stuffed stuff: Raz from Psychonauts

I made a “stuffed stuff: making of Raz from Psychonauts” post prior to this. Check it out if you’re interested!

Also, to maximize the enjoyment of reading this post, you should totally get Psychonauts, an awesome action adventure game, which is available on PS2, Xbox on Demand, PSN, Mac and PC!!

stuffed stuff: Raz from Psychonauts
created and stuffed: August 2012

We arrived in Seattle in early Thursday afternoon. Usually I have a lot of sewing to do at the hotel during PAX but this time I only had to finish the eyes and mouth. It was quite nice to be able to enjoy Seattle & PAX without worrying too much about the plush.

I was still not sure which eyes to use. I tried a couple of different eyes. Costume Quest style eyes (big wide eyes), intense eyes (like Scott Campbell’s concept art) and upside down intense eyes (like how he looks in the game) In the end, I decided to go with the intense eyes because I like Raz from Scott Campbell’s concept art. So I sewed the eyes on and stitched the mouth.

To be perfectly honest, I’m not 100% happy with the face. I still like it but I feel like something is off. Also I pulled the string on the mouth a bit too tight, so he looks like he has chubby cheeks. But I think this was more to do with my design for the eyes and the balance as a whole. I don’t have any regrets though. My design skills need to be polished and that takes some time.

While I prettied up Raz, Derek MacGyver’ed a photo shoot stand from an ironing board, bed sheet, toilet paper, pillow cases and some tape.

Since this plush was like nothing I’ve never made before, I asked Derek to take a LOT of photos, and boy did he! So here we go! (This is not all of them so make sure to visit stuffed stuff: Raz from Psychonauts set on my flickr to see all the photos!)

 

Sunday was the last day of PAX Prime and it was the day we were going to give Raz to Tim Schafer. Derek and I went to a panel in the morning and walked by Double Fine’s booth, where I saw a line for Tim Schafer signing. I knew that he was signing everyday but didn’t know what time. I went to the end of the line and saw an Enforcer (volunteer staff at PAX) holding a whiteboard that said “Tim Schafer’s signing line full. Sorry!”

Uh-oh…

There were several people behind the end of the line hoping that they could squeeze in to meet Tim. The Enforcer made no promises but we decided to hang out there anyway. Worst case scenario we’d give Raz to him or another Double Fine staff member during the meetup they were having after PAX.

Luckily, another Enforcer at the Double Fine booth saw that there were less than 10 of us behind the end of the line and they decided to let us meet Tim. Yay! Enforcers at PAX are wonderful people with kind hearts!

This was actually my second time meeting Tim. I met him at Women in Gaming panel at GDC and had a photo of my Costume Quest bento autographed.

Derek took a series of photos while Tim was taking Raz out of the bag, and the pictures definitely do speak for themselves!

Tim gave me a bear hug and everyone at the Double Fine booth seemed to like Raz, so it was a success! Later I’ll probably write more about the visit to the Double Fine booth in the post for PAX Prime 2012.

It’s always great to see the face of the creators meeting their creations in person. I can’t appreciate them enough for their inspiration!

This Raz doll took about two full days and a couple of nights I think. I only did one all-nighter, and everything went pretty smoothly. There were so many new things I learned to do while making Raz and it was a lot of fun. I really liked using wires too and I hope I can put wires in some future plush projects.

For more pictures of this plush, visit stuffed stuff: Raz from Psychonauts and stuffed stuff: Making of Raz from Psychonauts set!

You can also check out more stuffed stuff on my flickr.

Tagged as: Double Fine, plush, psychonauts, tim schafer