Making friends: How textile artist and author Cat Rabbit creates her books!

Cat Rabbit is a textile artist and designer working out of a fluff-filled home studio in Melbourne. She makes plush sculptural works of imagined characters and the worlds they might live in. She has collaborated with Instagram, NGV, Lady Magazine, Frankie Magazine, Odd Pears and Bakedown Cakery.

Today, Cat Rabbit is on the blog to take us through her process for creating beautiful picture books like her latest, How to Make Friends: A Bear’s Guide. Read on …

Cat Rabbit

When Nancy Conescu from Berbay Books asked me to pitch a story about three friends, I knew I really wanted to draw on my own experiences – both as a kid and as an adult – navigating friendships as an introverted person. I always preferred the quiet of the library or the art room to the football field or school socials, I always loved baking and sewing with my mum and sister and I had a sticker collection that I guarded with my life. The book is dedicated to my sister, who still to this day plays recorder with me (though lately it’s had to be mostly via FaceTime). So we can safely say that I am Bear, and this is somewhat of an autobiography!

I was so lucky to work with Nancy, as she had a very strong vision for the book and I’m very good at working under instruction; when someone sets parameters for me (otherwise I’m just too indecisive!) Nancy wanted a bold look for the book, with bright colours and not too much detail so the focus would be on the characters themselves, so the first thing to do was choose who those characters would be. We went through my past work and came up with a bear, a koala and a sheep. I then set about designing them so they looked relatable to little kids. I wanted their outfits to be simple, colourful and a little bit weird, giving them each a strong personality.

I sew all of my characters by hand and without a pattern – I work in a sculptural way, adding and cutting as I go. I always use an armature in my soft characters, and in Bear, Koala and Lamb I made these armatures a little more complex to allow for lots of different movements and poses. I also made their clothes removable so they can wear different outfits. To keep track of all the little felt elements I came up with a sort of organisation system. At one point I did lose one of Lamb’s shoes and had to make another, but then I found the lost shoe so now she has three. I think that’s the only thing I had to remake, so my system worked!

Once we had the characters, I sketched out the storyboard. Because the photographs take quite a long time to get right, it’s good to have every element of the story locked in before launching into the shoot. The storyboard went back and forth between myself and Nancy until we had the story plotted out to our liking. From there I made comprehensive lists of every single element I had to make for each scene and once I’d created everything I set each scene and did a quick test shoot of the book.

One of my favourite tv shows from my childhood was the Paddington stop motion series, created by Michael Bond and directed by Ivor Wood. The animation featured a soft toy bear as Paddington and most everything else was 2D drawn characters and backgrounds. I still find this style enchanting, and often start my day by rewatching an episode of Paddington. I wanted this book to draw on my love for the 3D characters on 2D backgrounds and also be bright and welcoming, with a bit of texture. I mostly used coloured cardboard with elements drawn on with crayon to give it a childlike feel – like Bear was in a world of her own creation. The coloured backgrounds also reflect Bear’s mood – yellow when she’s happiest – baking and drawing, pink when she’s earnestly trying to make friends, purple when she’s feeling emotional.

I wanted the story to have lots of funny elements to provide comic relief to the emotional rollercoaster that is making friends – and that’s where Bear’s toys come in. I really enjoyed the idea of Bear, a toy, having toys herself. When I was small I used to have quite a crew of toys (which I refused to call toys, instead preferring to call them ‘friends’). Bear’s stuffed friends provide a lot of the comic asides and also give Bear an audience for her feelings.

—How to Make Friends: A Bear’s Guide by Cat Rabbit (Berbay Books) is out now.

How to Make Friends

A Bear's Guide

by Cat Rabbit

Bear has lots of friends if you count her toys, but she’s not sure how to make real friends. And she especially wants to be friends with Koala and Lamb. They both have fluffy ears and like green things. What’s a timid bear to do?

This is a story about making friends while keeping the qualities (and quirks!) that make you unique.

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