Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

Oh wow - 60, then that does shade my perspective. I have only one really great collector, and if she needed to sell some of my work I would seriously consider 'working' with her. She's made a very large investment in my business, and mine is not my livelihood as is yours. Some of my pieces I would just plain like to have back for my own collection!

Then I might even lower my portion to 25% - I'm not sure if you said - is this only one piece she wishes to sell with your help? Several? An ongoing thing? If only once now and it's successful, will she be likely to ask for a repeat in the future?

Yes, I agree that it is competing with your current work in one way, but do you not have more collectors than you have cats available? Wouldn't some of them be happy to be 'moved-up' on the waiting list by being given the opportunity to receive one of your *fairly recent* pieces at a slightly reduced price?
Sooner and slightly lower are special pulls that can work for you as well as against you, especially if the kitten/cat isn't too far off your current style: i.e., not too old without most of your current techniques. Most of us wouldn't like to be involved with 4 - 5 year old work as our techniques have moved so far beyond that type of work since then!

Hmmm - much more thought going into this.

Karen, are you still on the fence about this? I realize that there are almost no gray areas in our responses, that most of us have been either "black or white".
But you also asked about a percentage of the sale for yourself, should you decide to go forth with this.
In my opinion, I probably would expect at least 30 - 35% return on this. With the auction fees subtracted from the total, that leaves her with about 50% of the total.
If I were the collector that might be the deciding factor - enough to change her mind about involving you.

NO WAY!!!

And what Kelly said - Doubled!

With the exception of approx 6 - 10 artists world-wide, since Day One, there has NEVER been a reliable Secondary Market.
Collectors should understand that when purchasing every Artist teddy bear....

I cannot attest to the efficacy of what's being written - it's just something that came though from the San Jose (CA) Mercury newspaper - one that's usually rather technology-based and up-to-date.
I haven't been 'invited' yet, and I've never had time to join any of the other networking sites.
I posted it - just in case anyone here was feeling a backlash repercussion over some ID problem(s) recently and frustrated about not getting any real answers.

Biz Break: What's in a name? Google+ is working on that

By Jeremy C. Owens
jowens@mercurynews.com
Posted: 07/26/2011 01:25:28 PM PDT
Updated: 07/26/2011 02:31:10 PM PDT

Today: Google (GOOG)+ recovers from weekend's wrath at account suspensions, Facebook changes its policies on facial recognition and Netflix (NFLX) faces Wal-Mart and Wall Street challenges
Growing pains for Google+
What is a person's real name in cyberspace? With so many people known by usernames or nicknames on websites, message boards and more -- some for safety reasons -- where does a social network draw the line on how users represent themselves?
Google+ has run head-on into that conundrum this week, and they seem to be groping their way toward a conclusion, but only after angering a multitude of early adopters.
Google+ clearly states in its conduct policy that users should "use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of those would be acceptable." However, that does not leave room for the more off-the-wall names people go by on the Web.

The problems started this weekend, when Google+ deleted many profiles that seemed to be created under pseudonyms, including one owned by a former Google employee known both online and offline as "Skud." Anger bubbled to the service quickly, with users expressing outrage, as compiled rapidly on Saturday by Violet Blue at ZDNet.
By Sunday night, Google+ was responding. Blogger Robert Scoble caught up with Google's Vic Gundotra, one of the top two executives for Google+, who told him that Google has "made some mistakes while doing the first pass at this and they are learning."
"He also says they are working on ways to handle pseudonyms, but that will be a while before the team can turn on those features," Scoble reported.
On Tuesday, the other executive in charge of the social network, Bradley Horowitz, used Google+ for a full-fledged response that announced a rollout of some of the changes in how the company will approach such issues in the future.
The most immediate change will be warnings sent to users, who will have a chance to change their name before the profile is suspended. The warning will include a guide to what is acceptable. In the future, Google+ is looking at changing the sign-up procedure to help avoid more reviews of users' names.
Horowitz pointed out the fields that are available to users to highlight nicknames and pseudonyms, and he also sought to fight the rumor that having your Google+ profile suspended will bar you from all Google services, such as Gmail.
So less than a week after the account suspensions began, Google+ has admitted a mistake, explained how they expect to approach similar situations in the future and offered users tips to avoid the problem.
With a service that is less than four weeks old and still not completely available to the general public, these problems will arise, and the Google+ response indicates they are ready to change the service if necessary. As Horowitz said in his post, "Please don't misconstrue the product as it exists today ... as the 'end state.' "
--------------
Facebook adds another opt-out
Proving that you don't have to be a nascent social network to face complaints, Facebook also owned up to an issue on Tuesday.
After Connecticut's attorney general questioned the Palo Alto company's 'tag suggestions' feature, which uses facial recognition software to help users tag their contacts in photos, Facebook said it would make it easier for users to opt out of the feature.
"For any users who opt out, any facial recognition data collected will be deleted," Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said, according to Bloomberg News. Jepsen also said that the company said the facial-recognition data was not being used for commercial or marketing purposes and has made efforts to fight impostor profiles.
"People across the country using Facebook will be more aware of our personalized privacy settings and how they can be used to benefit their experience on the site," Facebook spokesman Tim Sparapani told Bloomberg in an email.

Yes, I was a little amazed  - - no dumb-struck when I heard all that you did, at that early dinner last year with our other 2 dinner mates. It was barely past the time I'd actually ever heard of you and our only meeting-in-person.
At the time I thought "Works all day and is also a full-time bear artist? How can she do that?"
And now I see your tuts and FB & other social networking.
Ahhh.
You don't eat or SLEEP!
Am I right!!???

I've since come to 'know' you and your boundless energy, thirst for knowledge, need to share and pass on that knowledge and just be an all-around great gal! There have been some in this bear community who feel very much in a higher echelon, who (JMHO!!) don't know half what you do but do not associate with many of the rest of us bear artists, to say nothing of the collectors at bear functions. Fortunately (or at least I don't see them since I've been off the large show circuit for the past 6 years...) I don't run into them any more, or they are a dying breed and the younger 'kids' aren't as prone to that type of personality. (And if I'm remembering you were never on the show circuit—you've always been part of the Internet-sales-generation? You'd be a dynamite workshop teacher.)

But that told me much about the bear world when I began traveling a few years into this, in the mid-90s, and not to toot my own horn, because I think that deep down inside most of us we feel like outsiders who are quite shy, but I feel much more comfortable with collectors and will always pick a table of collectors to sit and chat with than one of 'names' if given the opportunity. Not to ignore the other artists, but the collectors are even shyer than we are, and they certainly don't feel as if they can barge up to a table of clustered artists and plunk themselves down!

And so how do artists expect to engender Good Will with collectors if it's only on the sales floor? That always made it look (to me) that the collectors were only there for one thing (OK, 2..) - their money and to give laud to the artist.
Oh no, Bobbie, don't hijack this thread!
Tuck that soapbox right outa' sight and tell Joanne - "Onya!" as the Ozzies/Aussies say!!!

Gathered only works for certain (softer) fabrics in minis. Even most of our fabrics look better with the disk being covered with a disk-of-fabric on both sides of the joint too, though it's awfully fiddly work in a rather limited area!!
Someone was asking about noses in another thread the other day and I was trying to point them toward Joanne's tuts but couldn't find them on her site or blog so I gave up.

Are you listening, J?? Yours are the best online!! As Becky just said, yours tell what others don't, in the simplest most understandable fashion: YOU SHOULD BE WRITING A BOOK!!! And beyond that you should be teaching!
We should all donate one hour of or time to you because the returns would be so worthwhile!!
And I know that's the most precious commodity and it's the one thing that you're lacking in fulfilling some of your goals right now!!!! Sorry about all of the exclamation points - I know that they become mundane and repetitious after a point but how else to express one's enthusiasm?

I wrote a response here, went to PM a note to you Becky and came back here to find my original note gone so I'll start over. (If you've already read my email/PM you may be scratching your head wondering what I was writing about!!??)

This realistic head is great! you knocked this one out-of-the park!!
And the body is very good too, but I see it more as a teddy style. If you were to double its length and widen the part out a bit below the armpits toward his 'bottom' half, like in your drawing, I think you'd have a pretty good representation of your original sketch.

And your neck joint is very good too; often a set of disks that are too small are used and the fabric divots in along that joining line; yours flows smoothly over it and if the body had been larger with perhaps even a hump back there, he'd've been just about perfect. You definitely have the 'vision'!

His lower body does appear to be more of a teddy style tho... and the hind legs. a bit fatter at the hunch.. and longer.. but no thicker at the paws..

Oops wait.
Sorry!
This is just my musings in someone else's design..
Forgot myself for a minute there..
not that you were asking...

Seriously - if you were to separate this bear and put the head on a longer realistic body as per your sketch and add a different head—like your classic Teddy-style—onto the body, you'd have 2 different teds with no wasted effort: 2 entirely different styles of bears to show for your efforts;  no loss and tons of experience gained!

The males are Nos. 3, 5 & 6, Joanne. The trick to figuring them out is to look directly behind the ears: does the skin fall away (disappear) or continue to widen toward the shoulders?
Now that you know which are which, you can see the differences and see why the males would slip those collars right off - -  that is if the researchers could ever get the collars tightened enough to not choke the bears to begin with.

Oh no Katy! And I thought everyone did something like this - the upside-down viewing & line drawings!! LOL!!!!!!!
I very often do this to teddy images which I see that have perceived or obvious flaws..... you know how we were discussing a while ago, the critique sheets that Australian show judges will give each bear at a fair on a point system, to both applaud its fine points and direct attention and help to those areas which could use some improvement?
In my own mind I use this system to say "If this bear were mine I would have done .... X and xxxx.. to those areas."
I've just found it to be the most efficient teaching tool.

Now if you're meaning the 3 bands of fiber for hip, shoulder and jaw bones, all will become clear after I post the next blog entry. My avatar polar was one of my very earliest polars in this size—a bit less than 3" long—(early because he doesn't have metal claws) and he too has too short a neck, but his head is the right scale.
However I also have a kit line which details how to create realism (at least my version of this process) so I won't go into the entire explanation in the blog!! Intuitive creators will get a jumping off point though.

No, that was his 'Before' pic, when I knew something (by my eye) was wrong but couldn't figure it out until I saw the photo images from all angles.

"Photoshop is Your Friend!"

The camera doesn't lie: flipping images upside-down is the first thing I always do to the image of a face.
Drawing 2 lines on them is the next thing, like a large *plus* sign: one at the base of the eyes and the other down the center of the face.
Those 2 should be perfectly in line (eyes balanced at the bottom of the first  and equally distant from the center line and for the second line, both sides of both the nose and mouth lines balanced and even with each other.)
Then a series of about a dozen other lines are drawn vertically and horizontally, checking the placements of ears, cheeks, shading, chin, outer sides of profile, etc - - and this is still done while upside-down, from the full face forward as well as the side facing and rear facing.

I find it impossible to do while right-side-up, because then I'm seeing what our minds have always been trained by life experience to EXPECT—a *face* smiling back at you—human-like features: two eyes, a nose, a mouth and all in a particular relativity to each other with minor differences for individuals.

There's a vast difference between imbalance for character's sake and that of lack of skill. I think you all know what I mean - where a sad clown expression has eyes downwardly tilted at the corners for expressing emotion or cheeks that practically deform the eye sockets upward because the grins are so huge and yet the same expressions that can be painful to look at when they're the result of poor workmanship, shown in a creation made by one who just doesn't quite have a good grasp on technique.

I thought back to the period of time that I had worked on this bear and realized that he'd had a period of about 6 months between start and finish. Several other species came in-between, 2 of which were pandas, probably the most no-necked bears there are!   Mentally I wasn't preparing my mind for polar....

The second step in my realistic bear construction is where I place three bands/rings of fiber onto the spine, which become the jawbones, shoulder & hip bones (like a human has) because you cannot just attach the limbs to a spine. The front band placement is different for each of the species—panda/grizzly/black/polar and it sets the tone for each (besides the slightly different shape spine.) Somehow I either grabbed the wrong body starter or got distracted.....
If I can ever get a free day, this information is the next entry on my blog....

I too have had the Lindstrand book since it first appeared in 03. I wish it had been available when I began designing in fabric in the mid & late 90s. I needed too many seams to accomplish what I wanted to do and was too limited in miniatures so fibers were the only medium that freed up the flow and natural lines for me.
This is the face-forward image of the bear above -

LOL - I think they look comical when they stand up - Ole Droopy Drawers!!
Their skin folds are so loose that it literally drops to their knees when they stand on their hind legs.
This doesn't happen in the other species—brown, black (and especially panda who already have such short, weak hind legs) partly due to their skeletal frames and in part to the places they put on their fat reserves.
In a miniature it's not very attractive as they look too out-of-proportion, as if I cannot get the scale correct so I've made very few standing straight up on hind legs; moving - yes, but not just standing still.
Where is this display?
Did you know that they cannot collar adult males because their necks are as wide as the head and the collars would be slipped right off? Only females get collared. So when you view images now you'll be able to tell right off what gender they are!
OK - Pop Quiz - which are males and which females?
     

doncha just LV the black tongue????

Wow - it's truly an honor to have you weigh in on this Kelly - Thx!
I consider your work museum-quality! (and Joanne's should start getting Gallery invites, too!)

Joanne, I forgot to add this on my post on your blog/site: I somehow got listed to fill out a survey to the No American Bear Center. It was a computer-recognized link so it wouldn't have done any good to share it, nor my prezzie at the end—a great head pic of Faith.
I wanted to tell you that your little Alpine reminds me so much of the wonderful signed-by-Lynn-image I rec'd of Faith for filling out the online survey. Great job there too.
I'm in awe of all of you artists who design and create full-sized realistic work!!!

Yep, Kelly's been known for his fab 'trash' for a number of years—his studio exclusive!!!!

Desert Mountain Bear / Joanne just wrote this in her post about her newest offering; it's so true and almost unrealized until one does go into designing realistic bears. I've thought about this for at least a decade but never found the opening to mention it out-of-context before. Not the teddy bears that are intended to have the larger-than-normal heads but sometimes I think that artists just don't realize that over time their template proportions are creeping up ever so much larger, especially on the head. I notice this mostly in miniatures, especially as a miniaturist myself. This *may* be intentional, as creating a child-like or baby effect, but I think not in all cases as the teddy isn't presented as a young one.

For myself, it often takes a photograph to pinpoint where the problem lays. I often work from images found on greeting cards‚ as here‚ which my DH masterfully bonds to the lids of custom made boxes for my work.
I'm behind in blog-posting but one of the upcoming posts is in the Off With His Head series. There was something waaay off with this polar's head but I couldn't exactly see what would be most expeditious to fixing it until I saw the photo images. That lead to a few judicious cuts in the right places and you can see immediately that, even though it's barely past framing out the skeleton stage, its neck/head now has a polar shape. It was too short and big before, just as Joanne said.
The base head has only just been attached and both neck and head neck need to be built out but you can see from the relative size & placement (I did set it back in the photos just a bit farther than it really was on the body, though) what was wrong with the first one. Funny, it just didn't look THAT bad to the eye...

I can't believe that you've been designing for so few years, Becky! Your work looks amazingly like the classics of the 80s, I noted that for Susana (from Hong Kong?) too, but your 'look' reminds me more of SueAnn's. I know one doesn't make that conscious decision or effort, but I also equate hers with the old-fashioned 'Ted' look.
It never ceases to amaze me how quickly you all advance. It seems like we who began in the late 80s / early 90s must've been slogging through sand or concrete... the advances were so much more slowly made. Just like advances everywhere today in technology, they're not leapfrogging but space-walking. You know - like those moon walking jumps that bound along 20 yards between steps.
It leaves me breathless how fast the pace is going.
I think I'll have a look through that box of patterns & pix tonight or tomorrow... Thx!

Yes, we too (mostly) switched over to what Brian could eat - it made it easier on the whole family.

I quickly dropped my work and surfed through the new issue - I liked the new article and their fresh approach to spot lighting 9 up-and-coming new artists - and most are already found right here in TT!!
All were posed the same 5 questions and all replied in the same nice short format. Very refreshing. The whole issue had a nice can't-wait-to-turn-the-next-page feeling to it.

And one of the recent threads posted here in the past week or so is about 'bare' bears; those made from no-napped fabric. On the last page is a new design from Steiff® out of a brocade in a raspberry on taupe (they called it burgundy), a tribute to Margarete: LE 1500, $275.
Quite handsome (or should I say Lovely, as it as one of those bejeweled black sequiny bow appliqués around it's neck). It caught my eye because I designed a similar 3" miniature in raspberry on black with a red & black neck ruff for Teddy Bears of Witney about 15 years ago. I'll have to dig out the image, as it was before the digi age and isn't in the computer.

With non-napped designs one can truly appreciate the design lines, the balance and proportions. I think the classic traditional style ted looks best in this type of fabric: JMO, of course!!!

It's also quite heavy for its volume, so a tummy weight would be good.

Aleta, I feel so deeply for you! Our oldest, now 46 was diagnosed at 10 with juv. diabetes. He was old enough to understand what had happened and what he had to do now, but he also felt isolated in that it now made him so 'different' from all of his friends and 2 sibs.
Try a Scout camp for 2 weeks, when everyone else is enjoying S'mores or spending their cash at the commissary on ice cream and candy bars and your folks packed dried fruit and canned tuna fish. Thk goodness he likes all food! But it doesn't replace sweets as a kid when you've known them...

The first 2 days back to school were hell, because he was to manage his own injections and I wasn't gong to rush him. We sat at the table for more than 2 hours both days before he finally got up the courage to do it.
There were many give many many bad times involved—this from a loner who wished it gone and if he chose to ignore something, in his mind it just wasn't there.
In the past decade he's now had 2 kidney transplants and received a pancreas with the first: the diabetes was gone and he'd take diabetes over dialysis any day!

Times have changed now, for testing and better control of blood sugars. Being alert for peanut allergies, gluten free (our other son) and the like—well we live in a world where there's just so much more knowledge about individual health care issues.
Yes, it is a shock knowing that all of your lives have taken a 180° turn, but having your darling girl have this happen now means that she will not know any different lifestyle and that makes it a bit easier than one which has to suddenly give up or substitute the sweets in their former life. You're all on my prayer list - for acceptance and peace.

There are very few who go to the extent that you do Joanne. I 'd like to think that they'd become discouraged by the amount of time it takes to develop the skills, as yours are pure masterful, . and just as well, as I'd hate to see a lot of - in the words of your fellow Arizonian, Sandy C- pure *shlock* work out there, competing with yours!

And our DD claims that Arizonans ARE formally dressed if their clothes are clean - LOL. (just kidding....)
But you all do dress a lot more casually than we do when we're there, and you're usually *more* covered up than we are, who are stripping off as many bits as possible in an effort to cool off.
You're attempting to protect yourselves from the AC when you go inside, whereas we're holding our breath waiting to be able to breathe again comfortably inside......!

LOL - and I can tell in a second who lives in AZ year-round and who lives in hot-in-the-sun-cool-in-the-shade-no-humidity-my-FAVORITE-State-CO!!! Look at your clothes!!  :crackup:  :crackup:  :crackup:  :crackup:  :crackup:  :crackup:  :crackup:  :crackup:  :crackup:  :crackup:

Hugs to all of you and hope to be in BOTH States in '12 and/or '13!

-----------------

The PHX area has got to be the best area in the world for finding old bears, even now....
As one of the primary retirement areas in the country (and for Canadians) it appears that the shops inherit the bears that the families don't value/want/recognize as valuable or there many not even be families in the picture.
I wish I'd bought a few of the white Steiffs I saw in the mid-80s for $200....

LOL - I wondered if this subject would ever come up - but never imagined it would under this thread!
I've only used these fibers to attempt to needle felt with, and let me tell you that they did not do well at all!! (Corn is called Inego™) But not for the reasons that you'd suspect—that like linen, cotton and flax and other vegetable fibers, they don't have the scales on the cuticle layer like our hair and the other mammal fibers do that can interlock with each with each other, because vegetable fibers don't have any scales.

But they reacted in the same manner that you found in regular stuffing - firmness to the point of hardness.

The needle was able to push the fibers down into the mass rather easily in the beginning with both types but the mass soon became so solid that the needle no longer penetrated, no matter how small a shaft size I reduced down to, and I was no where near getting to the shaping that I needed.

So that was an experiment that I chalked up to Experience!

Well, not quite just US citizens, as Brenda shows - - - it's for all North American citizens in Canada and the USA.

The count as of Thurs noon is showing 129,000 in first place and 29,000 for second place.
Do you suppose some of the bears are sneaking into town under cover of darkness and voting too?
A few of them had been quite close to the north side of the town of Soudan......

7PM Updated:

The big lead you have built up for Soudan Underground Mine State Park is a demonstration of how the radio-collared study bears benefit the area.  Your efforts are amazing.  You have put this park into such a strong lead (113,942 votes - this was yesterday's posting) that they have more votes than the next 9 parks put together. 
However, we are surprised to see how many votes Bear Head Lake State Park is getting (11,279), putting them in 5th place!  Last year, we were a little surprised to hear from DNR officials that there was no way to prove that their win was because of Lily fans.  They said that their campers mentioned voting, and that the win could just as well be attributed to them. Good.  We wanted them to win.  The strong voting for Bear Head this year supports the DNR claim that their win last year was largely due to their own voters, not Lily fans and not radio-collared bears.

This year, Lily fans are supporting Soudan Underground Mine State Park because radio-collared bears live there, because they need to make repairs after a fire, and because of the scientific values of their underground mine.  To vote, go to http://www.livepositively.com/#/america … eaderboard .  In this contest, we can vote over and over as many times as we can.

Important!

A second Soudan Park was entered on the Coke site and is causing some voting problems for fans. To make sure you are voting for the right park, you MUST use the search boxes above the map on the link and insert Soudan Underground Mine Park in the first box and in the city box, put "Soudan". 
Also, it is very important that you make sure the Soudan you are voting for has over 115,000 votes for the second one only has 4,000.  The team has contacted the coke contest representatives and are waiting to hear from them and asked could these two be combined since they are the same park.
Thank you for all you do!
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center

I, too, shall do my duty!!

Reader's Digest, DON'T MESS WITH TRUE ARCTOPHILES!!!