Designer Toy Beeto

This is another project that I did based on Paul Budnitz's Designer Toy Class on SkillShare, Also part of #ArtToyITP project.

Paul has a lesson which this video is part of on skillshare.com (not sponsored).

The lesson is called "Beautiful Plastic: Creating a Great Designer Toy"

https://www.skillshare.com/classes/Beautiful-Plastic-Creating-a-Great-Designer-Toy/

In the Video, Paul talked about juxtaposition, appropriation, complexity, emotion, which are usually elements taken into consideration while designing a art toy.

So as a start, I started sketching with each theme in mind. The idea is to spend less time thinking, more time drawing, just what ever you feel like it could be, spend less than 20 seconds on each characters. Just have fun with it, its ok to be wicked and be weird.

With the idea of juxtaposition, I wanted to make bugs that are cute. with that idea, I start sketching round body bugs, kind of like the Rollin' Wild Animation, but with insects.

http://www.rollinwild.com/

Another inspiration is from Lucas The Spider.

So pick a theme, find some animation, and finalize the sketch of the character that you like.

Because the body of my character is a sphere, I bought some EVA foam balls and carve some groove as the different sections of a body.

The legs and eyes I use 3D printed PLA plastic, and after sanding and painting everything, I will glue all of them together.

You can use any material to make your character, ie, sculpy, epoxy sculpt, wood, acrylic, etc. you can also combine additive and subtractive to make the sculpt as you desired.

Pretty straight forward, sand the prints till the layres disappeared, prime the surface, then paint it with the color desired.

If you are using spray paint or air brushes, masking is a great way to cover large area with sharp edges. Sometimes masking could be tough, like my design is a sphere, and because of the surface texture, tape does not stick as well, thats why there were some bleed, i come back fixing it with a blade and scrape paint that i sprayed on the side to cover the bleed.

Note, Spraying a layre of fixative or clear coat could prevent bleeds, this I learnt from someone after the project.

Put all the pieces together.

Here I used super glue, but you should according to the material you are gluing to select the type of glue you use.

The next version, I will have the legs to be removable so they will have pegs.

I have a data sheet as a reference for what type of glue to use depending on the material you are using.

When you are finished, take some nice photographs of the toy and share on social media.

Social media has a big presence in between art toy designers, a lot of info like events or pop up shops and publicity are through social media, primarily Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn6v6lIFolH/

I shared some of my work on instagram as well, feel free to check it out https://www.instagram.com/p/BnnaVUbFWel/

There is more detail and my other projects on my blog

https://sidchoublog.wordpress.com/2018/09/18/art-t...

Use the hash tag #Beeto to see my other projects

and share toys you design in the comments!