Adventure Time Toys are Out @ Mcdonalds Restaurants UK !

Cartoon Network's Adventure Time  is rad animation series. It was a lot of enjoyment to lead the development of the toy range and work together with Molly.

Large part of good luck  came down to cartoon network being very open to our suggestions , we were allowed to restyle the looks of 32 characters for the vinyl toy inspired figurine range! That was a rare freedom...

So the simple idea behind it was that the crazy loopy animation characters could mix and match to make weird combinations. The heads clip off to go with any body in the range. 32 figurines make for 1024 different possible combinations!  All the figurines follow a proprietary shape , with unique detailing to each character.

The promotion is running for the extended 8 week length at  McDonald's restaurants, UK. In the set , there are 2 character figurines and a sticker sheet.

I have to admit, it is still my fave toy design project to date. I was eager to share about these ones. I hope you enjoy them (:]

GIJOE Inspired Vehicle Design (and many thanks!)

So I'm imagining  GIJOE inspired vehicle to defeat the evil Cobra organisation, that  has developed a secret base on mars. GIJOE must take the fight to Cobra and venture to the red planet. Cobra’s HQ is deep into the core of the Martian planet, GIJOE must be equipped to get to Cobra and must be well armed for the battle about to ensue. And this is my take on it ! :] 

The vehicle toy would be fully equipped with spinning drill to get to the core of Mars. It would have an abundance of dart launchers and disk launchers to defeat the cobra, of course!  The front... bonnet (?) would open to place the figurine inside too. Og, and all the rockets and squeeze launchers would flip or push-fit inside for the 'shielded' drilling mode :D 

Gijoe Vehicle Obj by jolanta on Sketchfab

And here is some 3D development too. Just blocking out the shapes and breaking up into sections for (possibly) further modeling) Tried to maintain angular , mean shapes (Thanks for the advice Rich and Marius ! ) Also, in keeping with scorpion theme, went for rather over-sized rear (thanks to my sister for suggestion!) 

As a little behind the scenes, I've considered some of the existing GIJOE toys as well as reference of vehicle design for films such as Armagedon, Martian. But more inspiration came thinking about what could fight cobra as an equal opponent. Scorpions and mongoose (Thanks Jono!) ! I went with scorpion :] (Thanks to FZD and Tom for cool work that I got inspired by too)

Personally, I felt like this little design challenge was something out of my comfort zone, as I've never designed a vehicle...modeled one, as a tutorial (thanks Alan! )  But it was fun. I was pleasantly surprised it did come together. And a lot is down to some good advice from a fair few people too , many thanks to them.

Thank you for stopping by x

Life Drawing Yay!

Amazing amazing life drawing studio in Bethnal green ! Even served cheese and wine during the break! The model contextualized his poses in 'war scenes', quite playful. 

Fashion Illustration for Fun!

 I found this absolutely amazing Haute Couture fashion designer Yiqing Yin. Her work is hugely inspiring! I thought I'll make it an opportunity to practice different rendering styles capturing the 'effect' of the dress.
I'm trying to keep it impressionistic and not detract attention from the dress, i.e. face and other details. I want to work with broad brushstrokes and accents to make it more striking, like Adam S. Doyle does...

I believe this is my last blogpost of 2015. I wish everyone Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! x

Some Study Sketches

Studying shapes and playing with colour. Happy to practice :]

Mcdonalds Happy Creativity Toys

I'd like to share about another set of toys that got out today in French McDonald Restaurants. I was fortunate to lead this project, working together with lovely Molly.

The Theme of the set is creativity and individual customization, using Happy as the main character. In the set you have Happy Canvas that can be drawn on with a pencil; A pencil holder cannon; A Secret Keepsakes that can be customized with sticker decoration and Happy Frame with changeable expressions.

My favorite is the vinyl toy-like Happy Canvas :]

Many thanks for stopping by!

Transformers Figurines for Nestle

  

I'd like to share another  range of toys that I had worked on. Transformers: Robots in Disguise,  for Nestle Cereals.  This particular one was really fun to work on because we were allowed to stylize the looks of original characters: SuperD (super-deformed) transformers that light up once held in front of the light!

And here is the visual from the animation itself, that Hasbro released earlier this year:

Stardust

If watchmen or X-men wanted to design/illustrate some new characters...

It was a good practice this one. I was trying to bring colour, texture and a touch of design, all together. I see a ton of influence too but was actually most influenced by my friend's photography work.

Pokemon & Hello Kitty Toys for McDonald's

Colorful Kitchen set toys, developed specially for McDonald's France. So, left to right, you see egg cup, drink mixer, ice trays, cookie cutters and stampers, egg cup again and 2 fruit juicers at the center. With this set we were particularly pleased with how surface texture/finishes came out to be: mat or shiny, slightly speckled or smooth (reminds me of days when all of these were Maya shader considerations!). That little extra glossy finish on the character eyes did make the premiums pop!

This set has a bit of a special place in my heart as it was my first lead-designer project over a year ago..It was a challenging one, with numerous re-design attempts... honestly, how many different egg cups/ice trays can one imagine?? 8 is the answer... :D but at the end of the day, hopefully it is enjoyable to use these in kitchen.

Other than that, it pains me, that I rarely do blog updates .. I hope to share some freelance work for a show's mechanical puppets soon enough. And start to throw in some more personal work too.. :/

Lastly, to those who read this, thanks for popping by! (:] xox

Moon Girl!

Hello 2015 (and everyone reading this post :] )! This little  piece is inspired by a genuine artist, who calls herself Soey Milk! I liked keeping it fairly flat looking

Hunimal

 Long time I wanted to try designing animal and human morphed portrait/ caricature... And I got totally inspired to draw away after I saw this amazing photo by Kevin Horan in 'Chattel' series. So it is a rather young 'prince' who looks just a little bit like a sheep . I hope you'll find it quite amusing :]

Life Drawing Awesomeness

Could not stop myself from sharing about it with you. If you're looking for a great Life Drawing Class, There is a really worth wile community in Bethnal Green! Well-equipped studio, pro models and even wide range of tea & biscuits  (and snacks!!) provided.  All for £6 per class. So great...

How To Train Your Dragon 2 Toys

How to Train your Dragon 2 is an exciting film ! The winning designs were the gliders that offered that similar exciting experience. I mean , who didn't get in trouble in their childhood for having too much fun throwing paper planes in the classroom? :D
Working on these toys, about 2 years ago I was learning the ropes of toy design pipeline with this project:  visualizing concepts as well as representing them professionally, creating production artwork (sticker sheets and pictograms for how to use the toy); revising prototypes with redline drawings etc. etc.
I remember the engineering team doing their absolute best to find the perfect balance between the weight of the plastic and shape of paper wings to make it fly with confidence. Very rewarding when it all worked out well in the end.

Rio 2 Toys

Just realized that these birdeys have been released to the markets and I can finally share with you the designs ! (:] They have a very special place in my heart, these toys. 2 and a half years ago it was my first program I worked on for Nestle CPW at The Marketing Store.

At the time all we had was a couple of lines of script on what's gonna happen in the film and a small (very pixelated) drawn designs of the little frog character. I personally love these little whistle figurines..

Smartphone Sound Booster

Carlsberg asked to come up with some cool products for their 'Born to be Chilled' campaign. Out of the range, I've worked on the sound amplifier design . We nick-named it The Slipper :D . There were other designs suggested, such as some cool faceted amplifiers, which I thought looked more cool... But oh well, I guess :]

Generally the product is compatible with most smart devices and does actually boost the sound :D I saw some colleagues around the building doing some little work , their phones playing loud music with the help of this little fella :]

The benefit of silicone material is that the sound bounces around a little bit softer  in the chamber. With hard plastic chamber the sound would have a really tight and sharp quality to it.

It was distributed in ASDA stores at the beginning of summer (sorry, I'm a bit late to share this  design here :/ ) .