Adrian Murray is a father, dental student, and talented family photographer whose teddy photos of his two boys playing with their “living” teddy bear have gone viral and spread across the Internet like wild fire. Fortunately for us, he just revealed the secret behind this amazing, posable teddy bear! Read on to find out how he made the famous bear.
You can see more from Adrian on 500px, his website, Twitter, and Facebook. This post was originally published on Adrian’s blog, and is being republished here with express permission.
Some of you may have seen him before. Sitting, talking, standing or dancing. Teddy. He’s been in quite a few photos of mine and many of you have asked where you could buy one like him; or at least how on earth I was able to make him stand.
Many people have tried to guess as to how this was done. Today I’m going to give the secret away! I’m going to quickly walk you through the steps on how to build your own posable bear!
Step 1
First step is to find a bear that you think would go best with your current style. This really can be any animal if you’d like. The key is to make sure that the appendages are continuous. Meaning, you want the stuffing to go from the leg, to the belly, and so on. You can work around this, but that’s not always simple.
You also may want to keep the size of the bear mostly manageable. You don’t want to do this with a Costco sized bear. You can get these anywhere. I got the one you’re familiar with from Toys-R-Us for about $10.
Step 2
Next up, go to a hobby store and grab some wire. You want this wire to be sturdy, but malleable. Get a lot of it! You want a fairly decently gauged wire so that you can hold onto it (and while you may thing hanger wire would do, it’s tough to work with). Don’t worry, the wire should only cost about $5-10.
The next part is where you take some time.
Step 3
Go home, place down your bear (or whatever animal you picked up), and grab a pair of wire cutters. Cut several fairly long strips of wire and make sure the cut ends remain fairly sharp.
Once you have the strips, start injecting them through the ends of the beast’s appendages; paws, feet, head, etc. Then run them from one appendage to another. Do this many times.
Make sure you find the sharp points while they’re inside of the animal and bend them into a loop. This will make it so the bear doesn’t stab your main subject while they play with it.
You’re Done!
Well there you have it! The secret to making your own posable bear!