This is not my image.

When I watched Big Hero 6 over Thanksgiving in 2014, I fell in love. It was a movie about design and engineering and robots and siblings, and there was great representation for Asians in Gogo Tamago - what was there not to love? The movie so clearly (to me) referenced MIT and the Media Lab, and all the total nerds that worked and studied there were so reminiscent to all of my nerd friends, except obviously we don't have crazy professors.

Well, that's actually pretty debatable.

We don't have any murderous professors set out to destroy fraudulent corporate businessmen, at least.

Plus, all the feels. I sobbed in the theater so many times when I watched it, and I sobbed again the second time I watched it at home. All the sobbing. All the feelings about Tadashi and Baymax and Hiro and my heart still can't handle it.

I've been pretty set on making a Big Hero 6 inspired something for a while now, but I never got around to it. I had it all imagined in my head - a Baymax onesie that was huge and cozy and warm.

The Baymax onesie never happened, and I kind of forgot about the project as I got caught up in the craziness of MIT and stress and work and life... until I came across Angela Clayton's videos on Youtube.

She's amazing and I'm constantly astounded at what she's able to make. I love watching her videos and her explanations of her creations, and she's got a really nice and soothing voice which makes her videos great for unwinding. A few months ago she made a How to Train Your Dragon inspired pyjama set - an elaborate hoodie complete with the spikes and patterns of Toothless, and a pair of shorts to go with it. It was one of her simpler projects - no boning and corsetry involved - and when I watched her vlogs about it, I remembered how I wanted to make a Baymax inspired project a while ago.

So, using her videos and blog posts as a sort of guide for how the pattern pieces should look like and a hoodie that I long-term borrowed (read: stole) from a friend, I drafted up a quick pattern for the base of the hoodie. I used a pair of Forever 21 shorts to draft the pattern for the pyjama shorts, leaving ample space around the sides so the shorts could be loose instead of form fitting.

This is a quick sketch of what the pattern pieces looked like. The hoodie itself is a raglan sleeve, so when the body and sleeve pieces were attached and the side seams hadn't been sewn up yet, it looked like a big cross with a hole in it for the neck!

I cut the pattern pieces out of white fleece that I had picked up at my nearby fabric store earlier this week. The seams were really simple to do up - the four seams to attach the arm pieces to the body pieces, the two seams to sew up the sides, the hems, and the hood attachment.

Unfortunately, since I eyeballed everything and didn't think to measure anything out - I know, I'm so smart - the hood doesn't actually match up to the neckline, so I improv-fixed it by taking in the seams around the neckline and, after attaching the hood, hemmed the rest of the open neckline. I thought it would bother me that it's not like a real hoodie where the ends of the hood meet at the center neckline, but I actually think I like it better - regular hoodies tend to be a bit constricting on my neck, and leaving the neckline open like this counteracts that problem.

So I guess my mishap ended up working in my favor?

The shorts were also really simple. I sewed up the pieces and inserted an elastic into the waistband, and that was that.

For Baymax's actual features, I cut the pieces out of black and gray felt that I had on hand. His face was two black circles and a rectangle for the mouth, and his crest (memory card inserting thing) was a gray circle that I cut apart. I was going to sew the appliques on with my machine, but I didn't have any corresponding bobbin colors and I didn't trust my minimal sewing machine abilities to be able to sew along all the pieces in perfect lines.

I hand stitched all of appliques on. It didn't take as long as I thought, or it didn't feel really long because I was also marathoning Pirates of the Caribbean at the same time. Jack Sparrow can get you through anything.

The shorts were going to stay white, but I decided last minute to cut out Baymax's helmet design out of some red felt and attach it to the corner of the shorts. The pop of red looks really cute, and I had some red thread to hand stitch it on.

Here's the final ensemble! The face is so cute and I'm really happy with the helmet applique on the shorts - they turned out a lot better than I expected they would!

Since the project is made out of fleece, the entire ensemble is ridiculously soft and warm. All in all, I think it was a pretty successful project!

Here's a selfie of me wearing it! I look so tired because it's past midnight, but I feel like I'm wearing a cloud. It's great.

Have you ever tried to make a character hoodie? I've had a love affair with hoodies for pretty much forever even though I barely wear them, and now I think I want to make more. If I do, which character should I try next?

There's less than 5 more weeks of the fall semester (!!!) which means it's time to start thinking about all the final projects. We just got the constraints for the final project for my Advanced Visualisations class, and I thought this week's blog post could be about exactly that.

For a little background, I took this particular class because I thought we were going to be able to do a lot of animation. Unfortunately, this was not so much the case - we explored a lot of different ways of visualizing architectural projects, but less so storylines and characters.

It was no surprise, then, that the final project had to revolve around an architectural project (existing, non-existing, a studio project, etc). However, I had already thought about this project and how I wanted to make an animation about a little girl and her pet, and I was really disappointed at first because I thought that my dream wouldn't come true.

During class, while I was desperately thinking about how I could come up with a way to showcase a building while also doing the animation that I wanted to do, I was able to come up with a storyline that I think will work.

I will be using a studio project from two semesters ago (read about it here) which was a fitness center that was all about manipulating a user's view. I think this works well because it will be a fun project to showcase, but also because I have the model for the surrounding area, which will help introduce the project. The building and surroundings will be 3d rendering, but the people and characters will all be 2d. A little girl will be walking her puppy down the street when suddenly, the puppy hears something from inside the center and decides to take off into the building. The little girl will then have to walk through the entire building to find her puppy.

I think this way I will be able to showcase the building (as the little girl explores it in order to find her puppy) while also doing a fun, cute animation about a girl and her pet as I wanted to do previously. The little girl will obviously be my little sister, Hera, who I already have a character designed around, but we don't have a puppy so I'm not sure what to model the puppy off of or what to name it (I did recently come across "Fifi" as a puppy name which I think sounds adorable).

Here are some of the inspirations I have looked at which helped me come up with my idea:

Both of these shorts show characters who explore different situations - the little blind girl who explores the city in her own way as she finds her dog, and the dog in Feast who explores life, food, and human nature. Both of these shorts will be helpful for me because I can learn about different styles of animation and explore what I'm more comfortable with, while also showing me how I can tell a story with minimal dialogue.

All in all, I'm super excited about this project and I will definitely update you as I work on it! Even though my professor said that the final project was "small" I really want to do something above and beyond, especially since I think it will be a fun addition to my portfolio.

What are you guys working on? Are there any projects that you're excited about?