Furbies and Sketchbooks

behold...

Alexandres Penumbra

(or just alex for short)

40 inches of... well honestly I'm not sure what they are exactly.

Happy Holidays!

Let me explain. I’m 26 years old, I’m a toy collector, and I’m also a classically trained artist and a costume designer. I’ve been around the block a few times in toy collector groups, and I have never seen ANYTHING like what I’ve found here. I was not prepared. The content of every other toy fan community I’ve been a part of has primarily been BST groups that treat their toys like investments. The most carefully taken photographs are ones of box damage or authenticity stickers. On a rare occasion you’ll get someone bragging about their multi-hundred dollar display setup for their thousand-dollar collection. The largest walls of text are dissertations on in-box collecting and scarcity. Pictures of the actual toys have a tendency to be bury or poorly lit, over-exposed flash photography with boring plain white backdrops. People who do custom work on their toys are as frequently criticized for ‘ruining the value’ of their toys as they are complemented on their work - and the work itself is rarely good. And then there’s Furblr. Beautiful photographs that demonstrate an understanding of mood, lighting, composition and display a keen and personal aesthetic sense. Furbies are not exactly an ideal photography subject! They have like six facial expressions max, and zero poseability beyond the ears - but here I am seeing hundreds of unique and beautiful photos of them - dressed up in, frankly, incredible and creative costumes and taken to neat locations for photoshoots - these are incredibly loved toys! If that wasn’t enough, the attitude of the fan community itself is just… it’s so good. You’ve taken the best pages out of the BJD community and given your toys names, personalities outfits - I really can’t stop gushing about the outfits, I never would have even considered costuming a Furby and I do costumes for a living! Broken or glitched toys are not seen as ruined or worthless, but are prized possessions, given humanizing descriptions like mute or sleeping or quirky. I read paragraph long descriptions of what others would see as simple programmed interactions described as elaborate unique personalities - the creative writing talent in this community is surprising!

All the furbabies

List of names: http://furbyfrenzy.com/1998-furby-checklist/