How beautiful would it be to wander through the streets with soft colourful scarfs fluttering in the breeze? What a way to signpost the scarf district.

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These dolls have moved over to their own blog at http://www.rockndollstars.com/ and are now on sale over at Etsy

…this little fella is a birthday present for my nephew – who sported a pretty impressive quiff early on in life – I just wanted to stitch up a simple little indy fella but once the quiff was added he started looking very Morrissey – There could definitely be something in this.

Merv, originally uploaded by The Challis.

He popped back into my mind recently while I was sketching up some characters for a story that my Dad was working on- This fella’s actual story was pretty far fetched – much more than any talking tomato plants

This little fella – waiting outside the *cough* louvre – develops a bit of an attachment to a traffic cone – (the love of his life? a scarf pincher? or a delusion?). The clocking was ticking for this one as my iPhone battery dribbled away to nothing but I did manage to finish the (laughingly called) post production with TiltShiftGen and FlipBook when I got home – so it’s pretty much all done on my iPhone

This is the part of a collaboration with Redmag (super talented toy designer and maker extraordinaire). Her idea was to create a template for a plush vehicle… actually a bus was the original idea… with small pockets in the sides so little padded characters could hop on and go for a ride. Ideally this toy would occupy kids for hours… and then…hopefully… when they’re knackered become a handy pillow to fall sleep on…

Although I’ve spent a bit of time developing characters in the past they’ve only ever been in 2D and this was my first attempt at designing for 3d squishiness… so to kick off… I mainly ignored their… volume (head? sand?… yeah). Though I was well aware of the flatness of the characters it felt like I needed to breath some personality into them before I even began to tackle their waistlines…

The style I went with was richly detailed with nod to the vintage fabrics Redmag uses in her range. I’m a big fan of illustrators like Jim Datz, who have taken the kooky playfulness of 50′s masters like David Weidman or Jim Flora and refreshed the style but kept the energy… and I wanted to give our little guys and their car that same warmth and whimsy.

Both happy with the design direction I started to be a bit more scientific… going back to illustrator and plotting out the car in 3D. This gave us a chance to simplify the final pattern… like folding up the car doors rather then cutting and sewing them on which mean we could also illustrate what would be inside the car as well as outside. Here’s the first go at the car template which we’ll print out, stitch together and if it all fits then we’ll go back and re-apply the design.

This is a page (hmmm actually it’s page 13 ~ hope posting this one doesn’t bring on some reign of bad luck) from a children’s book I’ve been working on with a colleague of mine… he’s words and I’m pictures…