POP MART, founded in 2010, is a Chinese trend culture and entertainment brand, with business covering five areas: global artist excavation, IP incubation and operation, consumer reach, promotion of trendy culture, and innovative business incubation and investment. It also has a store in London, which is a glimpse of how popular blind box is all over the world.
Art toy, are toys and collectibles created by artists and designers. In the last few years, the blind box culture, led by POP MART, has made more people aware of the trend. The blind box itself is a diversified creation of a doll image by a designer, and often serves as an entry-level product for already famous hipster creations. The blind box greatly lowers the barrier to entry for hipster games and allows more people to participate in them.
Before formally studying animation, I was very interested in blind box culture. Blind boxes are not only a form of consumption, but also an expression of design that combines collection, aesthetics and characterization. As a character animation student, I gradually realized that the design of blind boxes essentially belongs to the category of character design. Each blind box character, though small in size, has a complete character setting, style visual system and even story background behind it, which has a very similar logic to the character development and visual design we carry out in animation creation. Whether or not a character can be accepted, liked and even have a life depends on its uniqueness and completeness in the design stage.
I like POP MART, not only because they have many original IPs, such as Molly, Dimoo, Skullpanda, etc., but also because they’ve actively co-branded and collaborated with other well-known IPs, expanding their characters’ expression and market influence. I researched POP MART’s job postings and reached out to a friend who currently works for the company to learn more about the specific requirements and actual workflow of the position.
Through my research, I found that two of the positions offered by POP MART are highly related to the character animation, “Character Designer” and “Character Modeler”. The work of a character designer is very similar to characterization in animation, which usually involves drawing different angles of character in order to show the character’s physical characteristics. At the same time, various detailed elements in the design – such as clothing, decoration, expressions and poses – not only enrich the visual image of the character, but also help to set up the character’s personality.
My character design
Character modelers, on the other hand, are tasked with transforming 2D designs into 3D models. Although I worked primarily in 2D animation, I also have the ability to translate 2D characters into 3D models. I am able to use Blender to model the characters I design, as well as perform some level of texturing and rendering. Because of this, I believe I have the potential and ability to excel in POP Mart related positions.
My 3d work
In addition, I have also noticed that in recent years, more and more companies, whether in the field of toy design, games, film and television, or new media, have an ever-increasing demand for animation. This shows that animation students are not only limited to the traditional film and animation industry, but also have a broad prospect to develop in a number of creative industries. Therefore, I am confident about my future employment.