Toy Design : December 2015

For my Toy Design project my license was Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer Invasion.

I wanted to create a figurine under the Death Alliance. After researching the existing characters in that alliance, I found there weren't many female characters. I decided on my character being a female to stand out more from the rest.

My characters name is Leben (German for life) and is the partner of Nagash, Lord of the Undead. After dying together on the battlefield, year later Nagash was bought back to life with dark magic. Because his and Leben's love was so strong she was also bought back to life. After discussing my original idea of my character with Gary we thought it would be a good idea to make Leben the Empress of Life rather than Dead. This means I wouldn't be creating a female version of Nagash. Life ties into the Death Alliance as there is no death without it. It works like Yin and Yang, they can only work well together and not a part.

I decided on creating collectible cards also. With the figurine comes a silver booster card that when played with Leben gives her immortality for 3 turns. The cards work for the Invasion game and the figurine can be played with the Age of Sigmat table top game.

I wanted to bring these two different audiences together and introduce them to the other game. Having the silver card free in the Leben figurine pack sparks an interest in the table top game audience and gives them the desire to collect the other cards. Because the silver card (the second best of Leben's booster cards) is guaranteed in the figurine packaging it creates a strong want for the card game players to buy the figurine. Then they are introduced the the table top game.

I had a few bumps along the way in this project (everything that could go wrong with the model did). But considering the mistakes and time limit I think I pushed on well. I am happy with my ZBrush sculpt of my character but the physical version I have some issues. It was printed with a missing half to the face so I had to cut the head off and replace it with the new one. That also happened with the skirt. After gluing and bogging these areas, it was a blocky mess. I tried to fix it with sanding but there was only so much I could achieve.

I was very worried about the painting because it is a very small figurine but with the time I had I think I did well. I am very happy with my base and packaging designs.

I had a problem with the sheets are the new versions of them didn't save properly or got deleted somehow so I had to quickly redo them on the day of hand in/the day after. This means I lost my good versions of my character in colour (for character sheet) and also the illustrations for my design sheets. With the time I had to get these out I feel I did ok considering.

I learnt so much in this project about ZBrush and also 3D printing. I really enjoyed experimenting with the packaging side of it (which is strange because I was originally quite scared of this area I hadn't experimented in before).