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’s work explores methods of playful experience design and environmental advocacy for issues such as predation, ecosystem collapse, and conservation through the use of character design as a communication tool. Her doctoral research – The Underfoot: An exploration into eco-fiction character toy design (2024)- explores how to design character toys for outdoor nature play.

Tanya is a Senior Lecturer at Massey University, College of Creative Arts, and is the program lead for the Bachelor of Concept Design  honours degree. Tanya was the former program lead for the Wētā Workshop school at Massey (2018-2024 ) and led the development of the new Concept Design program from 2019.

Tanya is an internationally recognised character designer, and the past president of the International Consortia, the National Institute of American Doll Artists (2013-2017), and an alumna of the Pictoplasma Academy (2014). With qualifications in Industrial, Illustration, experience and toy design, Tanya has contributed design expertise to the toy industry in the UK, and the film industry in New Zealand and internationally through work with Wētā Workshop, Aardman Animation, The World of Wearable Art and Seven Towns.

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