Client:
ELMER'S
Year:
2022
Role:
Industrial Design
Mix it. Pour it. Play it. Squish it.
During my time at IN2, I was responsible for the tactical design execution of Elmer’s Squishies, a line of collectible DIY toys for kids. The project involved transforming a set of initial concepts into a market-ready product—ensuring that the playful, tactile experience was not only enjoyable but also manufacturable, durable, and safe. My role focused on refining the design and ensuring seamless integration from concept to production.
The heart of Elmer’s Squishies lies in its hands-on, DIY nature. Each kit includes a formula that kids mix, pour into a "Mystery Mold," and leave to set. After an hour, they pop out their self-molded squishy character—a moment of discovery that celebrates their creativity.
From Sketch to Sculpt
The project began with 2D character sketches, each full of personality and potential. These drawings had a lot of charm: big eyes, wacky limbs, off-balance expressions. But none of them were even close to being manufacturable. They lacked volume, symmetry, and structure. Our job was to bring dimensional clarity to the chaos—without sanding down the fun. The challenge was to bring these sketches to life in 3D, translating their charm into forms that could be easily molded and consistently reproduced.
This transformation required a balance between precision and flexibility, as each character had complex, organic shapes and subtle details. After testing several methods, the team defined a workflow using Rhinoceros 3D, Blender, and SolidWorks with the Power Surfacing plug-in.
Here’s how we built it:
Sketch Translation (Rhino SubD): We took each 2D concept and created a SubD base mesh in Rhino. This was where proportions, gesture, and basic massing got locked in.
High-Fidelity Sculpt (Blender): With a clean mesh in place, we transitioned to Blender for expressive sculpting—dialing in wrinkles, mouths, texture seams, and playful silhouette details.
Physical Validation (3D Printing): Before locking anything down, we printed physical tests to understand surface behavior, handling, and ejection performance. These tests were invaluable—what looked clean on-screen often told a different story in hand.
Surface Conversion (SolidWorks + PowerSurfacing): When sculpts were approved, we used PowerSurfacing to convert polygonal meshes into NURBS surfaces inside SolidWorks. This let us retain the sculpted detail while gaining access to proper CAD tools for parting lines, draft, and wall thickness to construct the molds.
Manufacturing Detail (SolidWorks Assemblies): Finally, we built parametric assemblies for each character mold, ensuring uniform shell logic, consistent volume constraints, and draft-safe details across all eighty SKUs.
Non-Traditional Workflow, Real-Time Feedback
Rhino subdivision modeling was utilized to quickly create rough volumetric masses with clean topology that reflected the overall silhouette of each design.
From there, the polygonal model transitioned into Blender, where the sculpting capabilities of the software were used to refine the initial silhouette form and imbue each model with the characters' individual sense of personality.
With the initial sculpt complete, we needed to assess how the forms and details held up physically. Sketches can sometimes mislead, so compromises were necessary during sculpting to preserve the design’s intent. At each phase, STL files were sent to the Elmer's team for 3D printing. Using FDM printing provided a realistic preview, as its inherent loss of detail relative to a digital model mirrors what kids might experience when making their own Squishies at home.
Outside-The-Box
To streamline sculpting for manufacturability, we built a custom material shader in Blender that displayed real-time draft information directly on the sculpt. As we pushed and pulled character features—stretching limbs, rounding cheeks, exaggerating silhouettes—the shader instantly visualized how those edits would impact mold release. Areas with insufficient draft were called out live, allowing us to adjust on the fly rather than catching issues downstream in CAD.
This live feedback loop let us resolve parting line strategy and moldability during the creative phase, not the engineering one. Instead of sculpting freely and hoping the character could be manufactured, we designed with the mold in mind from the start. Blender’s volume calculation tools also came into play, helping us keep each character within material limits and cure constraints tied to Elmer’s proprietary squishy compound.
By visualizing these draft angles in real-time - and utilizing Blender's tools to calculate volume for the molding process, we were able to bypass any back-and-forth in parametric engineering analysis, refining character features directly in a decidedly non-technical software—Blender—for efficient, mold-ready designs. We weren’t just sculpting what looked good—we were sculpting what worked. The result: characters that felt expressive and weird in all the right ways, but still popped cleanly out of their molds with minimal flash and no tooling surprises.
Streamlining the Production Pipeline
With eighty unique characters in the product line, efficiency was key. By standardizing workflows and leveraging advanced CAD tools, I helped ensure each design transitioned smoothly into production.
We handled engineering for each form in a controlled parametric environment, with consistent wall thickness and volume metrics across the library. Draft angles were checked repeatedly with visual analysis tools. Parting lines were nudged to follow natural form breaks, minimizing the visual footprint. We also embedded alignment and fit features directly into the SolidWorks assemblies to ensure smooth mold use during actual play.
Behind the scenes, we created a highly organized project management system. File structures were aligned to each phase of the workflow, sculpt reviews were tracked with issue logs and screenshots, and a central assignment chart kept the team aligned—especially helpful when sculpt and CAD tasks began overlapping.
The final product successfully delivered a tactile, creative play experience for kids while reinforcing Elmer’s position as a leader in crafting. Each kit invites children to explore their creativity, culminating in a unique squishy character they can collect or share. The addition of the online Squistopia platform expanded the product’s appeal with digital storytelling and gamification.
Elmer’s Squishies delivers a memorable, hands-on crafting experience for families.
This project highlights the power of thoughtful design to merge creativity, functionality, and storytelling. By balancing playful character aesthetics with precise technical requirements.
For Kids: The product encourages creativity, self-expression, and sensory play, turning the act of making into a moment of magic.
For Elmer’s: Squishies expands the brand’s reach by bridging physical and digital storytelling. The collectible characters are complemented by the online Squistopia platform, where kids can engage further with their creations.
Squishies launched with strong results, according to Newell’s Q4 2022 earnings report, and soon became Elmer’s top-selling activity product.