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I was having a tough time for writing the academic research. I was overwhelmed but learn a lot throughout the progress. My research method was looking into the UH online library, Google scholar, artist’s blog and toys education website. As I move along confirming my keywords, I discovered a book “Dot Dot Dash!: Designer Toys, Action Figures and Characters”. That’s it! “Designer Toy” will be my keywords. As I’m a toy collector myself, I was thinking why not deliver meaningful message through toys? It’s a same idea like those meaningful message posters that can be decorate and can be play it.
I was interested in children psychology in the beginning, hoping I will be a better father to understand their thinking. It leads me to psychology of children play that I found very resourceful from a website “British Toy and Hobby Association”, found a lot of useful articles especially “Active Play and Health Development”. It was helping me to understand the important of active play and methods we can use.
One of the artists among my research was greatly inspired me, Amanda Visell. I really enjoy looking at her toys with simplicity geometry shapes and the well design colour scheme. Everything was so simple but yet the character personality was so noticeable. She did implement a lot from the iconic fairy tales, well known characters figure, educational element for her characters design. Some artists touch on the grey zone of political issues or hidden message to talk about the sensitive issues and mocking some politicians. Many great artists are versatile in many aspects to expose their artworks such as producing not just children storybook in digital multimedia format, toys, poster, decorations…etc.
In my progress development, I was trying to create more characters to let more children to play along or even the whole family can get involve with. Choosing the stationary was my final thought as they are closely related to. So I design a bunch of characters that reflect our social issue. The main group is the family of three, a rubber flag dad (fans of Manchester United team), a rubber strawberry daughter and a 2B pencil mum. The story was to show both parent need to work very hard to support their family, raising a child and investing a home are heavy burdens in Malaysia. He owned a “multifunction” pencil box that can transform to a car. I was trying to implement some “tech” gadget factor for the children who like high-tech gigs. I remember we used to store small toys in pencil box like “Goli”, the marble ball. The hyperactive child, which move with high speed and hardly stand still. Then the villain, “Kilo” a Kilometrico ball pen. His bike “Metre” is a classic cassette tape. Together to become “Kilometre”, distance measurement use in Malaysia.
I discover the story idea wasn’t unique to attract people. The rendering stylize expect to be more like children’s drawings. I might need to pay visit to children art center to study how children draw, the behavior and their thinking. The shape designs can be more genuine, I need to work it out to have my own style of design.
Bibliography
Klanten, Robert, 2006, Dot Dot Dash!: Designer Toys, Action Figures and Characters, Die Gestalten Verlag
Web link – http://www.btha.co.uk/btha/our-library/
Research & Enquiry 