Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2006 1:21 am Post subject: Panda plush update.
Many of you have asked what the current situation is with the plush panda.
It's not completely done, though I'm pretty much done with my part in it. I've done what I can, and the rest will shortly be in the hands of toy designers half a world away. Nothing of what you're going to see here is completely final, the factory still has to work on what I hope will be the last prototype for this. It's been a long six month wait to get to this point, and I'm going to try to bring you up to speed.
So, to begin...
Back in July, at the San Diego Comicon, we brought along a stuffed panda to liven up the table. Having also brought my official "Girl Genius" lab goggles, we decided to combine the two and lo, a crowd pleaser was born. Seriously, we had a full color 10' X 8' tryptic background consisting of something along the lines of 40 different overlapping pieces, that had taken 6 months to build, and a 10 dollar stuffed toy was more of a draw. "sigh"
After an awful lot of offers to buy the thing, we realized that we should probably look into having more of them next time. It didn't take long to realize that buying them, even in bulk, and adding goggles for effect, would not be returning much if any cash for the effort. So we looked into the professional world of stuffed animal making.
The company we chose to use has produced a number of toys which we had seen before, and at least one for another webcomic. The part that we really liked was their ability to nail the look of the original art when converting it into a stuffed form. So we sent them a pic of the bear from San Diego, and told them what we were looking for. They responded with a respectable quote and a request for a sketch of exactly what we wanted. This is where we got our first lesson in prototype communication.
This is one of the sketches we sent them.
A month or so later, this is what we got back.
Let me be perfectly clear, I never thought they would get it on the first try. I didn't. I hoped that maybe it would come back needing only some small modifications, thus enabling us to have a batch by christmas, but I knew from the beginning that it was a long shot. It had never entered my mind that the factory would splice the concept sketch and the photo of the convention panda together. Chalk one up to trans-atlantic miscommunication.
Live and learn.
So we tried it again, sending them more sketches and notes than I like to remember putting together.
Another month later they delivered something a bit closer to what we were looking for.
Closer, but still not quite it. So I decided that rather than keep going along these lines, I would try to make one myself. I always like to try new mediums, and I've dabbled in needlework here and there throughout the years.
How hard could it be?
My first attempt was obviously not meant to be anything final. Rather than waste the tiny amount of black fabric I'd managed to acquire on something I knew whould need major reworking, I used some of the more plentiful brown. The pink in the ears and face was due to my using a red marker to mark the patterns on the fabric. For obvious reasons, I soon switched to the faster drying black.
Work in progress...
And the finished work.
It's not the final prototype, I need to make that clear. This is more a guide for the real plush designers to follow when they put the final one together. I've tried to make it as close to what I'm looking for as I can, but there are a lot of things which they can do far better than I can, and so I haven't worried too much over the stuff they got right. The ears are too small, easily fixed in the next version. The eyes are really rough, but I don't have a machine for the kind of stiching they need to be. Same goes for the pads on the feet of both previous prototypes. They got those perfect, so I didn't waste my time replicating them. The goggles will have similar stitching on them, replacing the green felt. Various parts of the anatomy are just plain clumsy. What can I say, I'm new at this. But I'm confident they'll fix my sketchy designs where needed.
I have to say, the one thing I was most worried about was the eyes. We really didn't know how to do them, as you apparently can't just buy round lime green eyes. I've tried. But I found this lime green reflective satin thread that is just amazing. Trust me when I say, pictures don't do it justice. They look fantastic.
Alright, we've still got one last prototype to commission. I'll show you when it comes in...
I know what I say doesn’t have much pull, but I’m going to put it out there anyways. The plush looks like its coming along nicely. I just thought I would put my two cent in about the goggles. I pretty sure your trying to get as close to the look of your sketches as possible and I don’t think using cloth is going to do it.
I used to work in this plastics laboratory. They had this plastic stuff, it felt a lot like foam that they would just inject into molds that looked a lot like small goggles. They were soft but still rigid enough hold their form. Injection molding is pretty easy to do, and you can color the foam what ever color you like. I just thought I would let you know. Good luck with it all and keep up the great work.
Looks like the panda has gone a loong way to get to this stage, and its looking quite darn good. Though if you don't mind me putting in some opinions:
-The stomache of the panda doesnt seem filled enough, the sketch's one seem a bit rounder than the final set of photos there
-The ears could de with a bit of shape re-doing, the sketch had more of a polygonial (is there scuh word) shape rather than just a round one.
-Black patch surrounding the eyes makes the panda give the emotion of 'sad' which I'm sure was not intended.
I know this is just a prototype, and yours or other people's opinions may be different to mine, but it's just an input and expressing an opinion. _________________ Will I become smaller, more efficient... infused with atomic energy if I went to Japan?
What ever happened to the plushes? (Please forgive my ignorance) _________________ "Althalus was a thief after all and he devoutly believed that actually working for a living was immoral"
Any chance one could be emailed a pattern for the plushie? I have the skills to assemble just need the pattern..... I am willing to pay! _________________ "Althalus was a thief after all and he devoutly believed that actually working for a living was immoral"
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