Dr Tanya Marriott is a character designer who works in various media, including interactive storytelling, playful interaction and character-centric communication. Her practice-led research seeks to build meaningful experiences and storytelling opportunities between digital and tangible activities and objects. Tanya has led pedagogical development, which explores methods of playful experience design for social change and the character as a communication tool. Tanya is an internationally recognised character designer, and the past president of international consortia, the National Institute of American Doll Artists, and an alumna of the Pictoplasma Academy. Tanya has contributed design expertise to the toy industry in the UK, and the film industry in New Zealand and internationally. Tanya is a senior lecturer at Massey University, College of Creative Arts, and is the Bachelor of Concept Design program lead. Her doctoral research – The Underfoot: An exploration into eco-fiction character toy design- explores how to design character toys for outdoor nature play.

Garry explores the representation of religious iconography through artifact and painting. His own imagined creatures are used to invoke meaningful questions surrounding how doctrine can be established through the presentation of objects and images held in veneration.
A pop-surrealist artist who works in a variety of median including illustration, sculpture and film, Garry’s most recent work reflects his curiosity of the restrictive working practices of miniature model making, drawing satisfaction from detail, order and symmetry. This is a practice he has refined within his professional careers in both the toy industry in London, and as a concept designer in the New Zealand film industry, working notably on the Hobbit trilogy and Avatar. His enthusiasm for character centric design forms the foundation of all of his creative works.