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The Unique Toy Design Staff of Child's Own Studio

By Rain Noe - May 21, 2012

in Toy

Vancouver-based Wendy Tsao started Child's Own Studio, a home-based toy design studio with a twist: Tsao doesn't design the toys. Children do. Tsao's brilliant insight was to create one-off toys for a child modeled exactly on a drawing done by that child.

[Children's drawings are] a wonderful expression of childhood [and] the starting point of the collaborative project. Details and color choices are reproduced as closely as possible so that the stuffed toy that arrives in the mail is immediately recognizable to the child who designed it. It's a fun, rewarding process, and kids love seeing their drawings come alive.

While you can see how it's do-able enough to create a toy from a drawing by an artistically-gifted child, like these...

...you've gotta be impressed when Tsao pulls off the more abstract drawings, like these:

Seeing those latter three makes me reflect, with shame, on times in the past when I received a less-than-clear sketch from the head designer on the job and privately complained about being asked to realize it in CAD. It looks as if Tsao could probably pull off plush Picassos. And with a few hundred creations under her belt and counting, she won't be running out of business anytime soon.

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Ryan Oberti

12 years ago

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I like how Wendy is able to transform children's drawings into toys because it inspires the children to draw more often and think more creatively by showing them that their drawings can come to live. She also shows other designers that they can design any item with only a very basic drawing by paying attention to all the details of that drawing and using their knowledge to complete the rest of the design.

When I get out of college i want to become a toy designer for Hasbro, Spin Master, Bandai, or Banpresto and once i get myself comfortable in one of those companies i want to make a department dedicated to designing plastic toys of people's drawings, from children in elementary school to senior citizens. My idea behind this is to make everyone feel happy and important by knowing that they were part of the design process and that now they can touch and feel their drawings.
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kay kim

12 years ago

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I love these!
It is always inspiring to see from children's perspective. The one that you can never get by learning or trying hard.

I would love to buy that blue with two orange arms.

I love children's drawing
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Rafael Morgan

12 years ago

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Hey folks,

Thanks for this one! Really inspiring!

You know what? They should hire kids to teach about creativity on design schools!

I bet they would do a much better job than middle aged guys verbally reproducing something they have learned 40 years ago.
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