A Toy Story

Working on a toy commercial before Toy Fair was always an adventure. Once upon a time, I worked on a doll commercial that was a very special vehicle for knuckleheadism. The toy company and agency was in the midst of shooting the live action for the commercial when they contacted us to design the doll character for the animated section of the spot. Unfortunately for us, there was only one doll on the planet, the prototype, and that was being used for the live action. I asked the producer to send a photo via the internet even though it was the early days of dial up. She agreed and soon a photo was in my inbox, when I opened it I was surprised to find a 50 pixel by 50 pixel thumbnail photo with a tiny image of a doll in it. I called and asked to send the photo at a larger size to which the producer responded that they were too busy with the live action shoot and to just do the best I could. She continued to say that I should just design a cute doll with pigtails and that should work and that she needed the design asap due to the client being available. Well, I got right to work and within a couple hours faxed the first design. In less than five minutes, I received a call from the producer who was extremely upset that I had missed the flower on the doll's jumper. How could I miss something so obvious. The flower in question was one a little more than one pixel on the reference photo they had sent. Unfortunately for me, it didn't stop there. To be con't.