Sunday, March 13, 2011

A fox called Waldo.



I recently painted a customizable toy prototype (think 'munny') to contribute to a series that a class-mate of mine, Marta Ryczko, is launching as part of her self initiated 3rd year graphic design semester-long project. I felt that the original blank plaster form she had created kind of resembled a fox (if I imagined really hard) and this is what I came up with, a fox called 'Waldo'.

I guess there is a bit of a story as to the title I chose for this project. I figured I'd share it with you. My younger brother and I spent majority of our childhood summers in a small northern Ontario town with my Dad's side of our family. One of my most prominent memories of my Grandpa before he passed away, was how he had shown us that he had befriended a red fox that lived in the woods (which was essentially my Grandparents' backyard). My Grandpa regularly fed the fox cold hot dogs (this made them friends, you see) and called him 'Waldo'. I think that fox earned his name specifically so that my Grandpa could use the phrase "Where's Waldo?" when he would take the us out in the late summer evenings to catch a glimpse of the red pelted animal.
It drove my Grandma nuts with worry, but I always liked that my Grandpa was a bit on the mischievous side, and brave enough to feed a wild fox out of his bare hand. Besides, Waldo always looked harmless enough. He was definitely more afraid of us than we were of him.