About my one year out (2)-being a TOY DESIGNER!

I worked as a visual designer assistant for my last company for a month and a half and then I moved to Guangzhou to start a three-month internship as a toy designer.

There I started designing a character as a new IP for the company, and the lead manager only gave me the name of the character and what it stood for behind it. I was given free rein regarding the design.

I’ve put a lot of effort into this IP, she’s the second child I’ve designed and my friends say she even looks a bit like myself. Unlike the first character I designed, my first child is much closer to my personal personalities in terms of content expression, which will be described in the blog later.

The blind toy box market is very popular in China. Before this I knew basically nothing about blind box toys. It turned out to be a set given a specific theme for a character and then designed it to look similar but in a different form; or a set with several characters from a series in the same theme. Customers don’t know what’s inside when they buy these blind boxes of toys and to be honest there’s an element of gambling mentality that fuels their desire to buy until they get that particular toy they like. Of course some people like a whole set and they can buy the whole big box (normally 7 – 12 boxes for a set). I, for example, like to collect the whole set, so my wallet could always feels rather sad lol.
Here are a few examples of blind toy boxes. (pics from web)

I have designed a set of blind box toys (7 in total) plus a set of large toy for the limited edition(7 in total).

Regarding the big toys, this is for some core players. They are basically limited to a few hundred rather than mass produced. They also cost basically a dozen times more than a blind box toy. Of course, I think this is closely tied to the market, some people will take advantage of their scarcity to drive the price up, and some people will even invest in the big toys, thinking they will become more expensive when they go out of print.

BTW, Another aspect of the playability of the Blind Box toys is the presence of a secret one in each set. It is set up in much smaller numbers than the regular ones and people are usually particularly excited to have drawn a secret toy.

Ok, let’s go back to my design haha. 😉

The character’s name is RIP GIRL, and as her name suggests, she was born as a prayer of blessing for those who lost their lives in the disaster, and for those who are remembered.

The series is called Please Remember Me and the regular ones are all ‘Please Remember Me for something’, only the secret one is ‘Please Forget Me and Live Well’, which I think is one of the most special parts of this set.

Here are the designs and the 3D models.

This set of large toys were designed with visual consistency in mind. All use specific identity elements to act as a vehicle for the cross. Each one has a symbol on the back of the left hand that hints at its identity.

But unfortunately, due to a disagreement between me and the manager and his emotional approach, the design will not be produced, otherwise it would have been available in August this year. I didn’t realize that sometimes even signing a contract almost doesn’t protect my rights. Thankfully the matter was dealt with properly and I was paid what I was supposed to be paid. It didn’t go as far as needing to go through the judicial process, although I was ready to do so.

It was a lesson that I couldn’t be taught at school and made me realize that I must be careful when choosing business partners in the future. All my friends and I felt very sorry for them, I was really looking forward to buying the toys I had designed in the mall.

But the good thing is that I still have the attribution rights to the design, so I can put them on social media as a personal work for display if not for commercial use.

To my anger and disappointment, I own all the rights to the first kid I designed. The manager wanted me to sell it to him and after I refused he started to plagiarize my concepts and ideas and copied out another imposter. But to be honest, the current design environment in China is such that there is very little protection for original designs. This is one of the things that disappoints me, and I hope that in the future the creative environment for artists will become a little better in China.

Anyway, the process of designing toys was fun tho. ^.^