another stupid (or genius?) idea

Last night I watched the documentary Marwencol, about the artist Mark Hogancamp, who created an imaginary town with dolls and stuff he finds in his back yard. He lives a parallel "life" in the town. I highly recommend it.

And that got me to thinking about the croco-diamond book, and how fucking hard it is to draw pictures of made up animals when I have no artistic talent. And suddenly it occurred to me that maybe I could follow Mark's lead and just buy some toy animals and then decorate them to look like the animals in the book, and then I could stage scenes and take pictures for the book.

Yes, I had been drinking when I came up with that idea.

This morning when I woke up I was excited to go out and try to find stuff for my fake croco-diamond world. I figured I would go to a toy store, get the animals, and then go to goodwill to get some of the other props I would need, and then get to work on my fake town.

Here was my list of things I'd need for the town:

• crocodile, plastic, must have movable arms and legs, show teeth, and be able to stand
• kangaroo, stuffed (at least 1 inch shorter than the crocodile)
• giant man, plastic, must be dressable, must be twice the size of the crocodile
• chef doll, plastic (to be the italiani), must be smaller than the crocodile
• clay (to make stuff like cringle roots and termaters)
• paper dolls (to be the crowd at the market)
• baskets
• car to be the ticky tap tap
• child's skate (for the kangapult and zippy shoe skate)
• drink umbrellas (for the umbrellears)
• construction paper
• fedora for the kangawrong
• red socks for the giant man
• glitter
• glue
• fake jewels for the croco-diamond's spine

And that was just to do a few scenes.

Anyway, do you have any idea how fucking impossible it is to find a plastic crocodile? Or a stuffed kangaroo? I went to three different toy stores, nothing. Target, nothing. I couldn't even find tiny baby mittens for the whitey biteys. Pretty much the only things I managed to find were construction paper, glue, and some markers. Which gets me about nowhere unless I make everyone out of construction paper which could take the rest of my natural life.

Internet search you might suggest. Believe me, I've spent the past 3 hours looking at crocodile toys and stuffed kangaroos. Nothing has come up that will work for my vision of the characters, or the size requirements. How is it that a guy can buy a stuffed animal to have sex with and I can't find a cute stuffed kangaroo?

Then I also remembered that Mark was sort of an artist before he built his town, and he's pretty crafty. Me, I couldn't even make a hand turkey at thanksgiving. Every craft I've ever made has ended up glued to a table or worse.

So maybe I should stick to drawing for the moment...and maybe some other great idea will pop into my head to illustrate my book...