Knuffle Bunny
Construction by
Janson Fangio
For this production there needed to be two stuffed "Knuffle Bunnies," a small one for the baby character to handle and a giant version that comes to life in a fantasy sequence. The small doll was purchased from the licensed manufacturer and the big one...was up to me. Despite the fact that this piece wasn't even remotely what can be classified as a costume, i.e. it isn't worn by an actor and isn't even an article of clothing, I knew, and I suspect the production team did as well, that I was the best person for the job.
I achieved this bigger-than-life replica of the licensed doll by first dismantling the original using it to pattern all the pieces exactly. I made a quick mock-up of the pattern just to make sure that I got it right and then reassembled the doll. I then sized it all up using an opaque projector. It was largely an exercise in trial and error as I wasn't quite sure how big was ideal. My first attempt, which I mocked up in some cheap fabric that I had in stock and stuffed with trash bags, proved to be WAY too big. Although it would make a cool bean bag couch, it was too unwieldy for the actors to manipulate, so I sized it down to the one you see in the photos. |
The head/nose, tail and legs are stuffed with poly fiber-fill and the body and arms with bean bag pellets. There is an invisible zipper along the center back of the body for filling with pellets. because of it's massive size, the weight of the filling presented problems with keeping it all suspended where it needed to be at all times and also easily handled by the actors. As with the original doll, the legs are sewn into the body with a closed seam, as is the tail, so filling those was pretty straight forward, the head/nose and body, however, are all a connected open cavity. In the small doll this really isn't an issue as the poly-fill fills it all out just fine. I knew, though, that buying that much poly-fill to fill something this big would be cost prohibitive; I had already used most of my small budget on the polar fleece fabric. Bean-bag pellets go for about 15 dollars per large bag locally; they are very light and are meant to fill out large areas, but the pellets naturally fall wherever they can and won't suspend an intricate cavity like poly-fill is designed to do. When held upright, the head would largely deflate as it all settled down into the body. To get around this I used some jersey knit to create a shelf at the neck so the head could be filled independently with poly-fill. As also with the original, I used jersey to segregate the nose from the face to ensure that it stayed very full and taut.
Please consider the results:
Please consider the results: