Stuffed Creature Design Part II

Good morning from The Stuffed Animal Review, a publication dedicated to the analysis of stuffed creature design and their larger worlds.  If you are a new and bewildered reader, a fuller explanation of The Review’s purpose can be found on the “Philosophy” page.

Last Saturday introduced The Review’s in-depth analysis of high-quality stuffed animal design.  We outlined The Review’s first fundamental principle, the Axiom of Proper Abstraction.  All creatures are a stuffed translation of a real-life animal.  The best stuffed creatures take the essential characteristics of an animal as it is found in nature and abstract, modify, and distort these characteristics to render them cartoon-like and amusing.

Stuffed Creature Design Part II outlines a corollary that naturally flows from the Axiom of Proper Abstraction, The Corollary of Balance…

Good stuffed creature design requires balance and elegance.  Retaining the essence of an animal through abstraction is an artful translation.  It is all too easy to go to extremes, veering too far into exaggeration and distortion, or leaning too much on an animal’s real-world qualities. 

Let us explore the extremes…

Over-Abstraction

Some designers are over-zealous when it comes to abstraction.  Distortion and exaggeration can be overdone, taking an otherwise appealing “essential” feature and blowing it up to gargantuan proportions, leaving the stuffed creature with an odd, unsettling, or grotesque appearance.

Over-Abstraction can take many forms, but heads, eyes, and color are frequently the focus of excessive exaggeration and distortion.

Heads

The over-exaggeration of a stuffed creature’s head is plain abnormal. Nature rarely makes animals with gigantic heads perched atop tiny torsos.  A stuffed creature with a ballooned head, therefore, is distortion gone wrong; it does nothing to accentuate an animal’s fundamental qualities.

The poor creature in Figure 1 looks like it is suffering from an unfortunate medical condition that has caused its head to swell.  It is also difficult to discern exactly what this creature is supposed to be, it is so off-kilter: mouse, dog?

Figure 1

Mr. Raccoon has a bloated head that appears plunked on top of the wrong body [Figure 2].  There is no grace or elegance to the translation from real raccoon to stuffed raccoon.  His lumbering head does not add to his “raccooness;” it simply looks awkward. 

Figure 2

The brown Gund bear in Figure 3 is a wonderful illustration of how an exaggerated head can make an otherwise brilliant creature a bit off.  This stuffed bear is the exact same design as the white Gund highlighted last week [Figure 4], but has a roughly 3:1 head-bottom ratio.  His top-heaviness is not nearly as inviting and huggable for it renders his bottom paws and mid-section puny and inconsequential.  One is presented with a giant head to hug.  And this bear has balance issues, listing forward with the weight of snout and cranium.  It took a number of tries to position him for the photograph.     

Figure 3

Figure 4

Eyes

Another common, often troubling, Over-Abstraction is over-exaggerated eyes. 

Recall the frog from last Saturday, pictured again in Figure 5.  His protruding, googly eyes are brilliant because they are exaggerated in proportion with the rest of his body. [Note: this is Paddy, a Review staffer.  See the Staff Directory for his profile.]

Figure 5

Consider the frog in the background of Figure 6.  The appropriate response is a grimace and audible shriek.  This is a frog abomination.  The eyes on this stuffed creature are unrelenting black orbs with the power to suck in one’s soul, and its engorged red smackers suggest plastic surgery or botox injections.  Taken together, this is one disturbing frog.

Figure 6

The elephant in Figure 7 has puffball eyes that compete with his elephantine qualities.  His already diminutive ears must stand in the shadow of his eyes, and those relentless, unblinking pupils distract from the exaggerated trunk.  He is an amusing creature, but not nearly as successful as last Saturday’s elephant, Frazier [Figure 8].  [You can read more about Frazier in the Staff Directory.]

Figure 7

Figure 8

An additional elephant to compare to Mr. Bug-Eyes above [Figure 9].  Both have diminutive ears and focus on trunk exaggeration.  But this elephant works better because his eyes are tiny black dots, allowing the trunk to shine.

Figure 9

Color

Designers like to over-distort the color and fur-pattern of animals, in an attempt to be zany, wacky, and fun.  The Review has a different view of odd colors and patterns: at best they distract the eye from the creature’s overall proportion and features, and at worst they are a cheap way to impose personality onto a stuffed creature.

Before we discuss this turtle’s color distortion, note its over-abstracted head and eyes [Figure 10].  A pleasing attribute of turtles is a tiny head peaking out of a large shell, a proportion easily translatable to the realm of stuffed creatures.  But the head on this turtle competes with his shell, much to its detriment.  And those gigantic glass eyes and hooded eyelids have the same soul-sucking qualities as the frog in Figure 6.  

Figure 10

The final strike against this turtle: its aggressive pinkness and swirling, multi-colored shell.  The colors and pattern scream for attention: I am one crazy turtle who knows how to have fun!  It is simply trying way too hard.  If the color palate remained closer to a real turtle – greens and browns – there would be more possibilities for this turtle’s personality.  Imaginative play would have freer reign.      

Caveat: The Review is fairly firm in rejecting all over-abstracted heads and eyes, but is not so rigid it rejects all over-abstraction of color. 

There are ways to add distorted colors and patterns without plunging head-first into the deep end of extremes.  Take the turtle in Figure 11, for example.  The turtle’s head and flippers are a pastel shade of green, staying close to the hue of a real turtle.  Distorted colors of light orange, red, and blue are confined to the shell, a sensible translation of the patterned and multicolored shell one would find in nature. 

Figure 11

The Review rolls its proverbial eyes at the clearly gendered intention of pink and blue stuffed animals, but must admit some pastel-hued creatures are quite successful. 

An example is this pink Gund bear [Figure 12].  Yes, we have seen this bear before; he is the same brilliantly amusing design as the creature from last Saturday [Figure 4 in this post].  The Review tolerates his pink fur because of his superior configuration.  [Note, this is a Review staffer, Gum-Ming.  Check the Staff Directory for his profile.]

Figure 12

Under-Abstraction

Some designers try too hard for an accurate translation of an animal’s essential qualities into the realm of stuffed creatures.  Indeed, whole lines of stuffed creatures are devoted to the realistic reproduction of animals. Many of these tend to be produced by educational companies or “save-the-environment” organizations.  The Review avoids such lines. 

The whole point of a stuffed creature is imaginative play that references real-life, but is removed from the everyday, and these animals are too anchored in reality.  These lines can also produce creepy stuffed creatures with beady eyes, scaly claws, and menacing looking beaks.

This frog is simply too life-like [Figure 13].  He doesn’t have the amusing, cartoon-quality of the frog in Figure 5 because the design sticks doggedly to the real-world shape of a frog’s head and webbed-pads.  It is hard to imagine this frog doing much else besides lazing on a lily pad, waiting for flies.

Figure 13

Someone took great pains to make this stuffed creature look like a real Rottweiler pup [Figure 14].  He is well-designed, but is lacking the abstraction that makes stuffed creatures hilarious and fun.  Since he looks like a real dog, there is not the same desire to animate him in the silly ways you would another stuffed creature.  But he is not a real dog, so one cannot expect him to fetch or roll over.  He is caught in a boring limbo zone between real and stuffed.  

Figure 14

Can you possibly wait until next Saturday for The Review’s second Axiom, the Axiom of Essential Details?