Board games

When I began freelancing in the toy industry back in 1992-93 I started working exclusively on game concepts for Tyco Toys, based in Mt Laurel New Jersey.  Their games director needed some creative hands to handle everything from concept art to inventing, to assembling prototypes.  It was more out of necessity than anything that I quickly learned how to wear several hats in developing all kinds of games, and within a few months I was dealing with model makers, licensing departments, marketing executives and engineers.   I worked on literally dozens of games and activites over a 2 1/2 year period before eventually being offered the salary position of games maven at Tyco, but by then I had already decided I was moving back to the Chicago area.  Also, having worked on games already, I was really interested in designing product for other departments;  RC cars, slot racing, action figures, preschool, activities, dolls, everything I could.  Tyco needed help visualizing those ideas as well and even the VP of product agreed that I'd be more useful to them as a freelancer.

Over the years I have been able to work in virtually every other category, some more regularly than others, and have even continued developing games of all sorts.  I still consider them to be a favorite area of expertise and it's always exciting when something new occasionally lands on my drawing board.  One of the highlights being the 70th Anniversary version of Monopoly.

Here are a few other games I've created over the years. Again, there are lots more than what's here, and I'll cover more games in later posts,  these are specific examples of board games produced and sold;

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Veggie Tales' Jonah: An Overboard Adventure 

Big Idea Productions was operating out of the Chicago burb of Lombard when I got the call to design a board game around the Jonah movie they were working on.  Their close proximity helped because there was a lot to do in a short time, and being able to meet with them personally and hand deliver everything worked to our advantage.  I did some work on the game play itself, but my main task was designing and generating all the production art involved; including final board art, cards, spinner, pawns, ..everything except the package art. 

It was a challenge because at that point I hadn't done much digital illustrating for print, and I wanted it to look as good or better than anything I could generate on the drawing board.  I learned a lot about working in Photoshop over those couple of weeks and I've done a lot more digital art for print since.

   

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Looney Tunes' Smush 'em!

 While Tyco held a license for Looney Tunes I was asked to come up with some game concepts using their stable of classic characters. There were a few ideas I brought to playable prototype, including the "Smush 'em!" board game.  Another was a Tazmanian Devil board game that used a spinning top Taz.  Landing your character on certain spaces required starting the sculpted Taz character with a zip-strip and setting it loose. It would swirl around the board and wipe out the moving pawns. A fun alternative and a contender for what was ultimately decided on here;   

 

doughy fun for the entire family;

 

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The Cat 'N Fiddle game

Along with perennial favorites like Monopoly, Clue, and The Game of Life,  I've also worked with Hasbro Games on other Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers concepts, some of them for younger tots.  Candyland, Chutes & Ladders, and Operation are a few other classics that I've also revisited for newer generations,  trying a fresh twist on an old theme.  

For something newer this 'Cat & the Fiddle' game was fun to work on because of my old-school aesthetic approach.  I remembered those old "Happy Harmonies" and "Merrie Melodies" nursery rhyme cartoons from the 1930s and drew from that style.  They really liked that look and ended up going with it for the final design; 

Zooballs!

Back in the 90s Tyco Toys called on me to do some conceptual work for their plush line.

The pitch was simple; They're plush animals that are round bouncy balls. (Ah, minimalism!)  
The real task was in making them cute, fun, and marketable, like Beanie Babies (which were HUGE at the time). ..In fact, the price point and consumer niche was geared to compete with the Ty Toys phenomenon. 

Really, there was nothing that was not fun about this project.  I was given free reign regarding what animals to caricaturize, and no limit in the number generated.  It was 'blue-sky' concept work, so I had a good time seeing what I could come up with.
There was some back-and-forth of sketches and ultimately the creatives at Tyco whittled it down to 18 different character balls.  Most of them ended up being designs of mine, with about 5 of them being done internally (which they had me redesign for the sake of consistency).

..And they now had a name:   

Zooballs!

Another great thing about this project was that what I initially came up with was pretty much what ended up on the toy shelves.  A rare occurrence, as typically other designers and/or marketing people will add their own tweaks along the way. I guess everyone thought what I came up with was dandy enough.  ..Though, as mentioned, there were a handful that never made the cut.
..like these poor orphans;

The ones that did make it through the gauntlet needed final renderings for presentation and manufacturing purposes.  There were no Zooball prototypes in existence and these were going to be fabricated overseas, so they needed some solid reference material.  Tyco asked me to generate 2 views of each Zooball character to send to Hong Kong.  'Mugshots' ..if you will.
Here are examples of just some of them;

..for the record? No; I didn't actually pick the names for these guys.

That was someone else's lucky job.

Jumping Sharks and Dinosaurs

A while back I was brought in to develop a couple of fun stunt bike concepts for Jakks Pacific's MXS Road Champs line.
These toys use the classic 'zip strip' mechanism to power their stunt bikes, and Jakks was working on upping the ante for their thrills and spills.

The first one seemed like a given;
Jumping the Shark.

Sure, it's a cultural joke, implying the 'selling out' of integrity, ..but SOMEBODY had to make a toy out of it, right?
No Fonzie here, though.  Sorry.
This concept employed a battery operated shark head who's jaws clamped shut at intervals, challenging the rider to time the jump just right.

I initially explored 2 different themes;  A 'Carnival' theme and a 'Mad Laboratory' theme.
Early on, as is often the case, there is some real fun in conceptualizing how these things will look, and what comes in the box.  In this case they wanted to include a catch net at the end, and a loop stunt that the rider would need to navigate before going up the ramp. ..Really the ideal thing to disorient any rider on his way to daring jaws of death.
Ultimately, when these concepts go through costing, some of the extra stuff gets trimmed in order to keep the final price down.
But here are the initial drawings that sold the idea;

The 'Carny' theme

The 'Mad Lab' theme

 




 


  











Not to be outdone by themselves, however, Jakks wanted to heighten the danger.
And what could possibly be more threatening to a stunt cyclist?

Jumping a Tyrannosaurus Rex, of course.

..But not just any T-Rex.
This particular Rex was a roaring live skeleton, and could swallow you whole!
The idea used the same battery operated biting jaws as the shark, but instead of jumping across the gaping maw, the rider had to jump over the head, and successfully ride down the backbone and tail to complete the stunt. And if you got caught by the jaws of the T-Rex?  You ended up imprisoned in its ribcage!

And did I mention this T-Rex glows in the dark?

Well, it does.

That's right. Eat your heart out, Evel Knievel!

 









I must admit, I was concerned about the mechanical logistics around this one, but dammit it worked!
I had a lot of fun designing this, and it came out pretty much as I had drawn it.  The only thing that went due to costing was the base that I designed for it.
Here's the initial concept drawing that was presented;

Once it was approved, I had to generate a few sketches showing how the skeleton's parts looked and functioned.  Because of how this thing worked some creative license had to be taken to allow the bike to be 'swallowed and caged', as well as roll down the spine;

Shake'n Bobbles Hazard Highway

After I had generated some illustrations for their Monster Sports Games, Shelcore asked me to revise the packaging art for their Shake'n Bobbles Hazard Highway, which was commercially promoted;

AWESOME!

The marketing folks at Shelcore felt the existing art was somewhat inaccurate, as well as busy and confusing in how the set was presented. They also felt the angle of the illustration didn't highlight the features in the best way.  So, I was given some new direction and asked to take a crack at it.
Here's the existing;

The main points to tackle;  1. A fun but clear vision of what this thing looked like when in action,  2. A better representation of the item itself, and 3. Instead of featuring the rocking green bridge they wanted to show the car dropping from the upper deck of the orange break-away bridge to the track below.
They did ask me to purposely omit the clumsy dropping platform connected to the bridge for simplicity (which is why it's not seen in the final revised art). Otherwise; "make it look like it works".

To make things easier for myself and Shelcore in assembling the final image, I generated some of the key elements separately. Mainly the character/car, and the track set itself.
Here are the pencil sketches I submitted for approval;

     

I included a paste-up version with the car in place and given approval on the basics, after a couple of tweaks, I started work on the final art for print.  Unfortunately,  Shelcore went through some management changes while in progress, and the project was killed.
..Still, not one to let the work done go to waste, I took some time to finish up the project on my own down-time.
Here are the finished illustrated elements as separated;

Finally, I assembled the parts in one piece of art, adding motion to the rocking bridge feature, and bobble-head.  Here's the final art ready for print;

..and here's a mock-up of what the revised package may have looked like;

Grouchland vehicles

Back in the late 90s I got a call from the folks at Fisher-Price Friends for this fun project.
At the time, the talented and creative people at Jim Henson's studio were working on production design for their feature film;
The Adventures of Elmo In Grouchland. 

F.P. Friends (or Tyco Preschool, as they were called back then) held the Sesame Street / Muppet license for producing toys, and I was one of their go-to freelancers for many of their related concepts.  Often when a studio and toy company share a close working relationship, the studio will call on product development to come up with concepts in a tandem effort to shorten turnaround time at both ends.

The parameters for this assignment were pretty straightforward;  Come up with a handful of vehicles comprised entirely of junk.
The resulting concept sketches were a series of drivable ready-mades that could pass as cars, trucks, and vans for incidental use in populating the world of Junk.

The last 2 vehicles had already been designed for use in the movie, but Fisher-Price and Henson wanted concept drawings for each.

These were already being considered for toys in the line, and they wanted something for context in relation to the vehicles I came up with.

 

..RIP, Mr. Henson.
Thanks for all the joy.