Huggable Tee

Photograph courtesy of Phoneticontrol and Shawnimal

Making something out of T-shirt material can thing, but I think we nailed it.” mean different things to different people. For Pho- The two have worked together in the past and neticontrol and Shawnimal, it meant designing had a blast, so when Phoneticontrol found out Pulse Width (PW), a “happy little ’bot” filled with about the contest, he immediately thought of “stuffing and love. Mostly stuffing.” working with Shawnimal to create a plush. Once

The bug-eyed, blue collaboration was created as it was created, the duo decided that Pulse Width an entry in I Love Your T-Shirt’s (iloveyourtshirt. needed to get airborne. After a little old-fashioned com) competition for something made out of T- tossing into the air and rapid-fire photography, shirt material. Named after a term used in analog PW was captured airborne on film above Logan synthesizers, Pulse Width was designed in two Square in Chicago, where they both live. dimensions by the pizza-loving Eric Broers (Pho- Smith, who sells both big and pocket-size plush neticontrol), an illustrator and designer. “We both (“because small equals cute”), ends on a philo-needed to change our thinking a little to bring him sophical note: “All I can say about Pulse Width is to life,” Broers says. “It was an interesting chal- frumpy, huggable robots rule.” lenge. I designed the PW, and Shawnimal sculpted —Shawn Connally the crap out of it.”

Shawn Smith (Shawnimal), a multi-talented >>View photos: phoneticontrol.com artist who paints, sculpts, draws, and creates ^{shawnimals.com/projects.php} plush creatures, brought the vision into the third ^{studio606.com} dimension. “The challenge was getting Eric’s style to come through in plush form,” he explains.

“Somehow, maybe the planets aligned or some-