From That to This: The Evolution of a Submarine

Hey everyone! Today is the first day after a holiday weekend (the 4th of July) and I have to switch gears and get myself back in "work" mode. So, I decided to share with you the journey of a pattern design I am putting out in August. I was originally going to wait until September, but my testers are just zooming through so I'll be able to release it sooner. 

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Around 2015 I was into designing toy bags a lot more than I have been in recent years. It all came to sort of a screeching halt when I created two bags that I just couldn't get right. The Prairie Bag and a submarine bag that I never published. I finally revamped the Prairie bag and released in 2017, but the submarine bag kept moving with me from house to house never being completed. 

The main reason it never got completed was because I had made a stack on the top of the sub that had plastic canvas around it to hold it upright causing a myriad of issues. haha! It was too small for hands to reach into the bag and get the characters out of it and it was a scratch hazard for little ones. In the picture below you can see how tiny the top was. 

So, I took the scissors to it and cut the stack off the top. It definitely opened up nicely, but I still decided I needed to remake it so that I could figure out a different top. This is what I came up with...

The stack definitely looked more "submarine" to me after I was done, and hands could reach in and out of the bag- so I was successful, right? Not really. I wasn't happy with it and I couldn't put my finger on it. But, I moved on to the animals because I couldn't place my unhappiness with the pattern up to this point and this is where everything went completely wrong for me. 

I started with the squid. I wanted it to look like the squid from Surfs Up because it's a hilarious character- and I didn't want to make the characters too elaborate and difficult to make. That sucks the fun out of everything. 

Lani from Surf's Up. She's a lifeguard and the squid is her safety rescue tube. The squid has expressions throughout the whole thing- he talks with his eyes. It's hilarious and one of my favorite animated movies. If you've never seen it- you need to and you can get a copy here!

By the time I got him done I knew the aesthetic was completely wrong for the grey sub. This guy was cute and the grey sub was really dark and sort of gothy looking. But, I thought...let me try another animal and see if I feel any differently, so I moved on to the octopus. But, that just sealed the deal for me. These guys were too cute for the grey sub.  

Since everyone was too cute for the current sub, I decided that I wanted to put them in something more cartoony and a yellow submarine seemed like the perfect answer. I based my design off of this picture. 

I tried to keep it true to form as much as possible. With this being a bag, I needed one of the windows to serve as a door. In order to get one big enough to use as a door- I had to cut the windows down to just one per side. I also left the rivets off of the seams. I'm sure if someone added some in it would just complete the look, but it was too fiddly for me. I decided simple was better.

I was very happy with how it came out. After I got my sub squared away I was able to come up with the remaining characters much easier. I opted to go with a sea turtle and a stingray. I'm really happy with the whole gang, and I hope you guys love it as much as I do. 

Like I said at the beginning, my testers are hard at work cleaning up all the little details in the pattern and it should be ready to put out in August. 

See you soon!!