The party
Personal Project | Summer 2026 | 5 Weeks
Skills: Sketching | Z-Brush | Illustrator | Fusion | Keyshot
design overview
Little People has a well-established style and set of themes, but there is room to explore something outside of the usual play experience. This project looks at how a fantasy, D&D-inspired theme could be brought into the Little People brand while keeping the toys fun, approachable, and recognizable. The goal is to create characters and play environments that encourage storytelling, exploration, and imaginative play.
Product Teardown
To understand what makes a good toy, I went and purchased a Little People Set that is currently on the market. I began to identify the elements that make it up and draw kids to it
Sketching
For my initial ideation, I explored character design and some elements that those characters interact with, and how those elements would be fun and interesting for kids
modeling
To attempt to replicate the iconic form of the little people characters I used a 3D scanning software and imported the file into Z-Brush
I cleaned up the 3D scanned model using different Z-Brush sculpting tools to create a template for me to wok on when creating my three characters
Using my blank model I created the forms for my characters using various sculpting process
I attempted a different strategy when creating the horse. I combined basic shapes and blended them together to create the overall form of the horse while slowly honing in on details
renders created with Keyshot and adjusted with Vizcom
