THE ASK:
Create a children's toy tackling the issue of connection in our increasingly digital world.
THE ANSWER:
Cosmo, the feline space explorer who allows children to connect with their internal feelings by expressing them as customizable planets. Children create a new "inner world" once a day in the app, then play games and chat with Cosmo about it. Cosmo can also encourage children to talk to their caregiver if they are feeling negatively.
Dimension mockup of front of the package.
Dimension mockup of back of the package.
Package Dyeline.
App Homescreen.
PROCESS
Toy & Packaging Research
To understand what toys were popular at the time, I browsed Amazon and Target's lists of top-selling toys of 2024. I found a trend in toys that could be customized, interacted with, and had ties to popular franchises. Because I was creating the toy from scratch, I decided to focus on the first two aspects: make a toy that had customizable elements and could chat with you.
Then, I went to my local Target and sought out toy packages that fit the ideas I had for my toy. I annotated photos of these packages to understand what kind of information I needed to put on my package.
SKETCHING
As I researched the toy market, I sketched initial ideas for Cosmo and the app he would pair with. I knew I wanted to create a toy to help children express their emotions and gain self confidence, and I came up with the concept of representing "inner worlds" as planets. But beyond that, I needed to do research to understand the best way to represent emotional states as aspects of a planet.
working with womp
It was time to learn Womp. Over the course of a few days, I got the model and texture just right, and honestly had a great time playing with the software. I intended for Cosmo to look alien enough to be interesting, but cute enough to be lovable. I also added light-up stars to his arms that I imagined kids could play matching or similar games with.
I also created his expressions using a pixel grid in Illustrator, and placed them on the Womp figurine by creating hundreds of small pixelated squares. If I had known I would be moving to Dimension later in the project, I would have added the faces then, but at this point I thought I could create the entire package in Womp.
CREATING THE DYELINE
After flattening my package in Womp, I traced it in Illustrator and made the package on top of that, focusing on showcasing the worlds Cosmo could explore. I printed out a prototype to confirm everything fit together.
Unfortunately, No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't use Womp's sticker feature to put the packages sides on. So, I had to move to Adobe Dimension.
PUTTING COSMO TOGETHER
I brought Cosmo and the package's 3D files and the package's 2D side files into Dimension and compiled them. I had to re-texture a lot of Cosmo's glowing parts, but I found Dimension to make the process pretty easy. I was able to add the pixel face and package sides as textures, something that was impossible in Womp. Additional pixel faces I created can be seen on the back of the box.