Castle project part 2

I'd gotten to a stage where the idea was developing, I wanted a buildable, and playable castle, but I was looking for something a bit more abstract, but also something that would stick around for a while, and be a cool looking castle in it's own right.

My latest sketch reminded me of a video I watched on Adam Savage's 'tested' YouTube channel, you can see it here; https://youtu.be/ebQU7GipJcA

I remember falling in love with this little world that had been created, even though I've never played any table top or RPG games.

This modular idea, where everything can fit with everything else, the roofs, the bodies, the walls, can all be interchanged to create something new each time.

I really enjoy the detail on the pieces, like the staircase fixing together on multiple pieces so that your miniature model can climb the stairs in full. I remember making my miniature worlds in my old wooden serving tray, these are the details that mattered, it was always frustrating playing with playsets when a character had to jump a few levels because the design didn't allow a character to go from top to bottom, why did designers leave staircases out of toys? I thought maybe this should be an option, to have ladders and staircases that can go wherever you want.

Like I've written in my sketch book, this place and play technique is great for table top gaming, that's generally played by adults strategically placing pieces to move the narrative along, but in kids play, the place and play technique wont work, kids play is far less strategic, more energetic and the place and play technique works for those coloured blocks for kids, but the sole purpose of those blocks is the building element, one a structure is built, the play stops, unless you counts the knocking down of the structure, which is definitely part of the play, but in our case we want a castle that can be played in, so some sort of fixing is needed. I thought about magnets, but the issue with magnets, as I late found was that they can only allow the structure to be places in one way, the way the positive and negative line up, any other way to how the design intends, is just not possible with magnets.

So, this next realisation was difficult to get over.

THIS IS HARD!

My daughter wants a toy castle, I want to make her a castle that can aid in her creative development - am I being selfish by not building her the castle she wants, or buying her the castle she's seen in the shop? Remember when you woke up on Christmas day and found that you hadn't gotten what you asked for specifically on your list. Now, obviously there's loads of moral, and philosophical questions at play surrounding this, like learning that you don't always get what you want, and Christmas isn't all about the presents etc.. I'm an extreme optimist at times, but can also be a realist, in the sense that, as much as I'd love to change the world, I can also accept the way things are, and with this situation, my daughter who's four years old has seen a bright pink toy castle in a shop and has captured her imagination so much that she's remembered about it until she's got home and has put it on her Christmas list, and without a seconds thought, I've got my pencil out and said, "nope, that's no good, I'm gonna make a better one."

I think my intentions are good at their core, wanting to inspire creativity, make a castle that she'll use more than a couple of times, one that isn't just pink, confining to social standards of boys toys and girl toys, decided on by the colour of the toy and whether an action figure has a gun or not.

I really do believe that there is a fundamental issue with toys, there's too much giving, and not enough inspiring of imagination. I created a bootleg toy based on the toys I'd found whilst shopping in the toy isle with my daughter a few years ago, there's a distinction between boys toys and girls toys, and it's ridiculous, I wont get into it here, but it needs to change.

But as deep as my personal beliefs might go, I don't think that it should be my daughter that looses out in this instance. Maybe she would love the castle I build her, maybe it would have all the desired effects I want it to have. But it's not the toy she had a connection with in the shop that inspired her imagination.

This could inspire a whole other spout of research and thinking, "good toys make good people" -Cas Holman, it's true, but where does it stop, if parents had infinite time on their hands, if they didn't have to work full time, if they had time to learn the skills, I'm sure we'd all create the toys our kids want, and put a lot of thought into them. But we don't have time, so we rely on toy designers to create the toys that will inspire our kids. The problem is that people don't understand the power of good toys and what they can teach our kids, money becomes the deciding factor in how toys are designed and made, resulting in the thought less, flimsy plastic cast blue and pink toys we have today.

This has been an experiment in trying to think differently through design. Working through something to an end result, pushing to make a decent result.

I may be thinking about it too much, in terms of the castle being a castle, and not being a castle. The starting point with this project was to make a castle, and I feel I'm thinking more in ways of making a toy that provides the most creative results, and I'm not sure this is the right project for that. So I have the choice now of creating a toy that pushes creative thinking, or I can carry on with the castle project, and make the toy as creative as it can be, but in the form of a castle.

I think the challenge of making a new kind of castle play set is what's interesting here..