Aquatic Aztec Toy Box

Woodwork (reclaimed wood)

Christmas 2020 was looming on the horizon. My niece likes toys, my brother likes tidyness. Killing two birds with one stone.

Responsibilities: Illustration, Woodwork, Character design

Design Brief: Building an Aquatic Aztec Toy Box

I’m not sure if it’s really fair to say that this had a design brief. Basically, I wanted to give my neice a Christmas gift that would not add to the existing mountain of toys and teddies already suffocating my brother’s existence.

What better a gift then, than something into which chunks of that mountain could be stored?

My first thought was to just wrap up a shoebox, but then I remembered that she’s probably going to outlive me. Therefore, a bit more investment of care now should mean it being returned in kind when I need looking after in old age.

This quickly evolved into a wooden shoebox adorned in original artwork comprising underwater creatures. Wood makes everything feel more authentic, she likes animals and now her room is (ever so slightly) less cluttered.

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The final toy box complete with custom artwork

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A closeup of one of the main panel's artwork.

Design execution: 2D illustration and laser cutters

I was working at Staffordshire University at the time, where our department had access to several badass laser cutters. I don’t remember for sure, but I’m fairly sure it was the Trotec Speedy 300 that I used for this.

I created illustrations using a Wacom Intuos 3 and Adobe Photoshop, stylistically inspired by the work of Peter Chan, in particular his work on Grim Fandango.

The laser cutters work with gray scale imagery, so it was pretty easy to estimate the look and level of definition across the various elements.

I didn’t really know what I was doing with wood work at this point (that’s arguably yet to change) so I mapped out all the panel sizes in Autodesk Maya. This allowed me to ensure all the proportions and general sizes would fit before I started going mad with my dad’s saw blade.

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