7 Things You NEED to be a Toy Designer!

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: So you want to be a toy designer? Well, you might need a few of these things. What is up guys? Thank you for tuning into this new video. A little change of scenery here. We are out of the conference room and we are in my office. I wanted to do something a little different here. I know you guys love kind of the peek behind the curtain when I talk about, you know, the behind the scenes stuff. I just thought it might be nice to share kind of like the tools of the trade, things that like I can't live without that I use on a daily basis. And we're kind of essential if you really want to become a toy designer or get in the toy industry or, you know, do something. I'm not saying you definitely need these. I'm just saying like, these are what I use, super helpful, and it just makes the job a lot easier. So just a few things. If you guys like this, maybe I'll share some more, but again, we'll see. So, but you guys got to let me know. Let me know in the comments what you think. So again, this is just a few of the things that I use on a daily slash weekly basis when I'm working on Action Force, the black or extras. And it really just not just makes the job easier, but it's almost essential to the job. And the first thing that is essential to the job, this right here, my laptop. This is like the lifeblood of Valiverse right here. This thing goes with me everywhere. It is where I do all my work. Everything is on there. You know, if I leave the office and I go meet my wife and kids out for dinner, this thing comes in the restaurant with me. This thing does not leave my side. You know, I back up every day, you know, to hard drives, to clouds, because it's like, again, this is my work here. You know, I've, this is probably since I started Valiverse, I think I'm on my third laptop. You know, I've tons of hard drives backed up, you know, because it's like, you know, this, this computer, I just got this computer a few months ago. So it doesn't have stuff from like series one through four on it, just because it's like, I'm not really using that stuff. I don't need to reference it. And if I do, I can go get it from the hard drive or the cloud. Also, it's like, you know, this stuff takes up a ton of space. So, you know, you want your programs to really run smoothly. So you got to have a lot of memory, a lot of RAM. So that's why I upgraded because my, my old computer was getting a little, a little slow. And I said, eh, I need to work a little, a little faster here. But again, I'm a Mac guy. So this is my MacBook Pro. I've always been a Mac guy. I just find that, you know, the programs that I use just function better on a Mac. And I find Windows to be not very user-friendly. Again, some Windows people might say the opposite, but it's all a matter of what you want to do. I know I was talking with, you know, Mark from Mark II Designs, who does the sculpting for my weapons, and he works on Windows. And he was asking me if he should upgrade to Mac. And I was like, well, it all depends because he does sculpting. I do design. So it's, it's different programs. So you have to think about what works best for you. Again, Mac works for me. That's what I got. But in addition to my Mac, this, this baby right here, thing I am on every single day that is always tied to my laptop. I'm really never on my laptop. That's not connected to my Cintiq. What is this Cintiq? It is done by Wacom. It is this stylus screen here. You can go in, basically, this pen, the stylus pen is like your mouse. And you just go in, you can select all your different layers and everything you can go through. And I, anything you do on a mouse, I do with this. Now, I don't even have a mouse out here, because I do everything with my stylus pen. So these three things all work together. First time I used the Cintiq was my first internship at Hasbro. That was, I think, 2010 or 2011. No, I'd never worked on a Cintiq before. I came from a comics background where I was drawing on paper on a big drafting table. So I get there and they have a Cintiq. And, you know, my friend Bill, he gave me a crash course on like drawing with a Cintiq. So I was like, whoa, this is interesting. But I picked it up really, really quickly. Like once you know Photoshop and you can kind of, kind of get into it, you're, you're golden. So then after the internship, I went to FIT, did my toy design degree. I was like a whiz on, on a Cintiq and, uh, on Photoshop. And it was like second nature to me, but I literally do everything on here. I do all of my designing, all my drawing. I work predominantly in Photoshop. Uh, I don't like illustrator that much. I know illustrators. We use illustrator for when we're doing like Tampa logos, the company logos, the action force logos, all that stuff, all that stuff needs to be vector files. That's all done, uh, in illustrator. But because I'm not great with illustrator, I have my packaging designer. She is a whiz at, at illustrator, but I can, I can navigate illustrator. But for me, it's Photoshop all day long. There are things that people will do in PowerPoint or other things that I find so much easier to do in Photoshop. It's just what I'm used to. Uh, some people will think differently. It's just the designer thing. But again, I do all my designing, like here's the blackbeard design, you know, here, like inputs. All of these were drawn right here on this screen or the one at my house. Like I have a second Cintiq at home so that when I'm at home, I hook my laptop up. And like I said, I'm always working on a Cintiq unless I'm like in a hotel or something like that. I got to work on my laptop. Um, but other than that, I actually love my Cintiq. I cannot live without this thing. Um, some people, you know, a lot of designers, they use, you know, iPads, which I have an iPad. Um, you know, it's just a preference thing. I just got used to this. I got used to it and I love it. There are other tablet based, uh, you know, stylus screens that are out there. To me, Wacom is like Mac. It's like the best of the best. So I'm just used to it. I use it. There are some Wacoms now that have a touchscreen that you can kind of go like this, like on an iPhone. You know, I, I didn't opt for that model. I'm a little more old school. I, you know, I use my keyboard. I'm used to like the hot keys and stuff like that. So, but I'm sure I can, I can easily go to a touchscreen, maybe on the next one, but this one's still pretty new. But this, again, this setup here, these three things, laptop, Cintiq, pen, cause you can't run the Cintiq without your pen, cannot live without them. I'm literally on them every single day. Even if I'm not designing and I'm answering emails, I'm answering emails with my pen. Like it's, it's just like second nature to me. It's like another arm or something like that. But this is my setup. I'm here every day or at home on my, I have a very similar setup at home. My gamer chair, my desk, my laptop, my Cintiq, just cause I want it seamless when I go from one to the other. But this is it. You need your station, you need your station to do your work. Whether you're vendoring stuff out to other designers, you still need to work on something. And we're working on laptops nowadays. Everything is digital. So got to get yourself a good setup. And this is mine and I love it. So that's that. The next thing that I cannot live without and absolutely no designer can live without because this is something that I use. It's also something that the factory uses and you have to use the exact same thing that the factory uses. And that is a Pantone book. I've talked about Pantone books before. It's these things, these very, very expensive booklets. These are so expensive and ridiculous. They are just thousands and thousands of swatches of colors in here that, you know, they're all color coded. Each one has its own code and what it's called. There are, you know, metallic books like these are, you know, metallic PMS colors. You need these because if you're speccing colors, for instance, let me pull up the vest for Blackbeard, he was 19-5005 TPG matte. Well, everything is kind of numbered in here. So I go to the, basically the glossary and I find 19-5005. It's in the back where the dark colors are. 19-5005 is on page 1.045. Because when the factory say they send you a sample, like, oh, that's not matching. I can go and I can reference my actual, you know, Pantone book. I think I forgot the code already. It's probably in here somewhere. But either way, I can go in there and I can spec this chip and find out exactly what was used for this particular thing, for this vest or what have you. I know what I picked and then I'll go in here and I'll get my sample and I'll hold the figure up to the sample and say, all right, is that matching the PMS color? So you need it because this is what the factory goes off of. If your colors aren't right and you're not using exactly what the factory is using, then it's off. So like for these, so these books, like I said, it's called, it's the N letters are TPG. Well, I used to use an old book. Here are my old books. These are from my Hasbro days. You can tell they've seen some battle. These are the C books, but I have a TPX book. TPX was the old book. And every now and then they'll update colors and stuff like that. And you want to use the most up-to-date book. So the factory told me like, hey, you're using TPX colors. We actually use TPG colors now. So you're going to have to get new books. And I'm like, oh, cause again, these books, I want to say these books, I think these were like $2,000 just for these books. Like they're super, super expensive. But again, you're going to use them constantly. Maybe not every day, but when I'm designing, when I'm working on figures, I'm using these all the time. Cause you have to spec every single little color and a lot of colors. Like I will use, you know, like an 877C metallic is a standard silver metallic. It's a, it's a much brighter silver. I use it in my Hasbro days. So, you know, there are times where I know I'll just, I don't have to use the book. I'll just spec 877C. There's a lot of ones where I'm like, okay, well, there's a specific OD green that I use for Sidewinder's pants. I want to use it for this other figure. Okay. Well, let me, I don't need to get on my book. I'll just spec it from the deco sheet on Sidewinder. It just makes it easy. You start to kind of have a, a library of colors you start using. Um, but again, this, you need these, if you're making toys, you need these, whether you're making adult toys or kid toys, like they all use these, the factories use these. And again, this is how they spec your colors and make sure your colors are matching their colors, matching the product colors. And then you can, you know, double check it, get yourself some Pantone books. Well worth it. Okay. So the next couple of things are, I think they're essential. Maybe, maybe not, but again, I'm so immersed in it. Like I'm a firm believer is you do something, you immerse yourself in it. I wanted to be a toy designer and I run my company. I'm immersed in development. I know every aspect of what is going on from development to financials, to shipping. I know it all. So, but when it comes to like the product again, that's super important. So I feel like these tools are important to the product. And it's very simple. You can get these on Amazon. It's a pair of calipers right here. You need these, these are their digital readout calipers. You turn them on, you know, you slide this down and it can tell you the size of something. It's tell you the width of something up here. Super simple, but a very helpful tool because if you're, for instance, okay. So for the extras line, the factory, I have a character that's wearing a hat and the sculptor did the hat, the brim of the hat. And it was, they, they sculpted it like a real hat. It's thin factory. Got it. Now for molding purposes, they were like, Hey, we need to thicken up the hat brim to one millimeter for durability and molding. And I said, okay, that doesn't one millimeter. Like for instance, I'll pull up one millimeter. Oh, one millimeter. That little space right there is one millimeter. It's very tiny. But they said to me, you know, the hat needs to be one millimeter. Well, I remember that I did a head for trigger that has a brim of a hat. I said, let me check that one because you also want to hold the factory accountable. If they're, you know, they're always going to be conservative on the production side of things. But if you have something that, you know, can be done and has been done in the past and they're trying to tell you, no, it has to be done different. You could point to something and say, well, no, it's, excuse me, it's been done this way. So I went and I found that trigger head and I measured the brim of the hat and it was one millimeter. Email them back. I said, all good guys. I was like, one millimeter is cool. You can make that adjustment. But I couldn't have known that without a pair of calipers. Calipers help a lot when I'm measuring weapons. You know, when I'm getting the weapons from Mark and then I have them grown like 3D printed, you know, I'll need to see like, okay, well, he sent me the file. The print maybe is a tad too small. So I'm going to tell the factory, all right, well, if the print is say 15.15 millimeters, but that's too small. And I'm saying, all right, maybe I'm going to go up a little bit. I'm going to go to 17 millimeters. Then I can tell the factory, all right, on my spec sheet, this part should be 17 millimeters. Then they know to adjust the file, but you can't, can't do that without calipers. You can't just like eyeball what things are. You can't look at it. You know, okay, yeah, that's an inch, but it's like when you're dealing with millimeters, like the factory deals with millimeters, you know, the, the, the stem of the muzzle flashes that fit in the barrel of the weapons, that's like a millimeter. So, you know, you have to constantly use these to make sure like, oh, Hey, this part's too thick. Can we get it to a millimeter? Can it be 1.5 millimeters? Something like that. Okay. Well, what does two millimeters look like? This'll tell you. So you need one of those. Another thing that's very similar. Now this one I, I, I made, I made it, but it totally does the job. This is what you call a height scribe. So a height scribe is basically like a standup ruler. Again, it's what it is a height scribe. It tells you the height of something. So it's like, you can lay this figure on a ruler. It's like, okay, but you're not going to get a hundred percent an accurate reading. Now at Hasbro, we had this height scribe. It was huge when like three feet and it was heavy. It had this big fat metal base on it. So I was looking for some, I couldn't really find one, but I made this. So I basically bought, you know, a metal T square and I had soldered this adjustable ruler to it so I can go up and down. And it's like, it was perfect, you know, for what, for what I need it for. It's like, if I was doing a, you know, 14 inch figure, it wouldn't work because it only goes to 12 inches. But, you know, I was trying to measure this figure because I needed to know the height for something. But, you know, I basically put the figure on here because I was like, oh, I think, you know, action force figures are usually, I was like, they're under an inch and a half, but they're over six inches. So I just brought it down. I look at the reading on the side and he's just over six and a quarter inches. So as you can see, that's what it looks like with a height scribe. So you know exactly how tall you're getting something or what that reading needs to be. Again, this is something I wouldn't say I use this even on a weekly basis. This thing comes out maybe once every month or two, but it's a super helpful tool because you always need to know what size your figures are. If you're doing a brand new line and you're like, oh, what do I want it to be? Oh, maybe I should match a Valoverse figure, you know, or this or that, you know, you get your height scribe and say, all right, spec it to this, this height. Oh, what's a NECA figure? They're usually taller, like seven and a half inches. You know, Mark and I were talking about Star Wars Black Series, how they're not true, like six inch figures because they go by the actor's height, which is why the Luke Skywalker figures are like Leia height because he, Mark Hamill, shorter, Harrison Ford, it's like six, four or something like that. But you'd be able to like tell that with a height scribe and see the difference between the figures. But again, it's crude, but it works. That's what you need. Now, the last thing up that I'm going to talk about, I've talked about so many times because it is something that really takes your product to the next level. And that is a Yiksang texture book. You guys should all know what it is because I've talked about it a hundred times on podcasts and things like that. Again, super expensive, just like Pantone books. This, look at that. Yiksang metal and plastic mold texturing. So these, I have two books of them. They're basically binders with all these plastic pages. They're just ABS plastic pages that have different swatches of texture. So you got fine texture, rough texture, and it shows you a matte and glossy finish. And each one is, has a number YS9296. So, you know, if I'm doing a leather texture and it's something that the sculptor can't nail, or if I'm doing, for instance, I did a base, you know, a base for the black series and it's a rocky texture. And to enhance it, I found like a rough, gritty texture that what they do is they photo etch it. I'm not exactly sure how the photo etch process works, but they basically use something that, you know, photo etches this texture onto the steel mold. And then it gives your, your figure this texture. I could probably find in here, there's a texture on the Colonel Siege jacket. Let me see if I could find it. You got like tire treads or all sorts of wool, wool textures here. This might be it. Yeah, I think this is it. Now also you can adjust these textures. So this texture here, YS3280, it's almost like a canvasy fabric texture. So Colonel Siege is wearing almost like a Carhartt jacket, that, you know, rough, rugged jacket. I wanted a texture on that jacket that I didn't think could come out in the sculpt. So I said, here's this texture, but also you can adjust this. They can go up and down. You could say, I want this texture, but I want it 10% smaller or 50% smaller or 30% bigger. So they can make it bigger or smaller based on what this size is. So for Siege, I think I shrunk it by like 20% just because I wanted the texture a little more fine on the jacket. These things, man, like if you have a flat surface, like there should be no flat surfaces. Like I put YS textures on everything. My, my flesh, you know, areas of flesh, like it's a bare arm, even faces. I will, I have a standard YS texture and I think it's one of these from, you know, it's probably like a, a YS9284. It's very, very fine, but it still has some sort of texture because our skin isn't, isn't totally smooth. It's porous. So that texture just gives stuff a little more life. You know, um, I was talking with the owner of another big toy company and I was helping him out because he was, he was having some issues with the heads on his figures. I was telling him like, look, give them a YS texture. I was like, cause it gives them more life. Like it makes them feel alive. Um, it is like, again, these are like thousands of dollars of books here. Um, but it takes your stuff to the next level. You know, you really, you know, the Vanguard had seats and I chose a leather texture to make the seats look like leather, you know, just everything. You can put a texture on anything, but that really, you know, makes it breaks. You know, I, I knew these because there was an, an older designer guy that had been at Hasbro for 25 years. He had, you know, Yiksang books. He was the only designer with Yiksang books. There were designers there that were there way longer than me that had no idea what these are. No idea. They're like, what's a Yiksang book? But his office was, I was on the other side of his, his office and we had these high cubicle walls. And I would call out to him and I would say his name and I'd be like Yiksang. And he would, if he was in his office, he'd get the books ready for me because he kept them. I didn't keep them. He, you know, they were his books, but I'd come around the corner and he'd have them. Then he'd hand them to me. Um, but yeah, I was always using them. And then as soon as I started this company, I reached out to the factory. I said, Hey, I need some Yiksang books. Can you source them for me? And they reached out to, you know, Yiksang and they were able to, uh, to get the books for me. Um, but again, they really take your stuff to the next level. So, um, I think that's all I got actually, no, I have one more thing. It's kind of important and it's not something, well, it's, it's stuff you could buy, but it's, it's not like a, like a tool. It's a blanket thing. And that blanket thing is inspiration. You see, I have tons of stuff in my you know, you guys have seen, uh, the tour video. I have my, my designer skulls and my Michael Jordan stuff, my star Wars stuff, my artwork over there. It's like, when I come in here, I need the, the, I want to, I want to feel like jazzed up to design and work on stuff. And I want, I want to have that inspiration. So it's like, you can see, I I've been working on the action force, 1944. So I have, you know, some of these, these 12 inch figures here, because I'm working on a paratrooper, you know, you want to, you want to immerse yourself. You want to look around. You're like, if these were just bare walls and if it was a very sterile, like, I don't think you could really get into like the mindset to work on this stuff and, and really get creative. So my space is like my, my creativity box, you know, I want stuff that, you know, really gets me amped up to design and, you know, you can change stuff out all the time. Like I changed out this shelf and I just moved my MoffX superheroes and it's with my Dan Juergens poster and my Michael Turner art. And, you know, I come in here and I'm like, it's so much fun. And, you know, and you guys saw it from the toy video, you know, check that link right here for that, that tour video. I've got all the vintage stuff out there, all my toys and my glass cases and stuff, because I run a toy company. I want to come in and I want to think toys as soon as I walk in the door and that's what it is. And that's, that's the inspiration I get. So make sure you have a good space. If it's a small corner of a room, put a couple of figures up, put something up, put something that gets you, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're motivated to be creative. Um, that is so important because if you're not motivated, it makes this job so much harder. You really, there's days I've come in where I'm tired. I had a hockey game or the kids had me up or, you know, I'm just stressed out, but it's like, I come in here and I'm like, okay, all right, I can get behind this. You know, I'm, I'm good. I'm ready. So this place really sets the tone for me. Um, you know, there's, there's stuff in this office that's incredibly important to me. You know, I think that the artwork wall over there is one of the most important things. I have a piece that Tim Sale did. He's no longer alive and it's the only Ra's al Ghul, uh, you know, art piece of artwork he's ever done. So that means a lot to me. There's a, a, a drawing I did of Stone Cold Steve Austin that's up there with a picture of me and him together because I met him in Philly, which was, you know, a very fun trip. And, you know, meeting him, I did this drawing and I got him to sign it. And then he and I took a picture together and it was like, you know, that is the first thing I see when I walk in the door. So it's like, it makes that drawing, like that drawing brings back so many memories to me. And it's so important to me just because of, you know, that, that trip, uh, you know, to Philly and what happened there. Um, so, you know, again, it's, there's so many things. I got to point to everything in this office and it, there's something that everything is meaningful. Yeah. Have your space. Your space is incredibly important. Got to get those creative juices going. So, um, that's my space. That's, those are my tools. Uh, hopefully it's kind of helped you out if you're, you're prepping to, you know, be a toy designer, run a toy company, whatever you want to do. But, uh, you know, hopefully you guys enjoyed it and, uh, make sure you guys are liking and subscribing, turning on your notifications, all that YouTube jazz, uh, make sure you check out our old library of videos. We've got so much good stuff in there. Um, and we got new ones coming out every Saturday at noon, just like the video you're watching right now. So thanks for checking this out. Thanks for coming to my space. We'll see you on the next one.