Week 4 - Serious Invention

Last night's class was certainly a lot of fun and very creative. Everyone's toy concept presentation was engaging from several viewpoints. We saw a complete thread of originality from student to student...and many great sketches! Again, everyone must focus in and get the main rendering well underway. Hopefully the examples in class inspired all. it is amazing what you can turn a thumbnail into.

I will post a Quicktime of all the de-constructed toy designs later tonight. John

Week 3 - Draw, draw, draw...

Week 3 was a fun studio indeed as we began to draw and capture our design / invention intent in a real form. The thumbnail. Remember to focus on your singular idea. get ready to present in class next week, as we move to rendering, starting with markers in wk4, our ideas in a rockin' professional format.

WEEK 2 - Toy Documents

Week 2 - Toy Documents
Here are the documents required for week 1 of toy design.
Just copy the URL into your browser and download!

Lecture
Play Basics
Project 1

Lego Game Page: Marketing Genius?

The lego website in general is very well executed and has a rich mix of media and interesting content. You may forget after a while that it is primarily a selling vehicle for their brand. The games page immerses you in the Lego world as race car driver, knight in armor or battle robot. Is it all too much? Or is it great fun? Have a look...

http://play.lego.com/en-GB/Games/default.aspx

John

Rotofuji Designer Toy Store

Hi.
Oops forgot to mention in class...for those uninterested in the typical retail toy experience...check out the very, very cool ROTOFUJI store/gallery in Chicago! Great push into urb vinyl and low run designer toys. Very inspiring for your first assignment.

Go to: http://rotofugi.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc

John

Week 1 - Toy Documents

Here are the documents required for week 1 of toy design.
Just copy the URL into your browser and download!
www.struk-ture.com/pdf/week1/syllabus2007.pdf
www.struk-ture.com/pdf/week1/assignment1cover.pdf
www.struk-ture.com/pdf/week1/assignment1info.pdf
www.struk-ture.com/pdf/week1/assignment1toystore.pdf
www.struk-ture.com/pdf/week1/quiz1.pdf

Week 1 - Welcome To Toy Design!

Hey!

The loyal, the brave, the brilliant, have chosen to be part of this cool class at Columbia College in Chicago. A hearty welcome to all newcomers. The toy design class is a thoughtful and challenging semester leveraged around toy design, invention and creativity.

And with benefit to the class, I currently work for a large toy company based in Chicago as their Creative Director. So we are able to tap into a real-world professional toy scenario as the semester progresses, with great insight into real projects as we re-invent toy-play at Columbia.

This blog will be our extended home for the next 15 weeks as I log the efforts of the class here. All class assignments, thoughts, handouts and more will live on this blog. I hope you enjoy this class, post often. Be inventive!

John A Popadiuk
Adjunct Faculty - Toy Design
john.popadiuk@loop.colum.edu