Balanced Beauties is a doll line for children ages 5-12 that encourages mindfulness and wellbeing, through Yoga and other physical activities. This is Sunny Salutations and her dog, Helios!

Research

We began the design process by observing play, how we as adults play and how children play. From there we sketched children playing to get a handle on their gesture.

  • Children like physical play, movement is an integral part of their experience

  • Object Play is a large part of play also, kids like to interact with objects

Initial Design Concept

First three concept sketches shows girls in different styled athletic ware.

Traditional Athletic ware, Dance ware, and more loose and flowy clothes.

Concept Sketches

Most ideation for balanced beauties came from sketching and character/color studies. There are also product concept studies.

User Testing

Concept tested with a group of 8 year old children with a paper doll of Sunny and written Yoga Instructions. The children loved to try out yoga poses and invent their own as well as playing with the paper doll.

Takeaways:

  • More accessories like water bottles and yoga mats

  • They wanted to see more characters

  • They wanted to see more with the pets, articulation or texture

Process

  • Modeling

  • Resin Print

  • Initial Paint

  • Detail Paint

  • Final Face

  • Sewn Outfit

  • Sculpting Dog

  • Flocking Dog

  • Final Dog

Final Prototype Images