first time designing toys

Hi guys so my Netflix collaboration for EDEN and Yasuke are finally out meaning I am free to talk about it (at least I'm pretty sure this isn't doing anyone any intellectual harm lol)

I worked on this months ago on one of the tightest deadlines I had ever received. I had less than a week to draft up concept illustrations before the shows were even out. This meant that I had to work with a show I had not yet seen, giving me very little insight on what any of it was going to mean. I’m sure a lot of toy designers have to work in this way, given the long and strenuous months necessary for production. After the sketches were approved, I had less than a week to 3D model, yes I 3D modeled all of this, and make deco call out sheets (I had no idea what this even meant) for production. Turns out a deco sheet is where you provide CMYK colors and .ai files of all the graphics and placement ETC....

I honestly received 0 info about Yasuke as a show. They did tell me about Eden and the energy source behind the apples so I knew it was a pivotal aspect of the show. Since Eden is about robots, the person I worked with suggested I just focus on robots to keep everything relatable in terms of my contribution. This meant that while I knew the Eden robots were protagonists, I had no idea what Haruto's role in Yasuke even was. I did however work with his design by choice because it was the coolest. I didn’t know at the time who else was doing the collaboration and this is pretty much why I no longer want to do this kind of work. It’s not only really difficult to design without any context of what you're designing, it’s even harder to align yourself passionately with the project and then it's like SURPRISE these are the other people who worked on it. I went in really excited about the collab with such a big name but felt that there were many things I wish I knew/changed as it wrapped. I want to be as honest as possible here since it's my safe space... the next time I take a project (I've said no to a few since I moved home), I want to know everything about it or I'm not doing it. 

Anyway, the design task was challenging because they didn’t want to do your typical anime figures. I’m sure major companies that have master anime sculptors working for them (goodsmile, kotobukiya, etc) pick up the licenses for all shows pretty quickly or have first dibs haha so the ask was to work outside of that realm. Personally, the EDEN kendama was exciting for me simply because it was a toy that (in execution) really worked well with the apple motif. I had to scour the internet for toy ideas though and I’m glad I was able to land on this concept quickly. The Yasuke clock is super cool too because we’ve all seen one of those janky SailorMoon clocks growing up and I figured (again without knowing anything about the show) it would be a cool way to translate a character without making just an anime figure. There were other concepts I drafted up that actually made it all the way to prototype but just couldn’t go into the market because they cost way too much to make. My favorite thing was actually the EDEN bento box shaped as the statis pod that the robots find the human protagonist kid in… Definitely my top choice but again, it was too costly to make and they need to fulfill profit margins as a company I get it. 

Oh and then last minute they told me they were going to send a film crew from LA to my apt in NY to produce a video… about me. And my house looked like an actual junkyard from working on SSENSE kids delivery at the same time (pictured). Serious s/o to Dom and my friend Karl for cleaning up. I came home and the team spent 9 hours with me shooting.... and I hadn’t slept for days before that. I definitely think I could have handled everything better but hey now I know! 

Don't design toys while animating a short while sewing kids clothes while not sleeping. I'm still surprised I pulled this off but next time, I'd rather make my own toys. Did I mention this was one of the jobs that helped me realize I should work on my own shit more?