The project I mentioned working on months and months ago has finally been released into the world after a long hand rearing via mommy eagle puppets production cycle in the Deluxe art room.
It’s a fuckin’ eagle piñata dudes! A giant mother-effin eagle piñata! And it took six months of my life to make. I’ve made a few “craft-eagles” before but none of them took quite this long. The hand stitched cross stitch eagle was a good contender but this one is the new reigning champ. This wasn’t my first time making a piñata either, and I don’t mean the kind that you make in grade school for Cinco de Mayo because you’re not old enough to equate the holiday with blackout drinking yet. I made a “test-run piñata” before embarking on the monstrosity above there for a friend’s birthday. It was a simple piñata that was made to look like her cat Captain Francis. It also shat boxed wine.
With the success of the Captain I figure what the hell, a piñata made to look like the anithero eagle’s gonna be cake. HA.. HAHA.. HAHAHAHA! no…
I started out organized. I made a scale diagram of parts, cut them out of empty Budweiser and Pabst boxes that were accumulating in the art room, bought the necessary colors of crate paper and started stockpiling newspapers. That’s where the planning ended. Everything else from then on was total improv.
There was a lot of cutting involved. I actually hadn’t banked on how much crate paper frills I’d actually burn through, or how many glue sticks/Elmers glue bottles/hot glue sticks. I decided to use glue instead of the traditional flour and water mixture so that it wouldn’t deteriorate over time or be total roach bait. Good call considering how long this was sitting in my living room in states of unfinishedness. Here’s some of those states I’m sure my roommates loved for six months!
Tail done, other feathers numbered and marked.
All feathers crate papered
Wings glued! That was a total breeze thanks to the numbering system, maybe the only truly easy part.
This is what the head was made out of. Those animal balloon things hurt to blow up with your lungs. Good thing I sprung for the pack with the pump.
This was the first layer of news paper, I think seven to ten more layers went on after this. The piñata would have been really hard to break through if it was used as piñatas are meant to be used.
Feather murkin… It was unintentional.
I somehow pushed through the rest of the construction without taking any pictures but it was mainly glue and some string. (the string was used in the tallons because I ended up making an intricate joint system with hama beads and newspaper tubes) There’s also wire in the banner to help it keep it’s bannery shape (that is some good english right there) When I took it to work it barely fit in the back seat of my Ghia. The completed piñata ended up being a little over forty inches wide. I left it on the coffee table and didn’t tell anyone about it just to see if anyone would notice a giant piñata chilling in the art room. It took a few days but word got around.
I had only really told coworkers in the art room that I was even considering making an eagle piñata but it was a surprise to anyone else at Deluxe and I never even told Julien. I didn’t actually know if Julien would even like it or if it would be used for a deck graphic like I intended. Lucky for me everything worked out and Julien seemed pretty stoked to have a giant antihero piñata magically appear out of nowhere.
Julien had Gabe shoot the eagle for graphics and now the eagleata is hanging opposite the pill eagle I made a few years ago over the bathrooms at Deluxe. Look at how much nicer Gabe’s photos are than mine.
The intended finished product.
We ended up making a few other things from the eagle, notably a tee shirt from the graphic at the very top of this post and it appeared in an ad and a short video featuring Frank Gerwer. <— click that link it’s amazing. Carlos the web dude animated the fucking thing flying and being annoying. Also Franks rad, click that just because Frank’s rad.
In the end I’m glad that my six month gamble paid off and that it was well received. The likelihood that I’ll ever make another piñata again is super low. I would rather join a convent than make another piñata.
