we could us in a child's playroom. One of the ideas we had was to create each item so that they could all attach to each other similar to Lego blocks. Im not sure why someone would want to connect their bed to their nightstand, to their desk or closet, but I guess its kind of a cool idea.

I feel a lot better about these drawings than the Cars workbench/gas station images that I posted on the last blog. I feel like these images show a better sense of perspective, which is what I struggle with the most. I kept asking the industrial designers for their advise and in just one week I really feel like I have a better understanding of perspective than I did the week before. I mean I still have a long way to go, but I think that perspective drawing is starting to make some sense.

This week someone brought in a sample of EVA foam that could be read with a special pen. All we had to do was drag the pen over the words or numbers etc. and the pen would read the sentences out loud. So my job was to come up with a few quick ideas that would work well with this concept. These will probably end up being licensed so the images that I posted are just very generic ideas.

The second project that you see is an idea for a workbench/gastation licensed towards Disney's Cars. This is also made from the EVA material. This drawing that I did went along with the project that Chris was working on. He created a series of EVA cars and chairs that were for CARS.

June 8th-12th

The prototype of the Thomas sand pit with storage fabric arrived on monday as well as the stickers that I had the thomas the sand pit graphics printed on. I assembled the fabric onto the Thomas sand pit and applied the stickers. It is so surprising how much of a difference the fabric made in making the item look more like a licensed Thomas the tank item. The prototype will be packed up and sent over to the Thomas the tank people for them to check out and see if they want to go through with making this product. I was also working on a few designs for the packaging of a sanpit and swing set.One of the designers had finished the illustration of kids playing with the product and I arranged a background and used the illustration he made on the package. The photo of the actual product was not very good and even after I photoshoped grass and sand to make it appear as if it were outside, it still looked bad. Finally I grabbed Chris and we carried the sandpit outside and I just took new photos there. The image is a small part to the packaging since the main image is the illustration, but i think it helps show off the product a little more. I also continued working on some of the packaging that I created last week, revising it and adding the correct warnings and information on them.

july 31st - june 5th

We had a 6 day work week this week...(booo!) Its like having two mondays in one week.Remember the illustrations of kids playing on the swing set with sand pit and the one I made last week with the kids in the solar house? well this week I created some packaging for the illustrations to be placed on. Nothing is final yet, it is just a sample of what it might look like. These products are pretty huge since they are outdoor play sets, so the packaging that I am doing is actually creating large stickers to be placed on the huge carton that they come in instead of doing a full color print on the entire box. Another project i worked on was a concept for our Thomas the tank sandpit product. I designed the top canopy and side fabric that would act as the side of the train as well as a window area. I took a picture of the existing product and then in photoshop I rendered what the fabric would look like placed on the sandpit. The drawing was sent to the engineers so they could create a 3D file that would be sent to make a prototype. The fabric should arrive early next week.

pictures coming soon.... i cant seem to load them right now..ill try again soon

May 18th - 22nd/May 25th-27th

I finally figured out a way to find access to blogger, youtube, and all the other websites China banned from us. Its called Hotspot shield and it’s a search engine that works just as fast as google, so its pretty awesome.
The week of May 18th – 22nd
This week I worked on an illustration for our solar House project. It is a small wooden play house that is solar powered. I started by arranging a CAD file in the perspective that I wanted it in and then traced some of the house so that I had the right proportions. Once I got the basic size of everything all layed out then I was able to draw the rest free hand. For example, the awning, accessories, and texture of the wood. After I finished the line work I pulled it into photoshop and began adding color. I pretty much finished it by the end of the week and just left the final touches for Monday morning.
The week of May 25th-27th
This week was only a three day week thanks to the Chinese Dragon holiday. We had the 28th through the 30th off, but we have to come in on Sunday morning(booo!). It was a really nice break and we got to spend some time with Jason Yi and his group of Miad kids on their summer trip around China. It was really refreshing to see people from home and introduce them to a few areas that we enjoy going to.
On Monday at work I finished the illustration before lunch and as soon as I finished it my boss came over with some bad news. The product had been changed at the last minute which meant that my illustration also needed to be changed. The door and the window were going to be switched around, the placement of the recycling bins, and also the placement of the solar flowers. This wouldn’t have been so bad except the kids I drew were interacting with all of the items that needed to be re located. I spend the rest of the afternoon playing around with my options and trying to see what I could save from my illustration. I ended up reusing the children that I made originally, but just reflected them and moved them around a little bit. The new arrangement of play house made parts of the area very crowded and hard to fit kids into the composition. I spent the next day re drawing parts of the house and re rendering most of the house.

This week I got my prints back and put them up on the walls in the showroom. We were told to put them up with double sided tape and apparently we didn’t use enough because the next morning they were scattered on the floor. Luckily the people we were expecting weren’t going to be in until after lunch so we had time to put them up again. I think the prints for the showroom turned out pretty well, I was surprised to see how large they actually were, they ended up being 8ft long! I didn’t really get a sense of scale when I was working on them because I was working in the metric system, but I realized it once they arrived.
I also got to work on a new project which was to create an illustration for a scooter that we have. I spent one day creating the drawing and finishing up the line work and one day rendering the image and putting it on a quick mock up of some packaging.

I dont really have alot of images to post this week, since I spent most of my time prepairing the showroom. They needed our help to assemble a bunch of our products"swing sets, monkey bars, a trampoline, doll houses and things like that. In between helping out with this I was putting a few presentations together and arranging some disney images on some boards to be printed on foam core and placed in the showroom. Not too exciting, but i should be getting my prints for the walls of the showroom on Tuesday, ill post some photos of how it turned out on next weeks post.

This was a pretty awesome week; my boss was out of town making a visit to the factory and we got to go to the Shanghai auto show! ohh and I finally got a break from working on the website. We just recently finished the "showroom" that we have upstairs to display our products. It was all started and pretty far along before I got here so i didn't have a chance to work much on it.

Except this week they needed me to create some graphics to be temporarily on the walls of the showroom. They are going to be large foam core sections that can be propped up against the walls for a few weeks.

They will be displaying some kids furniture in the showroom for one of our clients, so I was to create graphics that would fit the theme of a kids room. I made two versions, one for the girls room and one for the boys room.

I sent them to the printing company on Friday, and I ended up having to send them 31 files!! I have never had to keep track of that many files all at once before!man I really had to stay organized and label my files very detailed so i could tell them all apart from each other. The largest the printing company can print of foam core is 250cm by 120cm, so I had to slice the wall graphics into many pieces. I should be getting them soon, and I hope I got all my measurements right and it all fits, its such a large scale project.

You gotta check this out.... and spread the word to Tom Noffsinger..... http://www.posemaniacs.com/?p=602

I spent most of my time on this site while my boss was out of the office. :)

Week of April 13-17th

I took a nice break from working on the website this week and designed a few diagrams explaining how "The Recycled Rider" and "Solar House" features work. These products are pretty new and not in production yet, but I think they will be soon. These items are very environmentally friendly and they are supposed to be shown and Earth Day event next week. The diagrams I made are geared toward young kids, explaining how they are "green" and how they work, so the text is very simplified.

I like working on these types of projects where I don't have to worry about following guidelines. The "Cars" packaging had to be approved by Disney every step of the way as well as the Star Wars products we deal with. These two products that I worked on this week don't have any license agreements, so there is much more breathing room.

The other image that I have posted is an explanation of how the packaging stays on the product with out falling off. Apparently some clients were confused and thought the sleeve would slip right off of the product. So I made sure to also simplify the text for them as well.

April 7th - 10th

We had Monday off from work this week for some Chinese holiday. You know what is strange though? We have off for all of the Chinese holidays, plus our holidays such as Christmas. But when the Chinese workers found out that we were off on Christmas and Thanksgiving, they asked to also have the day off, but our boss said that it wasnt their culture, so they had to work. I dont think its very fair, but I dont mind having extra holidays, if only I could bring these Chinese holidays with me to the states. Well anyway......about work this 4 day week......

I am still working on the website (yay.....) but I heard that I will be getting another project on Monday. I think it has been a bit slow at work, because the website isnt really one of the top priorities around here and I sure am spending alot of time on this thing. Also two other people are helping make games for the website as well so I dont think they have much to do either. Hopefully things will pick up soon, and maybe we will get a reply from Peter Rabbit, I think that project could be fun.

I posted a few of the things that I put on the website. Most of the changes happened under "development"and "game". The other images, of the box and the name tages were a few other tasks that I did. The packaging on the box was done by someone else, and I just arranged it on the box and sent it over to someone to be approved. The nametages were for our showroom that was finished recently, and I had to create name tage to be put into plactic frames and placed infront of the products. We are expecting some "important people" to come and view the products in the showroom sometime next week, so I think we will be prepairing the showroom a bit on Monday as well.