
Give this company a child's drawing and they'll make it into a stuffed toy - latch
http://www.childsown.com/
======
plainOldText
This is a cute idea. I'm wondering if they make any money since on their
website it says: "Child's Own Studio has custom made over 200 personal
softies". I'm thinking whether a redesign of their website and a more
aggressive Facebook campaign (they only have 1000+ fans) would help them sell
more. It probably would. No. It definitely would. They could also have a
checkbox on the order form to allow other people to order their drawn
creatures. And then have a top 10 on the front page with the most popular
toys. They could even have a competition: which kid designs the cutest animal.
Oh, I could make this a phenomenon.

Boy, I can't believe I'm thinking about strategies of how I would improve a
toys' business. Eh, just 2AM rant.

~~~
Murkin
Very cute idea, but at 100$ a toy (thats what the giftcard is worth), this is
not for the mass market.

Tho if you are willing to take it down a notch (or two) on quality, china can
probably produce them at >10$

~~~
rprime
From what I understood from the other comments (site is not working),
everything is custom made, unique and handled by one single person, that
explains the price, and honestly, it seems okay.

If you outsource to China, you take all those Pros away and the product will
turn into another toy factory.

~~~
eru
100 USD is actually pretty cheap for a custom made toy.

~~~
noduerme
Agreed. It's dirt cheap. I know dozens of parents who would pay five times
that.

~~~
eru
And you should probably charge that, add a few free toys for poor kids, and
come out ahead in terms of money and morals.

------
BlazingFrog
HN killed her business (if only temporarily):

 _Bandwidth Limit Exceeded_

 _The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site
owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later._

~~~
rhplus
The blog is still up, and has some great stories:

<http://childsownstudio.blogspot.com/>

------
ck2
It's a fantastic idea - but I would point out what a child sees in their head
vs their drawing capabilities are probably very different. Still, I guess they
could recognize it as something they created and it might encourage them to
keep being creative?

~~~
mbreese
Well, if they draw something and declare "That's my friend Foo!". If you show
up with a stuffed version of their drawing, they are likely to recognize that
as "Foo". Kids have a way of not letting their lack of drawing skill or
details get in the way of a good story.

Plus, I doubt they could turn a 3 year old's drawings into something. My kid's
drawings aren't that recognizable yet... (just lines and squiggles)

~~~
Splines
Sometimes they can surprise you: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3109213/sfb.jpg>

My daughter was almost 3 when she drew this. Most of her stuff doesn't come
out like this, but I saved this one since it was weirdly real.

~~~
kaybe
Wow, not bad! And I can imagine that being a great plushie..

------
latch
My question would be: assuming you want to, how do you scale it? There's such
an individual toy-by-toy creative aspect to it.

Also, the potential for building brands seems pretty spectacular. Stuffed toy
is just one step, you could add stories, games, episodes...this could be to
disney what 99designs is to graphic designers :)

~~~
tintin
Maybe this should and will not scale well. Most of the time the work of an
artist does not scale well.

~~~
_zeos_
;) yes, you are right, and It hurts, Internet can scale it, in some cases, if
not - then can be spread, modified and parallelized (or even better, if it is
copy-left...)

------
demoo
Heartwarming :)

Reminds me of My Machine, an organization that takes children drawings of
machines and make them come to live.

<http://mymachine.be/en/node/20>

~~~
kori
Monster engine is of a similar vein, but they take kids' monster drawings
instead: <http://themonsterengine.com/>

------
ndespres
Brings to mind this classic 60's Mad Magazine article "If kids designed their
own Xmas toys." [http://thatsmyskull.blogspot.com/2005/12/mad-magazine-if-
kid...](http://thatsmyskull.blogspot.com/2005/12/mad-magazine-if-kids-
designed-their.html)

This is great!

------
topbanana
Q. Do you take adult’s drawings?

R. I personally prefer to work with children’s drawings, but occasionally, I
have worked with the adult’s (inner child’s) drawings. The best thing to do is
contact me with the drawing and I will let you know what I think.

------
zem
as an interesting tangent, the [hopkin green
frog](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopkin_Green_Frog>) thing that went viral
some years ago, and which people assumed was a kid's typically clumsy attempt
to draw his pet frog, turned out to be a pretty accurate drawing of his
missing toy frog.

------
hopeless
It's cute and it's cool but I'm not convinced.

My daughter's drawings things are her interpretation of real things but I'm
not convinced she'd want a real interpretation of her artistic interpretation
of a real thing. After all, her drawings are often down to her limited skills
rather than an intentional artistic choice.

~~~
kellishaver
I saw a similar site a while back that took a slightly different approach to
making real-world items from kids drawings that probably works better in this
regard - they turned them into jewelry for moms in the form of necklaces and
pendants.

I don't think the site is around anymore, though. I believe it was just one
person making them.

------
dools
This is positively magical. I can't wait til my child is old enough to draw
something coherent enough :)

Absolutely brilliant.

------
joshes
This may be a tad tangential, but this reminds me a great deal (in terms of
the higher level concept) of Imaginawesome: <http://imaginawesome.com/>

tl;dr: give this guy a child's drawing, and he sprinkles "awesome dust" on it.

~~~
kaybe
Similar concept with photos:

[http://www.yeondoojung.com/artworks_view_wonderland.php?no=8...](http://www.yeondoojung.com/artworks_view_wonderland.php?no=88)

------
dmg8
Cute. The site's down for me, but I found their flickr stream here, plenty
more creatures:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/childsown/3465520257/in/photost...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/childsown/3465520257/in/photostream/)

The before and afters are great. I love the ones that were a scribbly mess in
the drawing and end up looking nice but still reminscient of what the kid
sketched.

------
jberryman
This reminds me of something the artisans working at the Museum of Glass in
Tacoma did.

<http://www.museumofglass.org/>

They got school kids to send in drawings of creatures and then these guys
actually rendered them in colored glass in front of the kids. They had the
pieces and the kids' drawings on display. Very cute and often hilarious.

~~~
gwern
At the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate NY too. (They picked one a day drawn
by visitors; my family didn't win, unfortunately.)

------
cookiecaper
This is an awesome idea. I'm considering stealing it, I think my wife would
really enjoy doing something like this.

~~~
watmough
For something this lovely, you wouldn't really be stealing, just helping.

------
josscrowcroft
Hahah, this made my day.

I have some great ideas for toys I want to make, gonna give them a try!

------
rickdale
Anyone know of something similar but with a pull string capability?

~~~
user24
contact the person who runs the site, I'm sure they'll do their best. From
what I've read here, it's just one person doing this because they enjoy doing
it. You tend to get excellent customer service from those types of ventures.

------
kgen
Neat! Not only is it a good idea, from the blog posted in other replies, the
execution was impressive as well.

------
adlep
Awesome idea, now she will have enough orders to last a hundred years.

------
gougify
That is a great idea

------
tonetheman
effin amazing and great idea. not sure if they can scale it but god that is
brilliant

------
tamle
this.is.awesome.

------
mikeburrelljr
Love it!

------
noduerme
Her work's amazing. She's taking the intent and smoothing out the rough edges,
filling in the undefined aspects. I've worked with a few really _great_
illustrators and designers as either a designer or an art director. I can't
name more than three in the last ten years, and all have been women. She has
the rare quality they have of being able inernalize an original vision that's
not their own, immediately and viscerally grasp the ineffable qualities that
give it its unique personality, and turn it into a final product that looks
polished while communicating exactly what the original artist intended. And
reading her blog, it's obvious how she does it. She TALKS to the people who
she's doing the work for. So how exactly would this scale without losing
quality? Clone her? This takes patience, communications, personal integrity
and a huge amount of skill and vision. I think it's the most impressive piece
of work I've seen on HN this year. There's no reason at all to look at it
through the narrow filter of what you'd do if it were an IT startup. It's just
awesome for what it is.

~~~
lftl
_She TALKS to the people who she's doing the work for. So how exactly would
this scale without losing quality?_

I'm in no way saying she would want to do any of this, and I'm not talking
about scaling to mass production or anything, but I imagine she could easily
offload some of the more common tasks.

Particularly, you've completely nailed that her rare skill is in the
translation and design. However, as long as she's capable of reliably
communicating her vision and design to a decent seamstress she could easily
offload the actual creation to others. She could focus on meeting with
clients, translating their design and communicating to the people who will
actually put it together.

If she wanted to go in a little further, she could work on apprenticing a few
designers as well. She could still sit in on most or all meetings with
clients, communicate broad ideas to the designer, check their design before it
gets sent to production, etc.

Basically I think her company could scale just as well as any decent IT
consulting firm (or really more appropriately any advertising agency) might.

------
sabat
I love the idea -- I wish I could see it! My almost-6-year-old would love to
have his drawing turn into a real stuffed animal.

Bandwidth exceeded. Le sigh.

