week of March 23rd -27th

These are just some of the changes I made to the website this week, you can see them at www.toymonster.com

This week I was working on the website. I didnt really know how to upload and change things on the website, so they called someone that works on websites in so that he could train me on how to do this. Thankfully, there isnt alot of explaining to do and I can just watch and learn while this Chinese guy clicks on things, because this guy knew about as much english and I know Chinese. Well, that and his breath smelled really bad, but either way, I think I caught on pretty well.

Recently TM has released a lot of new products and redesigned alot of the packaging. So my job right now is to update the website by adding, subtracting and fixing images and putting them on the site. Most of what I did this week was taking the package designs and creating them to look as if they were a box. Then I write the dimensions and upload the images on the web. We are also going to be adding a "Cars" and Star Wars section to the website, so I have been doing website layouts that we will have to send to Cars and Star wars for approval. I would say that is the most fun task I have when dealing with the website. What is boring about this and takes alot of time is collecting all the images I need from everyone. Also I'm not very familiar with what products are new and which ones are old versions since some only have minor changes, so I will upload the wrong version of the product on the site and then I have to do them all over again. Even my boss will walk by and glance at my screen and doesn't see the difference, until after I put them on the web. Oh well... I think we are going to get back on the Peter Rabbit project soon and I can hopefully put the website on hold for a little while.

week of March 20th

I didnt have much graphic design to do this week, and I am just working on the website inbetween projects so my boss asked me if I have ever done any industrial design word before. I answered "ummm no..not really" and he said I will need to be an industrail designer for a week or two!

We are working on baby toys based on Peter Rabbit. Our company has never made baby products before, they make toys mostly for ages 5 years and up. We don't have the licensing for Peter Rabbit yet, and at this stage we are just doing concept sketches. Next week we are going to continue drawing concepts and have them rendered to present to Peter Rabbit on Friday. The products we are drawing are; teething rings, rattles,play gyms, mobiles, and plush toys. Right now I have a few sketches for the plush toys and teething rings and will take on the rattle soon, the rest of the items other people are doing.

I don't mind doing this kind of work though, I think its really cool and something I would probably not do on my own. I kind of like it, although it is a whole different way of working. I am forced to think about perspective and pay attention to what materials these toys will be made of. I don't think the sketches look very good at this stage, since there is no value on them and it is just lines, but the I.D. people here say that it will look much better once I render them in color.

ps. I just noticed that the pictures from last week didnt make it on here, Im not sure why, but ill try again and if they still dont show up ill send them to you in an email.

Ben 10 2nd week of March

This week I worked on a package for Ben 10. Ben ten is a cartoon that shows on Cartoon network and apparently is very popular in Australia. We just received the licensing for Ben 10 and this week I was to make a package to show the Ben 10 people. In one week we had a prototype made of the product, had stickers designed and printed, and the final step was to create the package to place it in. We started all of these tasks on Monday and by Friday every thing was shipped DHL to Australia. When I first heard that we were to have all of these things achieved in 4 days I thought that was crazy! Last I heard was that Ben 10 liked the product and the packaging, but i dont know if they are going through with it or not.

Week of March 2nd

This week I worked on a small booklet for the Lightning McQueen Race Case. The packaging that I did for that product didn't have enough space to add all of the features. Disney had very strict guidelines and only allowed 3 small sections for the product images. To add more call outs to the product, we created a small booklet that would be attached to the handle of the Race Case. The booklet shows all of the features which the parent would be interested in as well as have activities in it for the child.

We only have the licensing to use the "Cars" characters and scenes from the movie and cannot create figures drawn in a Disney style. We wanted to make illustrations of children playing with the toy and add that as part of our booklet, but if we did, it would not be approved by Disney since it is not a Disney character. Instead we used actual photos of kids using the product and just created a very basic background explaining how the toy can be both used at home and at an airport.

I think the image looks really goofy since there are real life photos and just a loose hand drawing as the background, there really is no transition between the two. Also, the images that we were working with were really blown out and we had to Dr. them a lot in photoshop. There is another photo shoot being arranged so we can work with better quality images. Hopefully, with those images we will be able to create something different than what we have. This being said, those two pages are just a filler for now until we recieve more material to work with.

Inbetween working on this project I have been collecting many files from people and fixing them up a bit in photoshop and getting them ready to add onto the website. Not very exciting work but somebody's got to do it.

Solar Play House

I worked on a group project this week and we were to create a short children's story to go along with one of the products. The product is a kid's play house that is solar power generated. When working with the group, I worked mainly on the ideation stage, story line, front and back cover, and arranging the book for printing. We handled the project like we were creating a comic book, where one person does the line work or inking, one person does the coloring and one person does the cover illustration. One of my co-workers;Cole created the line work and passed it on to another co-worker;Susie who handled the coloring and then those images were passed onto me so I could arrange them and apply typography in Indesign. Also while they were working on the pages of the short story, I was doing the line work and coloring for the cover and back cover. I had to work very closely to create the linework in the same style as Cole did thorough out the book. I also had to keep checking Susie's updated pages and make sure that we were keeping the same color palette.

On the first day of the project(monday) we came up with the story line and created quick sketches of what the character and scenes would look like. The next day, the ideas were approved and we were able to start working on the linework. There was a pretty tight deadline for this to be finished by the end of the week because the booklet/shortstory was going to be placed in the products box along side the instruction manuel. The product was going to be shipped out to Australia and Europe as soon as we had finished the booklet.

I really enjoyed this project a lot. The projects that I have worked on so far, were things that I have done solo, and working in a group seemed like it was a lot easier to brainstorm and get started quickly. Also, it was alot more illustration based, it was so nice not to have to measure a product and create a package with exact measurements to fit. We knew right away that the size of the booklet was going to be half letter size and I was able to arrange it very easily, it just seemed less technical.

I wanted to color the pages inside of the booklet, but we thought it would be best it I did the front and back cover, so that the inside pages stayed cohesive. I am going to color them on my own time though, since i have the linework. I would like to add it into my portfolio once I am finished with it.
Is it ohk to add a group project into my portfolio though? I know that industrial designers do it all the time and they just point out the parts that they worked on. I was thinking I could do the same and just mention that I created the color for the pages and also the linework and color for the front and back of the booklet.