The Magic in a Design , The peacock you are now naming.
Hello everyone,
Paula asked me to talk a little about the way a puzzle starts its life. Trust me it does take on a life of its own. For the sake of this discussion I will address teaser puzzles because trick puzzles go down a different road!
Lets talk about the peacock puzzle, the one that you are now putting a name to........
The idea for this design actually was conceived two years ago. I was flipping through a catalog and there was a stunning peacock with gardens behind it, "that would make a great puzzle" I thought to myself. Then reality sit in and I needed to figure out how!
First came dozens and dozens of drawings of the basic concepts, How will he stand, will his feathers cascade down or will they be behind him? How do I want his expression to look, do I want to add the hen?
But for this puzzle, I got stumped on how was I going to create his feathers? It seems easy now that it's done.
I studied peacock feathers for what seamed like forever, They were long and graceful and so very thin. That don't compute well for puzzle pieces. so I had to put it a side and go on to another design. All the while my mind was turning its gears.
Then the epiphany came back in January, that I could use my power of "artist interpretation".
Instead of every piece being a feather, every feather could fit inside a piece.
So now I had to figure out every connection and every non connection to create the design.
Not enough connection means it will not hold together and to much connection means, you have to many clues. Trust me when Jennifer gets the design she is a master at what is "to many clues" She sends it back to me for any changes, and this puzzle had some.
when the design was complete it had to be tested, so I cut the prototype and the testers response was..... "Stave does not have anything like this, it's great"
The painting is one of the last steps, to me a lot of the beauty in this puzzle is its colors, after some tweaking the color was right where it needed to be. Then the puzzle get its name, and the name you give it represents everything I’ve done, and brings the puzzle to life.
so keep the names coming.
-Dee
Paula asked me to talk a little about the way a puzzle starts its life. Trust me it does take on a life of its own. For the sake of this discussion I will address teaser puzzles because trick puzzles go down a different road!
Lets talk about the peacock puzzle, the one that you are now putting a name to........
The idea for this design actually was conceived two years ago. I was flipping through a catalog and there was a stunning peacock with gardens behind it, "that would make a great puzzle" I thought to myself. Then reality sit in and I needed to figure out how!
First came dozens and dozens of drawings of the basic concepts, How will he stand, will his feathers cascade down or will they be behind him? How do I want his expression to look, do I want to add the hen?
But for this puzzle, I got stumped on how was I going to create his feathers? It seems easy now that it's done.
I studied peacock feathers for what seamed like forever, They were long and graceful and so very thin. That don't compute well for puzzle pieces. so I had to put it a side and go on to another design. All the while my mind was turning its gears.
Then the epiphany came back in January, that I could use my power of "artist interpretation".
Instead of every piece being a feather, every feather could fit inside a piece.
So now I had to figure out every connection and every non connection to create the design.
Not enough connection means it will not hold together and to much connection means, you have to many clues. Trust me when Jennifer gets the design she is a master at what is "to many clues" She sends it back to me for any changes, and this puzzle had some.
when the design was complete it had to be tested, so I cut the prototype and the testers response was..... "Stave does not have anything like this, it's great"
The painting is one of the last steps, to me a lot of the beauty in this puzzle is its colors, after some tweaking the color was right where it needed to be. Then the puzzle get its name, and the name you give it represents everything I’ve done, and brings the puzzle to life.
so keep the names coming.
-Dee
5 Comments
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Comment by June Herold on May 5, 2008 at 1:36pm - Please do not put your contest entries for the Peacock puzzle here under Dee's blog. Enter them in the Forum board for the Name This Puzzle, contest.
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Comment by June Herold on May 5, 2008 at 1:38pm
- Hi Dee...tx so much for the insights. I can't wait to do this puzzle!
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Comment by Tammy & Joe on May 7, 2008 at 6:16pm -
-Dee wrote: "and the name you give it represents everything I’ve done..."-
I feel like I need to go back and put a lot more thought into the names I came up with to do justice to your hard work.
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Comment by John Furlong on May 8, 2008 at 8:45pm -
Dee,
This is extremely interesting. I've been cutting puzzles for friends and family for a couple of months and I'm *starting* to get a clue about what makes a good puzzle. Of course, I'm freehand cutting puzzles from calendar pages so it's really worlds away from what you do at Stave with teaser and trick puzzles.
The whole concept of making a production puzzle is so different from freehand cutting. I never thought that you would design the cut first and have the painting done later (I assume there is a little bit of a feedback cycle in that). Well, I assumed that trick puzzles would have the cut worked out first, but I thought the teasers would more art work based. Also, having an in-house tester must be a boon.
One thing I'm having trouble visualizing is the idea of "Instead of every piece being a feather, every feather could fit inside a piece." - I've looked at the image of the puzzle, and I still don't understand. Is there any way you could show that without giving away crucial elements of the production puzzle? (I certainly don't want spoilers!) Also, I think your developmental sketches might be interesting to see - you should consider posting some of them to help illustrate the process.
John
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Comment by Andy on May 9, 2008 at 1:25pm - Wow! I just signed on and saw that I missed this contest. Too bad! This looks like such a fun puzzle. I can't wait to see what the name is and when it's available for purchase. I hope there will be more conest like this one and more opportunities to win puzzles.
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