The Power of Suggestion

So, a little while ago, Ritsumei wrote a post about this site she'd found: One Million Giraffes.
Apparently, there's a guy in Norway who has a friend who doesn't think he can collect 1 million giraffes by 2011. 1,000,000 is a big number.. so this guy turned to the internet for help. Though, he did put stipulations on anyone aspiring to submit an entry: It must be something the submitter made themselves AND it can't be created with a computer.

I actually find it very entertaining that a guy insisting that people are too digitized and actively encouraging them to "try being old-fashioned for once" should be running a website, online with scanned pictures for this project, but beyond that one little, trifling point, I thought this was a fun idea!

Anyway, so it amused me, but this site's quest REALLY struck Ritsumei's fancy and got her imagination running wild with ideas! So far, she has created two entries: A really great drawing and an amazing fondant giraffe cake.

Intrigued by the idea, and drawn in by Rit's enthusiasm, I went and visited the gallery of giraffes. At first, my thoughts were that this was really cute and kind of fascinating to observe people bonding over giraffes and coming together to help this random guy beat his friend's challenge... but still, despite repeated, enthusiastic suggestions, I didn't think I'd create anything.

But, at the same time, the site HAD gotten me thinking.. and I even told a few friends about it.. and the more I thought about it, the more I began to consider making my own giraffe creation - IF I could think up something cool enough to inspire me to put it on paper... but probably not.

After a few days, I revisited the gallery and perused the submissions, just to get a better idea of what people were sending in. There are some amazing sculptures and drawings and other unusual mediums used that bespeaks the amazing amount of creativity out there.

Of course, there's bunches of little kid drawings that are cute (like this one, this one or this one), some really beautiful ones (like this one and this one) ... but I really liked the sculptures made out of every-day things (like this one, this one and this one and even this one).

But what finally decided me on creating my own submission was that there was just too much cuteness on this site. So, I determined that it was necessary for me to restore a little balance to the universe and set about drawing sullen giraffe, and the picture just evolved from there:

see it here