PROJECT TOY: Wonky music for wonky people.

I love making music. Love it. Loooooove it. I'm no good at it, but I love it regardless. There's just something so satisfying about the creative process of making a beat. It's very different to my normal process - with music, I just begin with no plan or direction. I choose a piece of hardware and start pushing buttons and twiddlin' knobs. Over time my collection of hardware has grew but my skill level has evolved not quite as fast, and I'm OK with that. I hear something I like then I hone in on that, developing it further. It's a really freeing way to work, it feels more explorative than curated, and that's a huge part of the charm.

I put my music out under the alias of 'Project Toy' because [a] I love an alter-ego (I was raised on MF Doom, Aesop Rock, 2advanced etc) and [2] it means I can create a totally separate visual brand for that kind of work. The name has a couple of meanings; 'Project' because it's, well, a passion project and the 'Toy' part comes from the fact that in the graffiti world, the term 'Toy' is an insult levelled at novices who get ideas above their station. It felt totally fitting.

Creating the 'brand' for this outlet is as much fun as making the music itself, but I set myself a 'framework' to work within. The logo is made up of basic shapes, reminiscent of a kids building blocks, but the rest of the 'identity' is made up of circle, capsule and triangle, just simple shapes. My rule is that when making accompanying music visualisers, I only use those three shapes. It means that it keeps things achievable and I always have a starting place. With it being a passion project with slithers of time I can commit to it, it makes me feel empowered to just get cracking with the framework I have rather than fret about where to begin!

The graphic design of the song artwork is directly inspired by 90's video game packaging from Sega, SNK and Neo•Geo. The age of information overload, with ALL the information on the front cover, from copyright to specifications. The SNK and Neo•Geo covers in particular always had an air of mystery about them with the Japanese text on the front, and I've directly ripped that off wholesale!

When it comes to the artwork itself for each 'release' (and I use that in commas because it sounds more grand than it is - it's just me uploading to Soundcloud!) I limit myself to the three shapes but then I like mucking about with any technique that takes my fancy at the time! Sometimes CG, sometimes vector, sometimes hand-crafted - whatever is tickling my fancies at the time I tend to lean on that, and that makes me very happy indeed.

The same goes for the animated visualisers that accompany the music, these are often techniques that I've wanted to try out, so I use the music videos as an excuse to follow a technique and go from there! it's a win-win for getting something out there and also learning something new. The visualisers started out in After Effects as that was all I knew...

But then as I got more comfortable I started trying things out using Cinema4D...

Until finally, in the last few years, I've really settled on Blender as my 3D weapon of choice. It's so powerful, it's so FREE and it now runs like a dream on Mac silicone chip laptops. There's endless resources out there to learn Blender, and with their updates coming thick and fast, there's always new things to try. This is the latest release from 2024, with a Blender-made visualiser to match:

Well there you have it, a little bit of backstory on what 'Project Toy' is and why it makes me so happy. If you're a wonky person and you'd like to hear wonky music, then you can find all my Project Toy videos above on my YouTube but also on my Soundcloud account where every track is Creative Commons so you can use it in any of your videos, parties, funerals and bar mitzvah's. Knock yourselves out!

Thanks so much for listening,

- Gav.