From 2011 to around 2016 I worked for Good 2 Grow, the nation's leading maker of wacky toy tops plastic nipples of juice bottles. While I was working there they officially named them SippaTops. I was not involved with choosing that name. By golly it was a swell place to work. I started there as an intern. By the time I left I was officially their Toy Designer. A Title I wanted since I was 14 years old. While I was there I learned a lot, made a lot of things, had a bunch of responsibilities and I got to go to China and Hong Kong. (It was pretty great.) Fun fact: I researching the definition of the word TOY and saved the company a million dollars in import costs. I got a bonus for that, but it wasn't even close to the million dollars I saved them. It never is.
My Primary Job throughout my time at Good 2 Grow was to design the toy Sippa Tops. I would contact the licensor, That's the person or company that owns the copyright to the intellectual property. (Like Marvel, with the hulk or HIT with Thomas The Train.) Then I would find out what I could and couldn't do with their character. After that I'd design that character's top, make edits and basically get something that made the licensor happy and that I could send to our digital Sculptor. (Jay Kushwara, The MIGHTY KUSH!) Who would use my 2D designs to make a 3D file I could later send to our three or four and sometimes five factories in China or Vietnam. Why so many Factories? 1. To play them off each other for cheaper prices. 2. To make sure our supply was never interrupted in the event of something happening at or to a factory that could cause a delay or loss of inventory. Below are some concept sheets I made for a variety of different licensors. I sometimes used Adobe Photoshop, but mostly Adobe Illustrator to make the concept sheets. I wish I had kept all of them. I didn't think of it at the time. These are all the ones I could find on all my old thumb drives.
The best part of my job was designing turns. Multiple angle images of the tops for our 3D artist to work off of. I had to design them a specific way. This was to ensure they could be made as two parts in an injection mold machine to keep costs as low as possible. Lot's of these never got used for some reason or another, but I was still proud of them and enjoyed making them.
I also created a Design Envelope that all the tops had to fit inside because our bottling factory in Florida had this big fancy robot (All robots are fancy.) that would put the tops on the bottles. That was an accomplishment. A lot of time spent with engineers. Great minds putting toys on juice bottles. The one on the top is the SippaTop and the one below is a pull top for the older kids. (A lot of college kids, you'd be surprised.)
I like Info Graphics. As I mentioned I got to go to China. Not everyone there speaks english and those who do, get things mixed up sometimes. (It's a complicated language.) I often got to make explanatory pictures to help break through the language barrier.
Here you can see a Box Assembly Break Down. It shows the box, what's in it and how it goes together. Next to that is a Bottle Breakdown showing how the parts of the bottle go together.
Here you can see how we ingeniously painted Ironman three different ways. The classic red and yellow, Iron Patriot and War Machine. I also found ways to make new products without actually making anything new. This came in the form of Variants. Same mold, same sculpt, but we'd paint it a couple different ways. This can save a company millions of dollars and got me a raise.
Anna from frozen. I just felt like adding this in here.
Well that's is most of what I did at Good 2 Grow. It was a great job and I miss all the Above Average People that I got to work with and learn from while I was there. Especially my boss who was great. He was a cowboy. What do you wear to work?
Me in Hong Kong before it went back to china.