Cry Babies Magic Tears S4 Storyland (concept art & production desing)
In this season, the Cry Babies travel to Storyland, a whimsical world where classic fairy tale characters live. I was deeply involved in shaping the overall design of this new universe, and one of the most rewarding tasks was creating the characters’ houses—both interiors and exteriors. I conceptualized their furniture, patterns, and textures, infusing each space with charm and personality.
A key challenge was designing a single base structure for all the houses. Unlike previous seasons, we didn’t have toy packaging designs to reference, and all the houses had to be shown both inside and out. To keep production efficient while giving each home a unique identity, I proposed customizing them through color palettes, unique textures, and subtle garden variations that wouldn't compromise production flow.
Another highlight was designing the Story Square, the heart of the season, where The Book of Tales and lectern—our main prop—stand. This book acts as the portal between the Cry Babies' world and the Storyland world.
As in previous seasons, I also served as production designer, reviewing modeling and texturing to ensure consistency between the toys and their animated counterparts—always with enhanced detail and expressiveness on screen.
Storyland is the world in which Cry Babies of classic tales live. This world exists at the top of a large tower that reaches the clouds in which there are houses, forests and a square by which this new world is accessed.
Although it seems a simple challenge, the toy capsules already had many brand colors, so I had to give other proposals that followed the brand of the brand, but that differentiated from the rest
Beautiful final frame of the Storyland world provided by Hampa Animation Studio. Finally much bigger than the original concept since we needed to have.
One of the initial concepts for the Storyland world square where we were looking for visual development, it was fun to make some traditional pencil sketches.
Some animated series frames.
I had the pleasure of designing this important prop in the Storylan world, The Book of Tales.
Render of The Book of Tales provided by Hampa Animation Studio.
Some animated series frames.
Unlike the rest of the Magic Babies Magic Tears, the houses in the world of Storyland had to create before the packaging existed. I decided to draw the lost house of the forest with a roof that represents an open book.
This is another idea to decide the direction of the house, in this case I was inspired by the classic castles of the fantasy tales, causing the houses to be small castles.
Finally, a mixture between the tiny house of the forest and the castle was chosen. So that the castle's forms would not stumble with those of the house, I chose to simply add a tower that gave it the "castle touch". This is Scarlet's house.
This is how Storyland's signals work
I made a lot of proposals!
Final Storyland signals
Some animated series frames.
The characters of the characters had two production requirements: both the exterior and the interior had to be the same in form for all the snakes, but they all had to represent the character that lived in each house. These are the base designs.
Corners inside all houses
Corners inside all houses
Corners inside all houses
How to customize houses that are the same? Through colors, textures and patterns. These are the personalized color concepts for Scarlet's house. It was easy to create a moodboard for this main character.
Although I designed the patterns and colors of all Storyland's houses, I want to focus on Scarlet, since he is the main character this season.
Fun with patterns
The roads of all the houses that combine in the central square of Storyland are also personalized. I wanted the road stones to remember a lot of candies.
Some animated series frames.