11.14.2014

Vendredi (Friday)...

i sit, clutching a large cup of coffee, somewhere in the wee hours of the morning.  this post will be just one of the many that i have written in recent months.  hopefully this one will survive the over-thinking process that usually ends in deletion.... hopefully.

there has been a flurry of more-of-the-same around these parts, which i have come to accept as something bordering on stability and, even, sanity in this cluttered corner of the universe. i'm doing a whole lot of procrastination, which is remarkable because it means that there is work to be done.  and i've been making all sorts of silly things, so i'm going to attempt another post-a-day week, so (naturally) i will begin at the near-end of the week.

my favorite animator came up with the absurd idea that we i should turn a drawing done by one of his nephews into a stuffed toy. here's the drawing...



and here's the stuffed toy..



i started by making an enlarged copy of the main figure, and mapping out the individual pieces...

*that shadow is a cat who kindly offered to supervise the documentation process.  


then i purchased some fabric (blue plush for the body, and two shades of green felt for the arms and trim).  the remaining materials were scavenged from the steamer trunk of puppet-making supplies (wish i was kidding, but as the apartment features a working animation studio, such crazy things do in fact exist in our home).



about halfway through the creation process, we took a short (in both distance and duration) trip to Ottawa for the express purpose of pitching project ideas at the Television Animation Conference, which is part of the annual Ottawa International Animation Festival.  to be more specific, he pitched ideas, and i laid tucked up in the hotel fighting off a truly magical head cold (great way to get Autumn off to a start).  in the past, whenever i dragged him to Neuroscience conferences, we always managed to squeeze in a bit of fun between the professional obligations.  this time around, my experience was pretty much summed up in this view by day...



and by night...

*the New Yorker in me marvels at the notion of a major street (in a capital city, no less) being this empty, even in the middle of the night. 


i would love to say that i returned home and immediately turned my attention back to my little project, but i pretty much left the pieces half-done, sitting in a bag (on the couch... under a cushion... under a pile of yarn) for the next few weeks... until i was given less than one week to get it ready for delivery to the young artist. it's amazing how much inspiration one gains from a looming deadline.

at this point, it should be noted that every single stitch of this project was sewn by hand, as i wanted the outline to maintain the same hand-drawn quality of the crayon lines.  my favorite details were the hands...



especially this hand...



and the eyes...



especially this eye...



i had to take a bit of artistic license with the legs, opting for a darker shade of brown corduroy fabric from the stash, but the deadline was met and delivery was made a few days shy of the young artist's birthday.



and here he is, next to my hand for scale. ain't he a sweetheart?

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