Hi. Thanks for stopping by. I’m Jamie Hood, art director for Round 2. I am part of the team that develops our Forever Fun product. My primary responsibility for our products is coordinating day-to-day development of our holiday line of play and display items which covers great properties like Peanuts, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and new for this year- Little Drummer Boy. This means I research the subject matter (Watch TV, read comic strips and get paid for it? It doesn’t get much better than that), develop control drawings, advise sculptors, spec’ colors, check test shots, supervise tooling changes and otherwise try to keep my fingers in as many cool projects as I can manage (and sometimes more). I’ll do my best to share some of the stuff that goes on around Round 2.

Right now, we are in the home stretch of developing the product for the coming Christmas season. Other members of the development team are hard at work on packaging while I have a few projects still in the sculpting stages. I get images of progress made by the sculptors and give them guidance where necessary. Once the sculpts are done, they get sent to me so I can review them in person, then forward them on to the licensor for their approval. As I wait on sculpts, I concentrate on spec’ing all of the colors for the factory. Our development goes something like this…

1. The creative team brainstorms ideas for each product in each license. We do this by meeting for a few hours a day scattered over the course of a month or so.
2. We share our ideas with Tom Lowe, the owner of the company along with other sales support and production staff to get their input. Soon after, we share our ideas with our sales reps to show them our plan and gain their input.
3. We start finalizing our plan although it remains flexible through the selling season to be sure we overcome opportunities and challenges that arise over the course of the season.
4. We begin asking our factory for quotes for our proposed product and I begin drawing up plans for items that require new sculpts. This involves studying the subject matter, finding appropriate show images that show as many angles of the element as possible. Many times I do control drawings that show the item from every side and indicate the scale.
5. Sculptors start their work and I supervise via email.
6. Once sculpts are finished, I have them sent to me so I can take a final look before forwarding them on to their respective licensor. The licensors may ask for changes that are executed by the sculptor.
7. In the meantime, I spec the color for every product to guide the factory.
8. The sculpts then go to the factory and are used to create steel tooling. (it’s magic as far as I’m concerned. I don’t really know how it’s done.)
9. The factory sends test shots of the new item for me to review. I make comments to them for anything that needs improving.
10. The factory produces the product and has it tested for safety, etc. At the end of which pre-production samples are sent for our final review.
11. The product is shipped to the retailers and by that time, we will be about one quarter of the way through the whole process for the next year.

This really is a simplification of the process. Each year has its own hurdles to overcome but for the most part, this is generally how it goes.

I go through certain times of the year when my desk shows just how busy I am. This week just happens to be a regular week but my desk already seems over-run. I’m showing a picture just to show some of the things that have my immediate attention. Let’s see… There’s a sculpt of Rudolph’s cave for a mini figurine set, Little Drummer Boy figurine painted mockups, new sculpt elements for this year’s CVS Peanuts Music and Motion skate pond set, and fabric samples for our Peanuts poseable play packs.