Made by Noah Brennan
This project started when I first stumbled across Ultimatepapermache.com some time ago. I shared a picture of Jonni’s Giraffe with my mother, and she fell in love with it. What I didn’t know was that she had always wanted a giraffe sculpture to sit among her beloved plants. I offered to make her one for mother’s day, but there was a catch: She wanted a BIG version. I bought the pattern, enlarged its dimensions, and extended the neck. The process for making it was the same, except for the addition of extra support for the bottom of the neck.
I really love how this one came out, and more importantly, so does the recipient of the gift. Thank you Jonni for the pattern.
This giraffe is beautiful. What a great gift and great job you did. Congrats!
hello
do you offer the patter for whole giraffe?
No, I don’t have a pattern for the whole giraffe. You can make an internal armature for a giraffe using the method in this video. Be sure to also read Lezlei’s guest post, to see how she and her husband made a wooden frame for their giraffe.
I’ve been thinking about making a newborn baby giraffe, lying down, for ages, but I still haven’t found the time. If I ever do, I’ll try to make a pattern for it. 🙂
Hi Noah, I just purchased the giraffe pattern for our school performance of the lion king jr. As I was making the head, I realized it’s just too small. I noticed how awesome yours came out and was wondering if you would tell me how you got the pattern enlarged? With Jonni’s permission, maybe you’d share it? Thank you one million times!
Hi, Sherry! We’re doing LK Jr this spring, too! I’m also trying to figure out how to use this pattern to make a giraffe head/neck costume piece. Unfortunately, I don’t have Adobe Photoshop (nor would I know how to use it) so I can’t enlarge the pieces. From Jonni’s comments below it looks like you might be able to enlarge on 8-1/2×11 paper. Have you given it a go yet? Any lessons learned and tips would be so appreciated! Thanks!
Sorry for the delay Sherry, I didn’t see this message until now. I certainly would be willing to send you over that enlarged pattern, though some of the pieces have to be printed on separate pieces of paper and then taped together. You’d have to go through Jonni first though, and ask her permission. I would also presume your event has come and gone by now. I hope you figured everything out and it was a success.
Oh, I LOVE this! What was the percent of enlargement?
Hi Denise, thanks for the compliment. I enlarged the head pattern by 153%. The neck was a little different. For that I first measured how tall I wanted the sculpture, created a document in photoshop that size, assembled all the neck pieces together, then stretched them until they reached the edges of the document. It came out to a 268% increase in neck height.
Noah, you mother must be absolutely thrilled – what a nice gift. It’s going to look amazing among her plants. Do you have any tips on how to make the pattern larger? Did you do it at home, or did you take the pattern to a print shop?
Funny you mention it Jonni. Actually, I work in a print shop. I used photoshop to enlarge and separate the pattern pieces, then printed them on regular 8.5×11 paper. I didn’t have access to large format paper so… there was a lot of taping involved.
I can imagine that took a long time! I’ve heard that a printer can be set to print the pages larger, but on the letter size paper, and then you can tape the pages together again. That doesn’t sound very easy, either – but your mom’s giraffe came out so nice, I know it was worth the trouble.