<p><a href="https://www.instagram.com/toxinrabbit/">Jess Holloway</a>, Isobel Hazard and <a href="https://charlotteleadley.co.uk/">Charlotte Leadley</a> were among 150 students from universities across the country that took part in the Toy Design Challenge, supported by industry professionals.</p> <p>Jess Holloway said: “My tutor Sam Rowe told me about the Challenge because I’d shown a keen interest in game design during some previous modules. The event itself was incredible. The first half of the day was a conference, giving us some insight into the industry. As illustrators, idea generation is integral to our field, often working within tight deadlines, so quickly realised we were well suited to be there. Considering we were a team of three against teams of six, we wanted to try our best, but didn’t feel the pressure of winning.”</p> <p>“The brief we chose was to create a collectable toy that had an interesting and exciting unboxing process. We began discussing toys we had as kids and realised we had all had the same one! We began to think about why it was so good, why we liked it and why we thought other children liked it and applied that logic to our own toy.”</p>

<p>Isobel Hazard said: “We went to the event with the intention to just enjoy ourselves and anything else would be a bonus. We knew we wanted to put more flare into our packaging as I would remember when I was at school, kids would come in with special boxes for their card or toy collections and we definitely liked the idea of creating something like that to accompany our toy.”</p> <p>Charlotte Leadley said: “The whole event was a mad whirlwind of designing, pitching, redesigning, brainstorming and then pitching again! It was especially great to get one to one feedback and critique from industry professionals. Fingers crossed you’ll see our toy on shelves in the future!”</p>

<p>Due to the nature of the competition, the winning toy designs are currently embargoed as the students develop their concepts, with an aim to pitch them to companies in the industry for investment.</p><ul><li><a href="https://www.aup.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/ba-hons-illustration">Check out our BA (Hons) Illustration course</a></li><li><a href="https://mojo-nation.com/tag/mojo-nation-student-design-challenge/">Find out more about the Mojo Nation Student Design Challenge</a><a href="https://cms.plymouthart.ac.uk/courses/ba-hons-illustration/"></a></li></ul>