A lil iffi Beginning
lil iff started her 2D existence on a piece of notebook paper. I set out to create a look that was more today not a formulated character. I emulated the fashion sense of my daughter in law, Nifer (an original character herself). The drawing languished in the back of my sketchbook for a year or more before I determined to make my drawing into a doll. Certainly my sister Susan (Trentel) is THE primo doll and soft toy artist but I felt with a little perseverance I could accomplish the feat. I gave myself space and time to do it.
I started from the feet and worked up. Made sense to me. More than just sewing the doll it became an engineering problem. To create an original piece I eschewed buying a pattern but instead used paper to form the shapes creating a pattern on the fly. So what went into her composition, snips and snails and puppy dog tails? Well, almost. Materials included cardboard tubes, elastic headbands, mat board, muslin, wool, wood, leather etc, etc. She is a one and only, no plan to make another. Had I been charging my studio time the doll would be worth thousands.
I next challenge I gave myself was creating a 3D model of iffi and her world. It would have been great if I had had a 3D modeling program but once again I had to start from scratch. I found Cheetah 3D a reasonably priced almost learnable 3D modeling and animation software. Years ago (1987) Michael (my husband) and I beta tested a 3D program for the Amiga called Page Render 3D created by Michael Abrams. It was light years ahead of anything out there. I created a bit of animation where a cat jumps out of a paper bag and knocks over a lamp. But that was another time and space and most of that knowledge is packed away in some small cranny of my prefrontal cortex. My progress thus far is a, mostly satisfying, 3D model of her and her little dog fifi that I can pose on the page. Animating will another software hurdle for me.
Now some want to know what is my goal for lil iffi? Am I looking to make a commercial toy out of her? A storybook? An animation? As her name hints at I’m and she is a lil’ iffi. The answer is that I do not have a goal. I am just following her and letting her make her own decision of where she will take me next. I am permitting her (she insisted, you know what today’s generation is like) to have her own page even though she is pinned down as yet. So check out her web page, liliffi.com.
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 8:29 pm and is filed under Art. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
