Monday, February 22, 2010

the adventures of cleo and toby



It must be close to ten years ago now that I came up with a theme for a paper doll set that relates to time travel. I did several sheets of illustrations, and had a nice time doing them.

Called The Adventures of Cleo and Toby, the backstory was a single woman living in a small flat in New York. A white cat named Toby lives in her building, wandering freely and provided with kitty-kibble via the soft touch of the building superintendent. When the super dies and a new one less fond of cats takes over, Cleo lets the grateful but still independent and irascible Toby live with her.

Newly cleaned and fluffed, Toby insists on sleeping on Cleo's pillow next to her head. Each night he does so, Cleo begins to have spectacular dreams that feel like real time-travel adventures. The next day there is always something relevant happening in the news, or even in her life, that makes the previous night's dream even more uncanny.

Only these two outfit pages were ever scanned into my computer, but I have five or six more sheets with the rest of Cleo's outfits relating to an adventure where she travelled back to the early 1990s.

Perhaps this is obvious, but had I pursued this project any further, the concept would have taken me via clothing to a vast, virtually endless array of fascinating time periods.
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5 comments:

Mike Wilson said...

Sweet fancy Moses, I want to know more about The Adventures of Cleo and Toby.

brenda cox giguere said...

Ha! It's nice to hear a passing idea meant to facilitate some fashion designs has some appeal on its own, beyond its original purpose. Sometimes the tail wags the dog.

Time travel themes have probably been done to death, but I've always been a sucker for them.

b

Mike Wilson said...

Time travel is a much abused device, yes, but that doesn't mean there aren't great time travel stories yet to be told.

For an under appreciated gem, I recommend Alfred Bester's short story "The Men Who Murdered Mohammad." Of course, I'm hopelessly biased so far as Bester is concerned.

brenda cox giguere said...

Hurrah; a Mike Wilson reading recommendation.

Thank you!

b

Tarnished Rose said...

Thank you for sharing these! I just love paper dolls.

Smiles~
Marilyn
(Thanks for letting us know on your Yahoo group about this blog)