Creating Bertie by MOOPF

TRE got down and bugged Gareth Lancaster aka MOOPF [www/DeviantArt] about his papertoy named BERTIE. ), READ THRU about the genesis of his first papertoy creation :)

(And if you must know, I'd gotten wind of Gareth's creation via his Twitter)

TOYSREVIL: How was Bertie created? What led to it's creation?

MOOPF: Bertie really came about through just wanting to try my hand at paper toys, and deciding on something fairly simply in construction as a first attempt, but something that would hopefully create some interest from other artists who could see potential for customising it. I'm somebody who's always trying new mediums, for the challenge as much as anything.


MOOPF: In terms of the way Bertie looks, it takes a lot of cues from a character style that I've been working on for a few months now, centering around a character called Arthur, who you'll see in my deviantArt gallery mainly as a spaceman (hence the cut out front on Bertie), with fairly short legs and long arms. Bertie was really an attempt to transfer those basic style cues to a much more angular paper toy, trying to retain the overall feel of the character. It's part of a whole process of becoming comfortable with the Arthur-style character, and seeing how it translates into other mediums - I've recently pixelated the character as well, worked on a small sculpture of him and had artist Jennifer Bryan produce a plush of him as part of the same process. It all helps me to understand the character better, get to know it, and refine it.


TOYSREVIL: Looking forward to Arthur's development too! Back to Bertie - what's Bertie's "story"? And why "Rainy Day"?

MOOPF: Bertie itself doesn't have a story but the underlying character Arthur has one that's in development, in conjunction with a character called Charles who can really only be described as a multi-eyed caterpillar, called a Bugapilla. You'll see these appear in several pieces on my deviantArt gallery. I'm not really ready to expand upon their back-story yet as it's still in flux and I haven't made any concrete decisions yet. The main thrust for Arthur and Charles is a children's book, but that's a way off yet, and I'm not going to rush it.

The first custom of Bertie that I've produced is called Rainy Day simply because the character is wearing a raincoat. This goes back to a previous drawing of the Arthur character I produced called Happy April Showers and was the starting point for the Bertie custom.

TOYSREVIL: How do people can a hold of the template?

MOOPF: I've made the template available via. deviantArt for people to use. A few artists have already been given the template and I can't wait to see what people produce. I've licensed it under Creative Commons and a zip file containing Photoshop, Illustrator and PSD versions can be grabbed here: http://moopf.deviantart.com/art/Bertie-Paper-Toy-Template-122097211


TOYSREVIL: Cool! Thanks for your time, Gareth - and in closing, do share with us a little about yourself.

MOOPF: OK, well I'm 35, married with two kids and have pretty much spent most of my life finding different creative outlets, although only really came back to drawing and painting in any real way a couple of years ago. I spent a long time writing ambient music, which I had some advertising success with and will be having several albums re-released on a net label in the near future, after some recent interest in the material. I've also been writing children's poetry for around 7 years (www.fizzyfunnyfuzzy.com), which has led to some school visits, publication in english language books for non-English speaking children and their use on exam papers in several countries.

I also spent several years making virtual roller skates and bubblegum in Second Life (that's actually where I first used the moopf name, although I'd thought of it a few years previously). As my real job is as a software developer, I've also tried ways to merge the creative side of me with those skills and produced an iPhone game in September of 2008 called Hiqup. So, my CV is varied to say the least, and really everything is about trying to find creative outlets, whatever they may be, and certainly trying new things as much as possible. My main web site is http://www.moopf.com/ although at present it's really just a collection of links to my work, and I will be replacing that with a proper web site, with obligatory blog, within the next month or so.