PetSmart: Reptile Climbs and Hides

A while back I had the opportunity to do some concept work for PetSmart, a very positive experience for me.  Great creative people, and also a chance for me to branch out into designing some animal and pet products. At one point I've had as many as 3 dogs, now only my cat. But I adore animals, and I had never been tapped to work on anything more than some chew toy ideas, for an inventor.

Some of the PetSmart projects on which I worked were for focus studies, exploring potential themes and new concepts. As they were for internal use I can't share them publicly, unless some of them hit the market in the future.  But some of the reptile climbs I worked on were produced, and have become available for purchase.  Very cool!

About half of the concepts I came up with went to market, all things considered, that's a decent batting average.  Because of proprietary reasons, I'm only showing those produced. I'm also not including the rough sketches, just the approved designs and renderings. Just a few minor tweaks in their transition to actual product, ultimately a broad variety from which to choose. 

 

 

 

  

  

 

.. Aside from not being so toyetic, these had gnarly organic elements, wood and stone, .. I had fun creating a lot of the textures needed for the renderings. 

Some of these explored tropical and rainforest themes, others more desert and rocky terrain; 

 

  

 

 

  

 

   

 

 

 

  

  

 

.. A few of these explored the more wild and exotic, like ancient ruins and fossilized dinosaur skeletons;

.. The fossilized dinosaur went through minor simplifications, otherwise the sculpts are pretty close to my initial designs. 

Family fun for your entire collection of reptiles!

Updates: Greener Pastures

It's been a while since posting, a lot has transpired. Obviously, as of this writing, much of that involves a world pandemic, trying to stay safe and adjusting accordingly. But on a more personal level it has been about prepping my house for market and moving out of Chicago.  After 20 years there, it felt time.

It wasn't any one event that brought about the decision, it was more incremental in time and the pros for moving only compounded. A lot can change over 2 decades, inside and out.  Empty-nesting, a surplus of space, increasing property taxes, the toil of restoring and maintaining a 125 year-old Victorian, ..after 3 consecutive old 'fixer-uppers' I was ready to throw in the towel for a mid-70s ranch.

Chicago itself will always hold a fond place in my heart, and it's still only a little over an hour from me, but the city I love has also transformed over that time.  Even my charming Bohemian neighborhood of East Rogers Park was becoming gentrified.

Having been raised in the immediate burbs I already knew I wanted to skip over those, to a more remote and scenic setting; ultimately Ottawa, Illinois. Ottawa is best known for its proximity to Starved Rock and Matthiessen State Parks, located in the heart of Northern Illinois. Both are large, beautiful, and exquisite to hike. Partly due to the convergence of the Illinois and Fox rivers, the area is quite lush and hilly, with bluffs and cliffs throughout.  The kind of topography you might expect to find in Northern Wisconsin, or the Ozarks.

Contrasted with the surrounding farmlands (still scenic but relatively flat), it is a charming little hamlet of a riverfront town. With its antiquity and a population of little over 18,000, it has its 'Mayberry' vibe.

The house I landed in suits me far more these days. Much easier to maintain, single-story, brick exterior. No boilers or radiators, far more energy efficient.  That's important in this region, it gets pretty frosty. And since I work from my home studio I needed a level of tranquility that lends itself to that, even a place I could eventually retire to. At age 59 that's not too far off.

Fortunately I found the house, and the move happened just before COVID lockdown in early March. I'm grateful for the lucky timing there. Getting unpacked and settled went surprisingly quick. Doing a lot of purging prior to the move helped, but it's also like everything I brought just fell into place, as if the house was waiting for me.  It didn't have cable or internet, so I did have to get that installed, but I was wired up within a couple of days, online and fielding incoming work. 

What do I miss most about Chicago living?  The great restaurants and cafes. Many of my favorites are gone anyway, making it easier to let go,  but small town living doesn't offer the broad ethnic fare you grow accustomed to in the big city.

I would even kid about my own neighborhood;  East Rogers Park is very culturally diverse, with tons of ethnic restaurants. .. It's like EPCOT but with a higher crime rate.

Subaru's BRAT: revisited

I would imagine that anyone born after 1980 would not know what a Subaru BRAT was.  The only recent cultural references have been in the TV show 'My Name is Earl' (the character Joy owned a 1985 BRAT), and the character Rex drove one in the 2004 movie 'Napoleon Dynamite', an '82 model.
.. Aside from that, they are a largely forgotten footnote in the rich history of auto design.
Subaru only produced them from 1978 to 1994, a 16 year run, but stopped importing them to the USA in '87.

BRAT was actually an acronym for Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter.
The BRAT was available in many parts of the world, including Africa and Australia, where they were favored in the outback.  The Aussies called it the 'Brumby'.

 













When I was just out of high school my pal Chuck had a new 1978 BRAT.  They were actually cheap to buy new, especially with the minimum wage going as far as it did then.  The BRAT was preferable to a Toyota or Datsun pickup because it not only came with standard 4-wheel drive, but it was cooler looking and a blast to drive. They only pushed about 80hp, but were super light, nimble off-road, and they had 2 jump-seats in the rear bed, enabling room for 4 people, plus all the gear you'd need for a day at the Indiana Dunes or a swim at the quarry.  Chuck's BRAT was taupe colored, a 4-speed stick, with the standard stripe kit on each side.  For summertime fun, it was the next best thing to owning a dune buggy.

Over the decades since,  I've occasionally wondered why Subaru hasn't brought back the BRAT.  Their 'Baja', an awkward family wagon with a short back bed, seemed like a weak effort, .. but there really hasn't been another vehicle that even falls into the BRAT wheelhouse.  Hyundai is producing their 'Santa Cruz', which is about as close as it's gotten so far.

.. But it still ain't the BRAT.

I finally had to address this bee in my bonnet, so I came up with my own update of this lost gem.

Fisher-Price: the Fold-n-Go Workbench!

This project brings back memories when I look at it, as do many projects throughout the years.  It may also trigger the memory of some readers, it goes back to when many were just kids.
Often it's the project itself that leaves an impression on me, sometimes it's about other things going on in my life at the time.  In this case, I had just moved to Oak Park, Illinois after spending 9 years living in Philadelphia.  We were also expecting our second child and I was busy trying to get work while settling into my attic studio, then recently completed.  It was a great space, well laid out, and I was champing at the bit to give it a road test.

It was around this time that I started getting work from Fisher-Price in East Aurora.
A few of the designers there started calling on me pretty regularly and I really hit my stride in delivering solid work in a quick fashion.  The Fold-n-Go Workbench was one of those early experiences of a project coming and going fast, with the end product turning out pretty close to my design. Like in most cases, if there wasn't a foam-core model all I had to work with was a thumbnail and a description of the functions. 
If there were any rough passes for this they're long gone.  I don't recall doing anything beyond a couple of clean line drawings followed by a rendering, which at the time would be sent via Fed-Ex.  I had a new Mac G4 but was just starting to scan and email jpegs,  I wasn't fully versed in Photoshop. In fact, the rendering below is a re-render done digitally some time back, since the original was sent off to Fisher-Price.
.. I do remember the original was rendered in marker, something you don't see much anymore.

 




























Here is how it turned out back then when it was produced by Fisher-Price;

.. And as of this writing, my younger of 2 children is on his own and in college.

The years do fly.

Disney: Cinderella Coach Play Tent!

While this may have been another quick job for Disney Consumer Products, it was a load of fun to do.  I've always liked pop-up hoop tents, whether for children's play or adult camping.  I was tapped to bring that feature to a Cinderella pumpkin coach, which did have its challenges.
I didn't necessarily have to design the prototype but it did need to have a degree of plausibility in execution.

Again, this was a quick one.  I had a next-day delivery deadline so not much preliminary exploration was done.  I went from approved rough to renderings.  The figures were added afterward to show some scale.

I came across the above while cleaning through my computer hard drive a couple of years ago. I had neglected to look this one up, to see if it was eventually produced by DCP, and if so; how it turned out.

I think it turned out pretty well, if simplified for cost & function;

Tomy: Zootopia!

In the beginning of my career in toy design I worked as an in-house freelancer at Tyco Toys, then located in Mt. Laurel New Jersey.  As mentioned here previously, I started by lending a hand to the games group, helping to realize their lines to the market.  From there I began working with most of the other managers and directors that needed a skilled designer on hand.  It was my only time working on the inside, so to speak, but it was very formative.
As a result I acquired a lot of practical experience across categories, but never accepted the full-time position that was eventually offered.  By then I already had plans to move my family back to the Chicago area.

.. Cut to 2015:  After 20+ years at the drawing board in my home studio, and starting to feel like I was repeating myself,  I pursued an open position at Tomy International, who's US offices are within commuting distance from me, in Oakbrook, Il.
Tomy was rapidly expanding at the time and looking to hire, also their newer VP of product development was an old friend and colleague. It was a perfect storm of sorts and the timing felt right.  Unfortunately, as all storms pass, Tomy had a course change and I became part of a downsizing.
So I hung my shingle back up and have been back at my own drawing board since, .. though finally upgrading onto a nice new Cintiq.
In spite of my years I fully embrace this digital era.

.. Meanwhile;  having been hired to manage projects for the feature animation team, including Disney & Pixar movies, was a daunting undertaking. I had spent the majority of my career as an outside consultant, being called on more surgically.  But I took on the challenge,  spending most of my time bringing many of the Zootopia toys to the shelves.
I certainly didn't do it alone, working with an amazing team of designers.  I learned a lot from them in spite of my own mine of experience.   Among the learning curves I surmounted while at Tomy was working directly with model makers and engineers, revising and approving everything down to tooling and production.  It was something newer to me, and deeply fascinating.

Probably the most consuming of the Zootopia line of product, for me, was a police station playset.
It was to be the TV driver in the line, with a higher price point, but loaded with features and play action for the figures.
When I was brought on staff there actually was an early foam model of the playset, which was used in the pitch to Pixar when securing the license.  While it captured its essence it needed to be redesigned and turned into actual product.  I took things from there, fleshing out all the features, mechanisms, and electronics, which were somewhat complex to execute. I generated mugshots of the villains for a small projection feature.  I even created the flowchart for the sound board and wrote the script, which was concatenated to deliver potentially dozens of dispatches and alerts tailored to the play.

.. Ironically,  I have so little of the preliminary work to share here, because everything I did was in-house on company computers.  I did save some jpegs of the grey models produced, for reference, but no drawings or renderings ever made it to my home hard drive.  For much of the development phase the only exterior reference I had to work with was this inspiring screen capture provided by Disney;

Still,  it was a sheer joy to be such an integral part of creating the Zootopia toys, especially the big playset.  My tenure at Tomy International, short as it was, will always have a fond place in my heart.

Here is what imagery I do have of the actual products.  The quality on the figures, from sculpt to spray ops, is impressive.  Great toys, Tomy!

Be sure to watch the TV commercial to check out the cool features!

Playskool: 2 in 1 Bounce & Roll!

Beneath the umbrella of companies now with Hasbro is Tiger, who focused a lot on fun games and electronics.  

Clearly inspired by Tiger's successful 'Bulls-Eye Ball' game, Playskool decided to produce a similar skee-ball for their preschool line.  It had the same action and electronic score features as Bulls-Eye Ball, just scaled up and having the additional feature of being either a skee-ball or 'bounce' mode, like the classic. 

The creatives at Playskool tapped me to execute some quick sketches exploring what that might look like.
Here are some passes at styling the overall game as well as exploring the folding and ball return function;

    













Here is how the final product turned out;