Friday, May 11, 2012

Keep Calm

Every time I go into a home wares store I come across posters, mugs, carry bags, etc, emblazoned with "Keep Calm and Carry On."

stefansargent.com

It seems to be quite popular at the moment. I was curious and got on line to find out what all the fuss was about. Turns out it's a really popular meme and there are hundreds of different parodies. Then I found this version:

allthefunofthefair.bigcartel.com

I thought this was amusing, but something wasn't quite right. Why wasn't it actually knitted? The only thing to be done was get out the sticks.

I'm not great at knitting in two colours, but I think it turned out okay. Here's a close up just to prove it's actually knitted and not just done with photoshop.

I might make some changes to the pattern before knitting this again. I think a cushion covered in this would go great in my front room.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Zeke and Alice

A couple of years a go I worked on an animated TV series called Dogstar. It is a futuristic tale of space, plucky kids, ruthless bad-guys and a lost ship full of dogs. I still can't believe how lucky I was to get a job animating a science fiction cartoon. It actually had spaceships in it, and robots! Two of my favorite things. Once I even got to animate one of the characters knitting.

I wish I could show you some of the stuff I did, but alas, the second series has not been shown on TV yet. So all the footage is under wraps until Channel 9 finds a gap in their schedule. You can check out Series 1 (I think it's on DVD), I didn't work on that one though. What I can show you is my crochet versions of the characters. Here are Zeke and Alice the robot pilots of the missing Dogstar.

One of my favorite characters to work with was Zeke. He is convinced he is a human, not a robot, which means he gets to do a heap of fun stuff. I made this doll to take along to the Christmas Party. We were supposed to dress up as our favorite character, but I don't really like dressing up.
Alice is the other pilot of the Dogstar. She is much more sensible and constantly tries to keep Zeke in line. I have to say working with Alice was a lot of fun too.
If you want to find out more about the show visit the official Dogstar site. You should also check out Scott Vanden Bosch's blog. He designed all the characters for Dogstar, as well as directing the series.