NVC Crew Custom Cheshire Cat!!!

I just got this really nice email from the Mad Canadian Dentist and Custom Toy Maker Dr. Bao from the legendary NVC Crew! I was going to paraphrase his story about the creation of his latest project, but i'm too lazy and I think it's such a cool story, you might as well hear it from the man himself! All I can say is another AMAZING custom Dr. Bao!! The fact that this toy actually plays real music is unbelievable!!

Hi Kirkland!! How are you?? Hey long time no talk to you!!! I was busy with this custom that I will show to you.....As you probably know, we gonna be at the Cheschire Cat show at gallery 1988.

So here's the little story about this custom and the whole concept behind it........Ahhhh you know how I just love to tell story!!!! Hhehheeh!!! :)
So you remember that we use to ask a close friend of us that is from Montreal too, to make the soundtrack for the videos that we made for our customs( for the Taipei show and the Grendizer video)......We use to help him for anything that is visual presentation....We'll these guys have a group called the Boom Bap Cats........so when we received an email from Jensen of Gallery 1988 inviting us to participate to this show.......I was surprise first because when I saw the artists list......I was like hey....we're the only non pro artist there!!!!!! :)

I accept of course and I was like...hey it's the perfect time to create something on the concept of a cat that is a music lover... So that's the initial idea. But at the same time I knew that this toy will be very difficult to custom because all the forms are too already very defined....... It's a cat......You know, a cat is a cat!!!!

So we start to brainstorm on how we can create something cool from this toy........So we decide to give this cat a funky and cool look...that's how we came up with the idea of the dreadz and the whool hat. To make the head more comlete and to give it some volume , we decided to add a huge pair of headphone. It really gives to it a street looking.



But Spive was like....hey we have to do something woth the body and the the tail.........Yeah the tail......This is probaly the part that I like the most from this toy.....It really gives to the cat a special look....a big tail.......so we really have to find something to do with it.........I was doing my coffee......when I just got this crazy idea........I turn my back to Spive and go like....I got it!!!!!! We have to make the trump of a grammophon with it!!!!!! It's the perfect shape to make this part of the grammophon with it. Since we're just big fans of vinyl records and anything related to it......Well we just decided to make a tribute to the ancestor of the turntable.....a grammophon!!! So we built a grammophon with pieces of wood that we cut and then glued all the parts together..... I even tried to replicate the kind of needle that goes on the vinyl record.....



So now we have a cat that seems to listen to music generated by this kind of grammophon. But I was like, hey if someone look at this custom.......the last thing that this person would say and want would be......if this thing can really play music it would be cool.......So that's it!!!!! Hey why not try to make this thing play music for real!!!!!! That's how we start to think how and where we incorporate speakers into it......We finally put the speakers on each side of the belley of the cat... Kirkland.....this part of the custom was hell to do!!!!! It's just crazy how hard it was to make all the parts fit well with the cat......At a certain moment I was saying to Spive ...hey why did we try to do this.....The custom would already be finish if we would not try this.......But he goes like....hey it would be cool without this feature but just imagine 2 seconds how much cooler and more complete if it can really play music.....It would be just like what people would expect.......I was like...ok ok.....And I finally make all this thing fits together.......Now you can plug a CD, MP3 or anything that has a jack plug and make this thing create some sounds!!! Of course the sound isn't loud and good......but hey....it was only for the concept and try to push it to the end. But now we did it...I'm happy!!!! :)



Now that the cat was finish, we have to try to create a background fot it.....So we decide to simulate like if the cat was in an alley in front of a wall covered with graffiti. So we painted a wall....if you look carefully the pics, you can see that there's bricks on the wall.........
To make it more street, we scuplted a garbage full of litters....



The last prop that we did, was to do the vinyl crates......Vinyl records need a vinyl crate!!!!!! More than that, we even replicated vinyl record covers that are most wanted from hip hop music producers all around the world......that was quite cool because if a real music producers see this thing....they would go....hey these guys really know what they're doing....these records are damn rare and are probably on their most wanted list if they don't have them.....



Finally, to make the connection between our custom project and the cheschire cat.....the original cheschire cat..... I thought that it would be cool to find if there was a real Alice in Wonderland vinyl record LP ever created.........And i found out a Alice in Wonderland LP created in 1968.....so that was just the perfect thing to incorporate to the project....It was to make people remember that this project was an Alice in Wonderland Cheschire Cat tribute.



So that's it Kirkland!!!!! That was the story behind this project. Think we came up with something quite special. I think it's really not a conventional custom..... Don't know how people will react to this.....but for us it was very cool to do since we very like the concept around this custom and I think we just push our concept to the end of it. I think it's quite complete....we might forget stuff but think that most of the big details are there.

So you can post our project if you want....I received an email from the gallery giving us special permission to show our project to the public.....so that's quite cool!!!
Here's the link for the show

http://www.nineteeneightyeight.com/cheshire.html

Thanks for your time Kirkland! Talk to you soon!!!!
By the way, where are you located from?? If you're near LA, you can drop by the gallery I will fly to LA for the show!

See ya!

bao
http://www.drbao-nvc.blogspot.com/