Cecilia the Fox - Design Development
What does it take to design one of Resident's fabulous paper animal sculptures?Quite a lot! Maybe more than you think.
I’ll start out by saying, I believe strongly in multiple iterations, as my design process relies on failures. I create many versions of each design and through failing and finding what I don't like, I eventually end up with a design that I am really proud to put out there in the world. Let me walk you through the four versions I created before I ended up with the newest member of the Resident crew, the beautiful Cecilia the Fox!
Cecilia the Fox 1
For years I have heard from you at craft shows, on Instagram, and via email, that you wanted to see a paper fox sculpture. So deciding that Cecilia would be a fox was the easy part! I turned to this picture for my design inspiration.
This was my first attempt at Cecilia:
I judge each creation by its profile view and its head on view. I could tell immediately from the profile of Cecilia version 1 that I didn't like the proportions of the face. The snout felt too dog-like and the ears felt off. From a head on perspective, her ears seemed way too big. Her face doesn’t have a distinctive enough diamond shape as the fox’s face in the inspiration picture. Her eyes are are off. Yeah, there was a lot I didn't like on this one... Cecilia 1.0 was also quite small. All the pictures you'll see below are shot the exact same distance away and you’ll notice that Cecilia version 5 is decently larger than the first iteration.
Cecilia the Fox 2
I tried to fix a lot of those things that I didn’t like about Cecilia 1.0 but wasn't successful. The snout is longer but that didn't help. The ears got deeper but probably needed to be smaller. Overall not a great version but it helped me see a direction I didn't want to go. A valuable lesson I learn by doing many versions!
Cecilia the Fox 3
On this one you can see a lot of notable differences from version 2. The ears got smaller, the forehead changed a lot, the eyes sunk in a bit, the snout is a different shape and has more detail. I angled the whole head down a bit. It looked good on the computer but didn't really pan out when I physically built her. I was frustrated at the progress so far and gave myself a break on the fox after this version. Sometimes I need to let a project sit for a couple of weeks to marinate some ideas and then come back at it fresh!
Cecilia the Fox 4
I came back to the fox (after 2 months away) and finally made the most progress with this version. I included more of the neck, changed the angle of the head, got the snout length and proportions right, adjusted the ears, and made the angle between the forehead and snout sharper. Also note that I changed the paper to a brighter, shiny orange which accentuated her sleek, modern face. I was really happy with this update and it only took a handful of adjustments to get me to the final version!
Cecilia the Fox 5 - The Final Design!
Taking away the detail of the mouth and making it about 20% bigger made this fox easier to build without taking anything away from the design. Cecilia 5 is the final version that you can purchase today!
So what do you think? Did Cecilia improve from version one to version five? Would you have done anything differently? I hope this helped explain a little bit more about my design process and gave you a behind the scenes look at how each of our DIY animal paper sculptures come to fruition.
I have waited for Cecilia and it was worth the wait…Love her.
How can I order her?
I really enjoyed seeing how you develop your designs. I especially appreciated your comment that your design process relies on failures.