In Toy Product Design at MIT, students are organized into 16 teams, each with a unique animal. While I was a TA for Toy Product Design in 2017, I designed playful isometric representations of each animal:



Most of the animals were developed through sketches in my notebook (and there were a few non-animals as well):



I also used the animals indesigning the "play"-sentations poster to invite community members to the class' final presentations:



In addition to being on our signage, the animals were plotted and mounted to foam core to be used as table markers for students and audience members to find each team after the event:

In 2015, the 2.009 Product Design class theme was:

Magic!

I was asked to create a set of magical semi-animated illustrations to be used as backdrops to a fun video for the final presentations.

It started with quick storyboarding based on a rough script:



And then more detailed rendering in pen and pencil:


And then I painted the scenes in photoshop, and layered them into after effects to give them a sense of depth through parallax:

Animated Animals:

The Completed Costume:

The final (and very last minute) touch was to add “tentacles” which were made using a thrift-store dress. I attached the dress to the squid body and then cut it in the shape of tentacles.

Here I am with the studens of team squid, their incredible toy (Infect It!), and their mentor Jonah: