Lambie: The Nostalgia Series
For my senior thesis project, I designed a series of four blind box figure designs, inspired by themes of nostalgia and my own childhood memories.
My project was created to explore themes of nostalgia, memories, and vulnerability through a series of blind box toys designed to feel like fragments of a childhood scrapbook. I wanted to capture small but meaningful moments, both happy and bittersweet- these memories hold both comfort and a sense of fragility, which I aimed to reflect in my designs. I hoped to highlight how toys can be more than just objects, but also serve as a representation of memories, comfort, and belonging.
This series focuses on my original character Lambie, a plush sheep who serves as both a mascot and persona for myself. Through Lambie, I reflected on my own childhood memories and the emotions that surround the idea of nostalgia. I created four unique designs, each with their own figure turnaround sheet, sculpted and painted prototype, and illustrated insert card.
After creating many rough sketches, each design began by creating a turnaround sheet. The turnaround sheets of each figure feature information that would be important in a manufacturing scenario, such as sculpt notes, painted details, and color palettes. While usually these would be sent off to a sculptor to create the physical prototype, I was also the sculptor in this project! I found that for me, the process of creating the turnarounds was easier when done in tandem with the sculpting, so that the physicality of the sculpt could better inform my design choices.
I started the sculpting process by making a simple wire armature, covering it in tin foil, and then layering polymer clay on top to block out the basic shapes of the figure. From there, I'd both carve down and add on clay to refine the figures further. After sculpting, the figures were primed with gesso and painted with acrylic paints.
Often, blind box figures include insert cards of each design in the series, so I created illustrations of each design with watercolor and colored pencils, as well as a quilt-themed background to use for the cards. All of these assets were scanned and used digitally to create the final insert cards.
To introduce more context and create a better sense of worldbuilding in the project, I also wrote a bit of text for the back of each card. Through the text, I tried to convey the emotions that were central to each memory in a narrative, storybook sort of style.
The sculpted prototypes of these designs are truly my proudest achievement from the whole of this project. While these designs were made with the format of blind box toys as the goal, I haven't yet explored the possibility or logistics of reproducing multiples as real, collectible objects. My dream for the future would be to find a feasible way to create more Lambies, perhaps through 3d printing, casting them myself, or having them manufactured elsewhere, so that he could have a place in other people's collections!
