"This square looking cat will look amazingly cool on your desk!" promises Katamari Damacy.
Look, Ma, we made it ourselves! Thanks to Blogfriend Brian of A Map of the Cat for inspiring us with his desktop shot of three paper cats.
We downloaded and printed out two sheets of cat parts (nine parts in all) and set to work with x-acto, steel straight edge and glue stick.
It took longer than you might think and wasn't as easy as it looks -- check out the number and tininess of tabs (red dots around perimeters of Meow Cat's head, body, ears, legs and tail). Lots of repetitive motions -- sort of in the spirit of those monks that meticulously rake the gravel in their zen gardens day after day.
Chipboard topographical model (detail) for a student proposal to reshape what is now known -- years later -- as Alumnae Valley at Wellesley College. Our right index finger was numb for years after due to stress pressure on the x-acto knife fighting the recalcitrant board.
The relentless repetitiveness of cutting, turning the sheet, cutting, turning the sheet, cutting recalled our labor in preparing a heroic chipboard model in grad school for Michael Van Valkenburgh's studio class, where we were asked to reimagine and reshape a neglected corner of the Wellesley College campus -- dominated at the time by a vast parking lot -- as an immense outdoor exhibition space for a world-class collection of contemporary sculpture. Checking over at Wellesley's site today, we notice that neglected corner has been renamed Alumnae Valley and is being restored to an idealized form of what it once was -- a moist meadow with native plant communities -- before Wellesley abandoned a 1921 site-sensitive plan, drained the meadow and sealed it off from its roots with asphalt. Hillary and other alumnae and friends can now catch the latest developments on the site via the Wellesley College WebCam. Very cool, and a great fundraising tool.
Comparing the actual restoration with our own student work, we tried, cinderella-shoe style, to fit our concept into what they're doing on the ground today and managed to convince ourselves it's not so far off. We had proposed a more formal version of bringing the water back into the meadow and berming up the eastern edge of the site where it abuts the main campus to better define the sense of place.
Update: Speaking of animals with four legs -- not to mention six, eight or more (centipedes and millipedes welcome) -- the Friday Ark is open for business over at Modulator.
That's just downright frightening.
Posted by: Laurence Simon | May 06, 2005 at 02:58 PM
Meow Cat isn't frightening.
Meow Cat just wants love. Or tuna. Polygonal tuna.
Or something.
Nice job, Sissy.
Posted by: Brian | May 06, 2005 at 09:02 PM
he's infected you!!!!
Posted by: gen | May 06, 2005 at 09:08 PM
Hello!
I want to make the meow cat, but I can't find the file. Do you still have the file with you? If so, can you please send it to my email address. please please... Thank you very much!
Posted by: Jeff | September 15, 2007 at 11:24 PM
Jeff --
It looks like Namco retired their Katamari Damacy page that had the Meow Cat, and I don't seem to have saved the full-size images.
But a little googling brought up another paper model that might be a good substitute for you: American Shorthair
If you do decide to make it, send me a photo if you like, and I may blog about it. :-)
Posted by: Sissy Willis | September 16, 2007 at 07:15 AM
http://www.moreprime.com/2007/12/26/katamari-damacy-papercrafts/
I've found this page have this cat papercrafts!!
Posted by: Daisy | March 01, 2008 at 11:29 AM