Rationale

In Droid Saga, I wanted to capture and harness some of the fun and magic of the main franchise but make it a sort of whimsical and fun offshoot. I really love sci fi and robots and such so I played with the idea of a force using droid – who learned the ways of the force from their master and carries on the legacy of their master once they pass on. The side of the force their master was on would determine their force affiliation – and this aspect would be part of the collectible nature of the product – a set of detailed models. Consequently, the way I made this would mean you could mix and match droid parts – feet, arms, hands, weapons and clothing which would be a very cool aspect and allow people to basically customize their own droid if they wanted. I intended for a teenage and upwards audience. If it were a real product I envision it would have an accompanying game/app or animated series to go along with it and flesh out the characters. Because of the nature of collectibles, I wanted to make the box and art look appealing enough that you could use it to display/keep the item – thus a nice full color image is prominent on this packaging.

I’ve never particularly been craft focused on my design solutions and don’t really have a high level of technical know-how, so that was a big challenge for me for this assignment. There were a lot of cases of expectation vs. reality – things that I thought were straightforward and seemed like they would work in theory, often didn’t in practice. And thus, I had to problem solve every time something happened. And this was both in the construction of the model, as well as the packaging. And while things didn’t come out exactly as I had planned, or perfectly, I am proud of what I’ve learned, accomplished and produced for this project. While there are a few things I would have done differently (creating the body from scratch and using different joints rather than trying to make an existing thing work probably would have saved me time in the longrun in this instance) I can now say that I know how to make this sort of thing and don’t doubt that I will have to call upon these skills in future.

Package Art

Here are full versions of the peices of artwork I created for the packaging. I drew these using a wacom tablet in Paint Tool Sai. :)

Craft Photos

Here is a photo of the original doll I used the body and limbs from. The reason I picked this doll is because they are extremely skinny and droids tend to be as well and this also gave me room for changing the proportions and such - this dolls body also comes mostly apart so that allowed me to pop most of the body parts out to lengthen, bulk up etc.

First I did the head and hands - These were done entirely of sculpey over wire/foil.

The body was done in a two part sculpey shell and joined together around the elongated torso using epoxy and superglue.

I tried to keep geometric patterns and lines to maintain the droid aesthetic (not easy with soft sculpey!)

Lastly I painted all the parts. the paint peeled a bit at the joints sadly but the gloss I applied did allow the spray paint to dry properly and finished the metallic look I was hoping for.

Final Product

The final model, although a little loose jointed, and difficult to stand on it's own, came out pretty good for a first time effort! the clothing really added alot to the character as well. Learned so much about different materials and construction from making this! The clothing does come off completely, and alot of the joints pop out. Joint mobility isn't as flexible as the original doll I sculpted over due to bulking up the limbs but there is some element of movement there for posing and such. Small things like this would be worked our for a commercial version obviously. :)

A little rough around the edges, due to being folded manually and such but overall looks pretty good for a mock up!

Packaging Mockup / Specs

Some simple rectangular box I did as an initial idea. It didn't really work out tho, plus i wanted something with a more sci fi ish look/shape.

A more geometric shaped box which I ended up using for the final package

Existing Merch

I had a look at existing Star Wars action figures and models being sold. There appeared to be cheap action figures on offer - your standard movable and reasonably cheaply made toy that is sold rather cheap, and then a better more collectible "black series" of models with more luxurious packaging, that seemed to be part of a collection etc.

they included a summary of the character on the box

and also included imagery of other figures to purchase in the set.

The current series features red/white/black as the main colors to tie in with the last jedi movie.

Aesthetic Research - Droids

The aesthetic style of droids in Star Wars isn't very high tech sci fi by any means, it seems to draw inspiration from steampunk aesthetic and Metropolis. The purpose of the droid also appears to dictate the aesthetic - more slim and 'humanoid' droids for battle or social means, while droids for utilities can vary depending on their use. color schemes and usually metallic tones or greys, occasionally with colorful motifs panels.

Aesthetic, Logos etc.

Session 1 Brainstorming Stuff

License
Star Wars

Age Group
Collectible

Character
J-3D1 - A droid who once served a great Jedi Master and uses the force to continue his masters legacy. Part of a collection of other droids with different force affiliations.

Toy Type
Articulated figure or detailed action figure - I want to make something that looks cool and harnesses my love of sci fi. :) After watching how the original crude prototypes were created for the original star wars movie, I want to try sculpting and mashing up stuff to make my toy rather than try to 3d print. I also feel more comfortable with a hands on tactile approach as I don't know how to 3D model very well yet..

Accessories
Weapon/Saber, Satchel + Belt, Cape, Robe and other clothing,

Packaging Considerations
Collectible packaging is usually visually appealing and able to be kept to store or display the item. Because of this I will attempt to make a visually interesting package using illustration that contains elements for display (i.e. opens out into a scene for the model) I will also use geometric shapes to carry over the visual language of droids/star wars.