Behind Blythe: A Cute and Curious Doll Exhibition features the wide-eyed Blythe dolls from CWC and the photography of Gina Garan. Curated by Junko Wong, Behind Blythe opens at the Showroom NYC on Friday, March 3rd from 6 to 9 PM. If you can’t get enough Blythe, be sure to make it out for this event.
I WAS WONDERING HOW I COULD GET SOFTWARE TO MAKE AND DESIEN 3D TOYS FOR KIDS AND FIGURINES.IAM A LOCAL ARTIST IN IOWA,AND WOULD LOV IT IF YOU COULD GIVE ME SOME TIPS.
Hey Jon,
While I don’t specifically design toys, I do know that the information provided on Vinyl Pulse applies to many segments of the toy industry. Many toy designers still don’t use 3D software. More often than not, they’re mostly excellent illustrators with a firm mental grasp of how their illustration translates to 3D. This ability is usually communicated in the form of orthographic drawings (check out the “Panda” work-in-progress stuff for examples).
I know some toy designers who still just provide hand-drawn renderings which are sent to a sculptor. Some do their layouts in Illustrator instead before handing them off.
Recently I’ve noticed that some toy companies seem to be increasingly interested in Maya, which is actually a 3D application for animation and videogames, but which can – if prodded – output files for tooling (not typically used, but possible). This seems to still be pretty rare.
Not long ago I helped a toy company in Chicago that was trying to get a videogame character into CAD. The original file was created in 3D Studio Max, I imported into Maya and converted it to another file format which I then imported into a CAD application. And while the company had all the tools, they were unable to duplicate my conversion. So it’s still rough going for many of them.
I’d recommend the excellent documentation on this site, some pens and markers, and modeling clay.