Bug Adventure in the Backyard

Kids love to camp in their backyards. It's safe, fun and still within the comfort of their own home. I wanted to create an adorable, bug themed, backyard camping set that could be appealing to a wide range of children.

Autodesk Fusion 360

polyhaven.com - For high definition environments and lighting for renders

When I researched backyard camping gear for kids, not too many jumped out at as being particularly interesting. Many of the designs were just regular camping gear in smaller sizes. Nothing seemed particularly marketed towards a child and their interests.

I pulled inspiration from an artist that my wife and I both love named Lianne Pflug (@loonpflug). She creates art based off of natural subjects such as mushrooms and bugs. Seeing her artwork with little sprites living in the mushrooms gave us the idea to create a set of camping gear based off of nature.

My wife sketched up some rough concepts for a tent, lantern, sleeping bag, stools, s'more pokers, and a bag to hold everything together. I ended up making everything in the sketch except for the duffel bag. A design for another time!

I created each individual part and model separately utilizing mostly the "Create Form" tool for the natural inflatable look of some of the products. I made them actual life size within workspace so it was easier to scale and compare them.

After everything was created and ready for renders, I applied colors and textures to the parts and placed them in one environment. I added an emissive texture to the light bulb in the firefly lantern so it could act as the light source inside of the tent. I also used HDRIs from Polyhaven.com to add realistic backgrounds and lighting.

I thought it would be a cute idea to have the bugs on the s'mores pokers be removable so that could act as decorations as well as toys for kids to play with. Perhaps each set could come with a few different bugs so they could decide which friend they wanted to roast marshmallows with.

This was a really fun project to work on! My wife was really supportive throughout and she gave really helpful tips on how it should look and what kids would like.