Toy design is not something that usually comes to mind when you think of careers in art, however it is something that is important to our society. Toys have long been essential to the structures of our cultures and the people who deign toys in a way are designing future generations. In order to become a toy designer, skills in sculpting, sewing, and woodworking are helpful. There are also post graduate degrees that you can earn in toy/product design (Otis College of Art and Design offers programs like this) to fully understand the art of design. The elements of these curriculums can include the major categories of plush, preschool, dolls, action figures, toy vehicles, games, etc., so a variety of creative skills are good to have if you are interested in pursuing this career. People who go into toy design may also have degrees in industrial and commercial design. However, a college education is not mandatory for this career, as it is possible to get a job in this field with only a GED or a high school education (though further education makes achieving this career easier).
So what do toy designers actually do? Well, it's pretty self explanatory, but they are the brains behind the attractiveness, functionality, and marketability of the products that line the shelves of Target and Walmart. In fact, designing and creating toys is a major process. The first step is coming up with an idea, which first comes in the form of a thought and then gets put on paper. Once this is done, with appropriate materials, a prototype is created, which can be sold, along with the design on the paper, to a toy manufacturing company. As a toy designer, you usually will spend time creating specific genres of toys or working with specific materials that best fit your skill set. Sometimes, toy manufacturing will employ their own toy designers who create original designs along with working on a team to come up with designs that fit the theme/aesthetic of the company. One of the many factors that goes into the process is safety. Since toys are generally marketed more towards children, safety is a vital component to the design of a toy. Nowadays especially, the process of toy design is drawn out further because of the insurance of the safety of the customers, as once prototypes are made, they must be approves. There were times when these steps were not as emphasized (we all remember yard darts), which ended in lawsuits and the injury of people in their most fragile years, so this concern is a big part of the responsibilities that a toy designer would hold.
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Just for fun, I challenged myself, for 2 weeks, to draw one of my fears each day. Some of them are not true fears necessarily, but are just things that make me uncomfortable. For example, I don't exactly fear driving, it just makes me nervous. I also don't constantly fear that I will be left in the middle of the ocean, but when I think about the idea of it, it terrifies me. The rest are all fears that I actually think about a lot. To be clear though, none of them are phobias as they don't inhibit me from preforming activities (for the most part) and they are all pretty rational (again, for the most part). Here is a quick description of each fear in order by day:
All Finished! These photos aren't the best quality, but I will try to get better photos later this week!
Bit of a late upload, but here is a picture of the progress from the week before last that I took while painting on the roof :).
Here are some more pictures of my sketchbook drawing pages that weren’t in the last post!
Almost done with the in class project! Just a few collage pieces to paint and then adding more physical pieces and then some minor fixes and detailing left to do. For the at home project (the homework one), I have worked a bit on the first of 5 elements and am near finished with that part! The rest of them will hopefully go by faster now that I know what I want to do and how to do it.
Here are a few pics of what is in my sketchbook so far... I was pretty inspired by new people that I met recently...
Here is a photo of the progres from this week! It doesn’t looks like I did a lot but I actually repainted the body to have the same undertones and obviously I added some of the collage painting work. This week I hope to have finished the background. I wasn’t home all weekend so I couldn’t do a lot of the homework project, but I definitely spent my time on the plane thinking up plans and drawing thumbnails for what I want to do. I have a pretty clear idea on that project so all I need to do is execute it this week so I’ll make that another goal of mine.
So far, I have made a quick water color reference piece just as a plan for composition and reference for ow to paint the collage pieces. I then did a quick watered down underpainting type thing and added color just to the person. My plan from there is to paint on the collaged paper from my reference sketch and then to do the background. While working on the canvas, I also thought about where I wanted to go with the background and other details and I think I would like to mute the color of the background more to a grey or desaturated blue. I also decided to not paint the eyes in detail because I want to play around with collage or a realistic replication of it. Regarding the collage portion of this piece, I plan to realistically paint on the collaged papers and also add a few actual paper cuttings. I will do the same for parts of the background, but I also want to add texture to the painting so I think I will try using my acrylic paint to build texture. It may not sound like it makes sense now, but I do have a plan and I will hopefully get more done next week!
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AuthorHello! I am Isabel Martin and I am an art student at Maggie L. Walker Governor School. Archives
May 2021
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