FINAL DAY! Time to display my work

Today is hand in day! I brought everything into uni today and set it all up on my desk ready for the examiner to see it. Fingers crossed I did okay :)

FINAL PACKAGING!

Here is the final design of my packaging. I added the cartoon drawing of BILL to the front, top and bottom of the box and think it looks much better than the silhouetted version. I also left the drawing white to show that people wont know which colour they get until they open it.

Final poster - Time to print

My A2 posters came today. Yay! I was very pleased with how they turned out. Luckily there was no pixelation on the final posters and I am glad that I can use them in my final show at the docks.

Cartoon drawing of the toy
on the sides of the packaging

Earlier this morning I spoke to Chris and Jake for the last time about my packaging before printing them all out. They were very pleased with how it turned out but were still not sure about the silhouetted image on the front. They felt that it made the viewer concentrate on that part of the packaging too much, and drew peoples' eyes away from the other patterns, images and the logo. As a result of this I drew a line drawing of BILL and made it look very cartoon-ish, like existing designer toy packaging such as Smorkin' Labbits.











Here is the cartoon styled drawing of my toy. I am pleased with how it turned out in the end as it took quite a long time to make it look good enough to be put on my final packaging. Now all I have to do it put it onto the packaging.

More book work...

Not long now until my final day! I have to make sure that I get everything finished in time so today I spent my time finishing any book work and documenting my changes to my posters and packaging.

Packaging - draft 3

Here is a finished version of my packaging. I changed the silhouetted picture on the front as some people couldn't tell it was a silhouette of the toy. I changed it to a picture of the toy face on, making it much easier to recognise. I also finished adding all of the photos of the toys to the side of the packaging, enabling people to see what toys they have collected and which ones they still need to get. I like this and am very pleased with how it turned out.

Packaging - draft 2

After a day of working on my packaging I have come up with this general design. I used a blue simplistic shape, just like the one on my posters. However, I have decided that it will stay blue on all of the packaging as blue was the original colour of Bill before I created the other 8 colours.

On the packaging I have put the title of the toy and a silhouetted version of the toy with a large question mark in the middle. This resembles the fact that people wont know which colour they get until they have bought the toy and open it. I have also added some personal messages about the toy on the back and bottom of the box. A lot of existing designer toys do this with messages like, ' This is not a toy! it is a work of art'. I liked this and added my own version to my packagaing. I feel that it makes the packaging a work of art as well as the toy.

Packaging - draft 1

Packaging is a very important part of my toy. The packaging has to be interesting to look at so that people would pick it up off the shelf. It also has to encourage the person into buying the toy, and since designer toys are expensive this is very important.

This designer toy packaging has cartoon-styled drawings of the toy in the front and colours and patterns relating to what the toy is; in this case it looks like a cake tin because the toys are based on cakes.














I wanted my designer toy packaging to be very similar to my posters, simplistic and eye catching. I decided that I could not have a different colour on every box as this would give away what coloured toy was inside, and I want the toys to be a 'suprise' for each person (they wont know which one they get until they open it).

Here is one of my first ideas. Since the platypus comes from Australia I used colours that reminded me of Australia (sandy colours). I also added a small photograph of my toy and it's original name. This packaging was made before I changed his name to Bill.

The green bubble on the front of the packaging was the part I would cut out and put acetate there instead. However, after making this packaging I have realised that I can't have acetate on the font otherwise people will see what coloured toy is inside.

Poster - Draft 2

Early this morning I showed my poster to my tutors. They liked the idea of the background being the same as the colour of the toy but they did not like the font at the bottom saying 'collect them all'. They felt that it looked hand drawn and too pixelated. I agreed with this and if I am going to print them and have them on display I want them to look as good as possible.

Old version with pixelated text

Improved version

As you can see the posters look much better now that I chose a new font and made sure that it wasn't pixelated. I also took some new photographs of all my toys as I felt that the previous ones were also a bit pixelated. Overall I am very pleased with my posters and will print 2 out of the 9 I have made in A2 size. These final posters will be shown at the docks on 16th May.

Creating my posters - draft 1

First draft of my poster

Here is one of my poster designs that I came up with. I like the idea of having a very simple background colour with a bold title. I chose the font front www.dafont.com as this site has thousands of great fonts for you to choose from. The two coloured shapes in the background were inspired by this designer toy:




















As you can see, the photo shoot for my toys came in handy as I was able to cut my toy out of the photo and put it directly into a photoshop document. From there I was able to adjust the brightness and sharpness of the photo, making it look even better.

Photo shoot!

Example of one of the
photos I took

Now that I have finished my toys I decided to start thinking about the advertising and merchandise that I would display with it. I realised that if I was going to have pictures of my toy on the packaging then I would need some high quality photos so that they would look their best.

To do this I borrowed my friends SLR camera and set up a photo shoot for my toys. The pictures came out really well with a bright white background, enabling me to easily edit them on photoshop to put into packaging and posters.

Finished painting my toys

Today I finally finished painting all of my toys. It took me so long because of paint overlapping. This made the toys look messy and unprofessional. As a result of this I made sure that they could look as good as possible by letting them dry and adding another layer of paint over 4 days.

I put all of the plain coloured toys in a row and made it look like a rainbow. I love the way they look as I had always planned for them to be set up like a rainbow. Since I had 2 spare blue Bills and 2 patterned Bills I had to think of a way for them to stand out. To do this I painted some cans blue (the original colour of Bill) and stood the toys on these at the back. I thought this looked quite good, but I will have to see what it looks like at the docks before I decide the display them this way.

Patterned Designs

Finished toys

I spoke to my tutors about what they thought of my toys today. They liked the colours and the shape of the toy now that they can see what they look like finished.

However, my tutors liked the idea of me making a few 'limited edition' Bills that had special patterns on them and made then stand out compared to the others. I thought this was a really good idea as existing designer toys usually have a limited edition one in the series that makes it special and rare to get. 

To make the limited edition Bills stand out I needed a good pattern to paint on them, so I started researching into some interesting patterns. Two particular patterns that I thought would look good on a Bill were Polkadot and Camouflage. 

Camouflage 

Polkadot

Here are the polkadot and camouflage versions of Bill that I 

made: 

Hand painting my toys

 Since spray painting didn't work yesterday I decided that today I would practice hand painting my toys instead. This looked much better than the sprayed versions. However, I was worried that I would leave brush strokes on the toys if I hand painted them. To make sure that I didn't leave any brush strokes I added about 3 layers of acrylic paint to each toy.

Here you can see the layers of paint that I added. I would paint the main colour first (body and face) and then do the eyes, bill and tail afterwards. This helped avoid paint marks overlaying and the toy looking messy.

Spraying my first toy - an important lesson

Designer toy with MATT paint

Today I decided to spray one of my toys with the spray paint I got from B&Q on Friday. Unfortunately it did not go to plan as the spray paint was GLOSS paint. This meant that the paint dries a very shiny colour. I didn't like this because it made the toy look like it was still wet. Designer toys are usually coloured in a MATT style. Now I know to read the label and not just buy the first thing I see!

BODY

TAIL

Here are some images of what the paint looked like as it started to dry. The idea of using spray worked perfectly as there were no brush strokes left on the toy and it looked professional. Unfortunately I could not use it because of it being GLOSS. As a result of this I need to buy some MATT paint instead and see what my toy will look like after it has been sprayed.

Friday the 13th!!

Today is Friday the 13th. It is meant to be one of the most unlucky days of the year. Luckily nothing terrible happened to me today except getting caught in the rain. Lovely British weather!

Today I thought about what colours and patterns I should paint my toys. Much like my original design I liked the idea of painting it blue with a yellow beak.

Original design

My tutors recommended using spray paint to colour my toys as it would look more professional. So later this evening I went to B&Q and bought some blue and yellow spray paint. On Sunday, when I have spare time, I will spray one of my models to see how it looks sprayed compared to my original toy which was hand painted with acrylic paint.

Thinking about painting

Today I had an update with my tutors to see what they thought of my toy so far. They were very pleased with the design of the toy and felt that he would sell well in shops. The only point they thought I could change was the tail. They felt that the way I had stuck it together looked like he was wearing a backpack.

After noticing this I was worried that people wouldn't think it is his tail, so I started asking people their opinions. Most people did think it was his tail but there were also a few people who agreed with my tutors about it looking like a backpack.

To sort out the tail problem I drew some new designs of what the toy looked like with its tail at an angle.

Unfortunately my toy would then not fit in any packaging because the tail would stick out too far. Also, if it was at an angle the join between the tail and body would be too fragile to hold and move around in packagaing. As a result of this I decided that it would be best to keep the tails as they are.

Sticking the toys together

Adding glue to body

 Now that I have caught up on all my other work I decided that today I would glue the sanded toys together. To do this I tried two different types of glue, to see which worked better. My first try was with superglue. Unfortunately I ran out of superglue half way through making one toy. The glue was also very messy.

After the superglue I tried a hot glue gun. This glue was quick to dry and also much cleaner that the superglue.  As a result of this I glued all my toys together with the hot glue gun.

Attaching head to body

Toy all glued together

Catch up on book work

Today I decided to catch up on some book work and document how I have created my toys so far. I did not do any more to my toys as I have left them overnight to make sure they are fully dry for sticking together and painting.

Sanding complete

As I approached the end of this week I made a total of 11 toys. I could have made more out of the mixture I bought, but unfortunately I wasted a small amount of Fastcast with each toy I made.

Amount of Fastcast wasted each time

This added up to quite a lot being wasted altogether. However I had to make sure that I had enough each time, otherwise I would have an incomplete toy. This would have inevitably wasted even more Fastcast.

Sanding my toys

When I took my toys out of their moulds I realised that they were rough around the edges. This was because of how the liquid set when I put it in the mould. 






To solve this issue I used an electric sander and slowly filed away the rough edges. After a while they felt really smooth, just like a professional designer toy.

Me sanding head

Heads with rough edges

I did this for all 3 parts of each toy until they were smooth all over.

Success!

Here is an image that I took a couple of hours ago. It shows the result of the fastcast that I left in the mould over night. I decided to leave it in over night to make sure that the solution had definitely settled. I am very pleased with the outcome as the toy feels very smooth and light, just like a real designer toy.

Fastcast F

Since making each toy by hand would be a long and difficult process I have decided to create a mould and make lots of the same toy (with different colouring on each one). Yesterday I successfully made the mould of the toy out of silicone, which is a very durable and bendy material, and will be great for using repeatedly.

Today I am going to attempt to make my first toy out of a material called Fastecast F. It is a form of plastic, a lot like resin, but is much cheaper and dries very quickly. This is perfect for my project as speed is what I need!

The idea of this solution is that you use them both 50-50. You then mix them together thoroughly so that the hardener has mixed together and then slowly pour into the moud, poking all the little holes in the mould with a thin stick to stop air bubbles from forming.

Now I leave it for a few hours and see how my first attempt went.

Pop! out come the toys

The silicone had dried early this morning and I was eager to see how this one went. I had my fingers crossed that I had not created any air bubbles when mixing the formulas.

The head of the toy

The tail of the toy

As you can see the Fimo body parts came out of the mould perfectly. Even though the arms broke off when removing the body it still created a perfect mould. This is all that matters as the mould is what I'll be using for the next few weeks. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the body of the toy.

Restarting the process

Now that I have a new design and more Supersil I decided that I would start straight away in making my new mould.



I repeated the same process as before but I made a few changes
when making these moulds. The changes were:

Creating the box out of wood so
that it would not leak out 

Creating enough mixture so that
I didn't run short like last time

I also created a mould for each body
part so that it wouldn't be awkward
getting it out of the mould

This photo shows that the wooden box worked perfectly. No silicone dripped out and it wasn't as messy as before.