Talking Stuffies

I always wanted to make my own version of My Buddy. Or Kid Sister. Remember those talking dolls growing up? Do you remember their songs? You do? Well, sorry. Now they’ll be stuck in your head for days. My first talking doll was Gary Oldman from True Romance. You know, when he played dreadlocked pimp, eating Chinese food and threatening Christian Slater. When you hugged him he would say inappropriate lines (all of his lines were inappropriate) from the movie.

From there, I illustrated and built other dolls that talked. Vin Diesel from The Fast and The Furious, Keanu Reeves from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Michael B. Jordan from Black Panther, Milla Jovovich from The Fifth Element, Catherine O’Hara from Schitt’s Creek, Steve Carell from The Office, and Charlize Theron from Mad Max: Fury Road.

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Fake Reporter: What was the hardest part of this project?

Me: Printing on fabric was new to me. I had to test how inks behaved on different fabrics – which ones held the ink and which ones bled. From there, cutting and sewing was time consuming but not hard. Finding little recordable sound modules to get the dolls to talk was also challenging.