Monsters at Play

Monsters at Play is an independent study to explore the visual language and established branding of Monsters, Inc into an outdoor and play system.

ROLE

Industrial Designer

company

Independent

responsibilities & contribution

Concept Development, Toy Design, Form Exploration, 3D Modeling and Visualization, CMF, Mechanism & Interaction Design

Visual research

Movie clips and existing themed products provided a good sense of how iconic objects from the movie is translated into real world products.

Furthermore, existing water-related toys provided a form foundation; ergonomy and mechanisms.

play pattern

To answer a few questions:

1) How do kids interact with similar objects?

2) What are the common touchpoints?

3) How does the object operate/work?

Multiple play mechanisms were noted:

- The classic hand-held mechanism

- A small, refillable water tank attached to the back of the toy

- Directly connected to the water source instead of a refillable water tank

- The toy rested on a tripod for ease-of-aim

Form exploration

Ridiculous ideas were explored during this phase; alongside conventional ones (of course).

Many issues were attempted to be solved:

1) Should a character (e.g. Mike) be the face of the product?

2) Should it rather resemble a conventional-looking blaster?

3) Can a conventional blaster be adapted to the IP?

4) Would a CDA weapon be appropriate?

5) Would then a scream/laugh canister be a more appropriate direction?

refined form exploration

Pursued two distinct directions:

1) CDA-Inspired

Steering from the predictability of a Monsters, Inc-themed toy

2) Scream Canister

Explored the Scream/Laugh Canister as a portable water tank that is to be worn on the back

I decided to pursue the second direction, and proceeded with working on the CMF for the set.

CMF + IP TRANSLATION

Rather than reproducing character imagery literally, the CMF direction translates each character's recognizable color and material cues into functional product zones.

SCREAM (& laugh) canister water tank

Modeled on Fusion360, the water tank is 11.05" tall (not including the tubing). It has a dial to adjust the flow of water from scream to laugh. And the scream meter becomes the window to gauge the water level.

Most of the components can be manufactured using injection molding. The black bands are over-molded instead of grooves being painted black.

water blaster

Definitely drove myself slightly insane trying to model this in a night (under all transparency, this took me discontinuous 24 hrs). The aim was to make the incorporation of Mike and Sulley less obvious. The outer shell is composed of ABS and TPE. The grip is made ofTPE to make it less slippery when wet.