Koomba is a dashing dinosaur made out of .5" Baltic Birch Ply with vibrant colored edges intended for kids 3 and up.
Harry is a merry mammoth made of upholstered .5" thick plywood with leather accents intended for kids 2 and up.
The project started with a 4 hour prototype in order to help determine the proportions of a ride-on toy, and discover the different ways children would engage with a toy.
After the initial play test I wanted to explore the dinosaur form more and how one could incorporate some sort of moving interaction as well through the twisting of the handles. By applying this idea to other creatures I eventually landed on the idea of a wooly mammoth as well.
After creating a half scale model that illustrated what I wanted to do with both the dinosaur and the mammoth I created a full scale mammoth to test out proportions and ergonomics.
Not certain on the form of the dinosaur I decided to do some research. By surveying both parents and children on which silhouette they preferred, 2 obvious favorites became evident. Taking this info and combining the two, I was able to develop a full scale cardboard model of Koomba to help illustrate the idea.
After deciding on a final form for both the mammoth and the dinosaur I began creating Koomba and Harry. Making harry by hand I had to stretch the leather seat and upholster the entire body padding the top of the head where I noticed kids would rest their face on. For Koomba I wanted to test efficiency by modeling it in Solidworks and then organizing the individual pieces so it could be CNC'ed out of a singular piece of 5'x 5' ply.
Trunk in action!
Chomping away
Dino evolution!
The herd
Field research on ride-on toys proved to be more fun than originally anticipated.
Thanks for checking it out!
