It's that time of year

Well, actually it could be Christmas on any day at work. As a product designer for seasonal and novelty products (let's just call them toys for short, heh) some days I work on Christmas toys and decor, sometimes it's Halloween and animatronics that go, "Boo!" and reach out at you. Then there's Party and Easter and...well, it goes on and on. The variety of categories and types of products I have had the opportunity to work on keep my job rather interesting and challenging. Oh, and just because it's seasonal doesn't mean we haven't found a way to hit all those other "un-seasonal" or "un-holiday" labelled days - we simply call that the "Every Day" season. ha!

So, here are a few old projects that show a bit of my thought process...from when I get the brief or art request document and start doodling rough sketches, to a final concept.

This one is part of a series of banners I created for Christmas decor using my Photoshop paintings:

Here are some rough sketches that I did of some ideas I had for a couple of table-top animated plush scenes with Pooh and friends (Licensed art being a sub-category for every season...yup, I do alot of Disney product art requests):

And here's a color version of a table-top animated plush with callouts that never made it to sample production even. Basically, what that means is - for all that there's an art request made, it doesn't mean that the concept actually gets through all of the checks and balances and art reviews and products reviews to becoming a sample series made that we can put in our showrooms and sell to our buyers.

Here is another set of little animated plush bunnies I designed for Easter that never got made into samples or got approved for factory production. I had so much fun picking out materials that were soft to the touch to help make them sweet and huggable. Oh, well.

And then, for contrast, there's always something for Halloween that pops up: