Crafty Tuesday: There are only so many ways to make a leg
I swear like the coming of spring comes the arguments about patterns, frank-n-patterning, and drafting.
Frank-n-patterning is when you take a couple of different patterns and put them together into something new. Takes some serious skill to do so because you have to fit all these pieces that were not made to fit together.
And it always seems to come down to something like a leg on a doll for example. There are only so many ways you can make a cloth leg and have it look like a leg so a lot of doll patterns have similar forms of the shape. There are slight differences between each since we all draw a little differently.
Now that has again changed with the arrival of software that allows you to draft patterns so there can be a lot of dolls with the same leg since each creator was using the same software. I am on the fence as to whether using the drafting software to create patterns is ‘cheating’. I do think that if one is to sell patterns that one made with the software, one should say that they used X software in the creation of the pattern.
I make no secret as to how I put my puppets together. Any trick I learned, I am more than willing to teach to someone else. Use to make me the exception but more and more puppeteers seem to be willing to share information with each other. Which I think is a good thing. We need to continue to foster puppetry here in the US.
Someone asked why I don’t just sell a pattern of the puppets I make. Several reasons including that a number of my patterns are extrapolated on the work of others, some of the things I do have to be seen since trying to describe how to do it is a real PITA and I have tried, and I don’t think there would be a huge market for them.
I do agree that I need to set up a website with my portfolio to show people what I do. Photobucket really is not a good way to do that.
I am grateful to those who do share how they make the puppets that they make.
Frank-n-patterning is when you take a couple of different patterns and put them together into something new. Takes some serious skill to do so because you have to fit all these pieces that were not made to fit together.
And it always seems to come down to something like a leg on a doll for example. There are only so many ways you can make a cloth leg and have it look like a leg so a lot of doll patterns have similar forms of the shape. There are slight differences between each since we all draw a little differently.
Now that has again changed with the arrival of software that allows you to draft patterns so there can be a lot of dolls with the same leg since each creator was using the same software. I am on the fence as to whether using the drafting software to create patterns is ‘cheating’. I do think that if one is to sell patterns that one made with the software, one should say that they used X software in the creation of the pattern.
I make no secret as to how I put my puppets together. Any trick I learned, I am more than willing to teach to someone else. Use to make me the exception but more and more puppeteers seem to be willing to share information with each other. Which I think is a good thing. We need to continue to foster puppetry here in the US.
Someone asked why I don’t just sell a pattern of the puppets I make. Several reasons including that a number of my patterns are extrapolated on the work of others, some of the things I do have to be seen since trying to describe how to do it is a real PITA and I have tried, and I don’t think there would be a huge market for them.
I do agree that I need to set up a website with my portfolio to show people what I do. Photobucket really is not a good way to do that.
I am grateful to those who do share how they make the puppets that they make.