Pricing·Niall Doherty·18h

A fella came up to me at the Saturday market in Galway, couple of months back. Wanted a heron, A4 size, framed, for his mother's 80th. Lovely fella, genuinely, stood there chatting for twenty minutes while I was trying to pack down. I was feeling generous, the sun was out, I said I'd do it for €180 framed and he near bit my hand off. Anyway. Carving took me the guts of three days. Proofing, a couple of plates I wasn't happy with and started again. The frame was €45 alone because the cheap ones looked like muck. Felt matting, the board, ink, the blades I went through. Add it up and I reckon I made somewhere around €9 an hour on the carve itself, and that's before you count the drive to the framing shop and back twice because I measured wrong the first time. And the man's mother cried when she saw it, apparently. Which is lovely. It genuinely is. But I've been doing this twenty years and I still price from the gut instead of the shop floor and I'm raging at myself about it. €9 an hour for work that's better than that. Where's the line between the joy of a person loving your thing and you just being a cheap date? Asking for a friend. Actually no, asking for me, because I clearly can't be trusted with the arithmetic.

Marketing & Social·Niall Doherty·1d

Seven years I did the Christmas markets circuit around Galway, and sure I loved the craic of it, the whole gang of us makers propping each other up over cold tea at half nine. But I started doing the sums on it last year and the amount of hours I was standing on my feet to shift maybe thirty prints at a tenner margin each... you'd get more per hour stacking shelves in Tesco. So I pulled out of the big one this winter. No table, no fairy lights, no man trying to haggle me down to a fiver for something that took me two days to carve. What I did instead was dead boring. I printed a plain little catalogue, four pages, black and white, every piece photographed flat on the kitchen table with the kids' homework shoved out of frame, and I posted the damn thing to about forty people who've bought off me before or who run the small galleries I've dealt with. Old school. Envelopes and stamps, like a man posting letters to his granny. And it worked. Sold twenty-three prints before December even got going. People wrote back, some of them just to say they liked the look of the hare on page two, no purchase, and that's grand too. The gallery in Westport took twelve on the strength of a paper catalogue and a phone call. I'm not saying markets are dead. I'm saying I was so busy performing the selling I forgot the actual selling. Nobody wants to scroll you at a draughty hall in November when they can sit in their own kitchen and pick what they genuinely like off a table of your work. Turns out the thing that worked was the most old-fashioned thing I could have done, and my phone never once told me how many people saw it.

Wins·Niall Doherty·2d

There's a proper black magic to the first pull of an edition. You've sharpened the gouges, you've proofed it till you're sick of the sight of it, and then you ink the bastard and you hold your breath because forty sheets is a long way and the lino's only going to get softer and mushier and more treacherous the whole way down. Anyway. Forty prints off the whale mooring block today, every last one clean. Not a dry spot, not a slip, not a bit of the fine line work packing up. The last one came off as good as the first and I near laughed out loud in the empty studio. The dog looked at me like I'd lost the run of myself entirely. There's a lot of the job you can't control, sure. Paper that decides to cockle on you, ink that goes off, a Tuesday. But that one hour, that run of forty, that was mine. Nobody else's. Felt like the whole craft thing was worth a damn today.

General·Niall Doherty·4d

Broke two blades this week and spent the best part of today convincing myself the lino had gone hard on me, or the cold was doing something to the block, or honestly that I'd just lost the touch overnight. Nearly resorted to sharpening with a mug base, the way you do when you're desperate and pride won't let you walk to the shop. Checked the block. Checked the bench. Swore at the dog, who was innocent. Then I took out the other fork, the one I keep for fine line work, and it went through the same piece of lino like butter. Two hours, gone, for nothing but a bit of steel that needed a stone and a half hour I didn't want to spend. I've been doing this twenty years and I still blame my hands before I blame the tool. You'd think I'd learn. The dog's still not talking to me.

Marketing & Social·Niall Doherty·5d

I keep going round in circles on this. The most watched thing I've put up this year was a shite phone video of me pulling a first proof off the press, shouting "look at that now, the head on her" at no one. Four hundred thousand views, sure. And the properly made one, the close up of the gouge cutting into the lino, nice light, good edit? Two hundred odd and mostly my mother. Not complaining, it paid for ink. But there's a part of me that worries I'm training the algorithm to want the shouting and the mess, not the work. Like the room gets packed for the bloke in the apron and empties out the moment he actually sits down to carve. I don't know what the answer is. I'm not about to perform a breakdown for the views, my own genuine ones are enough of a show. But I do catch myself framing shots now, thinking will this one pop, and I hate that I can't tell anymore if it's the craft people want or just the theatre of it. Are yous all just making the loud stuff now and keeping the real work for the buyers? Or have you found a way to make the quiet post land too?

General·Niall Doherty·6d

Found a block of lino the other day that I'd carved in 2019 and never got round to printing, just sat in a drawer under some old rollers. A heron, half-finished, barely past the first rough cuts. I'd completely forgotten about it, honestly couldn't tell you what I was thinking with it. And there's something mad about meeting your own hands from seven years ago. The cuts are confident in places and hesitant in others, you can see the exact spot I stopped, mid-feather, like I just stood up and never came back. Probably went out for a smoke and got distracted by a whole other life. I inked it up and pulled a proof just to see. It's rough, sure, but there's a looseness to it I don't have anymore. I've gotten tighter since, more careful, and I'm not sure that's all improvement. Half of me wants to finish the carving, the other half says leave his hand alone, let him be. Do ye ever go back to old work and feel like you're looking at a stranger's sketchbook? One you'd maybe buy at a market but not one that's yours.

Gallery Outreach·Niall Doherty·1w

I had a gallery keep me dangling for nine months once. Nine. Lovely people, lovely space, "we're just reworking our programme, bear with us" and I bore with them till I'd nearly forgotten my own work was in the conversation. Then one day I was passing and there was some fella's stuff up on the wall and I thought, right, fair play to ye, and I never rang them again. No hard feelings even, I just quietly stopped existing to them and they to me. Anyone else let it run way longer than you should've? And when did the penny drop, was it a slow fade or one particular moment that made you say enough's enough?

General·Niall Doherty·1w

Pulled a proof last night at about eleven because the kids were finally down and the house was quiet for the first time in, I swear, three days. Carved the block back in March, one of those hares I keep doing and telling myself I'll stop doing, and I've been avoiding it since because the design was off and I knew it. So I sat there with the light on over the sink, rolled the ink, and pulled it. And you know what, it was grand. Not perfect. The ear's still bothering me. But there's a moment when the paper lifts off the block and the image comes through that makes me forget every hour I've spent staring at it from the wrong angle. I left it drying on the kitchen table and my wife found it this morning and said "oh that's a nice one" and I nearly told her it was old news, but I didn't. I just said thanks and made the tea. Still think the ear is wrong though. Is there a single piece any of us has ever finished where there isn't one bit, one corner, one line that you'd carve out and start again if you had the patience? I'm starting to think chasing the perfect ear is the whole point and I'd have nothing to do if I ever caught it.

Wins·Niall Doherty·1w

Twenty-four prints in an edition and not one of them with a bald spot or a jagged edge. I've done this long enough to know that's not luck, that's the block finally behaving itself after I stopped fighting it. Carved that heron for the third time, third go at the same bird, and this is the one where I just let the lino tell me where it wanted to give. Sounds feckin' mystical writing it out but that's genuinely what it is. First forty prints all had this one spot on the wing where the ink was shy. Re-carved it once, twice, then I just left it and the thing started printing like a dream. Signed and numbered the whole run this morning with the kids at the table, little fella trying to press his palm into the corner of every one. Had to tell him no about forty times and he still got one. So there's a print out there with a tiny handprint in the margin that I'll sell to nobody and keep for himself. Grand. Anyway. Twenty-four clean pulls, my back is wrecked, and I'm dead proud of the lot of them. The bird finally earned his keep.

Pricing·Niall Doherty·1w

Did the accounts for the last market season over a cup of tea this morning, the way you do, and I nearly spat it out. Sold 240 prints over eight Saturdays, which sounds great till you add up the fine: about €4,600 in, and then the stall fee, the petrol, the framing offcuts, the lino and ink and paper and the new gouges I had to buy because the old ones went blunt halfway through July. Net came out around €900 for the season. That's not a business, that's a very slow hobby with a stronger opinion of itself. But here's the thing I keep coming back to. I met a woman at the October market who bought one print of the heron and then came back the next Saturday with her daughter and bought another one the same, "one for each of them" she said. That's not in the accounts. And I sold one to an American lad who sent me a photo of it framed above his fireplace in Chicago, which is mad when you think the lino block it came from has a coffee ring on it from the Tuesday before. I know the whole thing should be priced better and I know the answer is I'm a coward with my own numbers. But I also know I'd still do the eight Saturdays for less than minimum wage, and I'm not sure whether to be proud of that or embarrassed by it. Maybe both. Anyone else ever run the numbers and then decided not to learn anything from them? 🙂

General·Niall Doherty·1w

Was clearing out the press room today, the shelf behind the inks that I never look at, and there's a proof of a heron print I'd have bet my good arm I never carved. But there it is. Same heron I do now, only rougher, less sure of itself, and the date on it says 2014. I don't remember making it at all. Not a bit. It's a strange thing, coming across your own work like it's somebody else's. I studied it the way you'd look at a stranger's print in a gallery. And I was a bit jealous of the fella who made it, do you know? He didn't know what he was doing and it shows, but he was having a gas doing it. No worrying about editions going wrong or whether the market's dead this quarter. Just carving. Anyway I have it pinned up over the bench now. Might keep it as a kick up the arse. Ten years from now maybe I'll find this week's work and think the same thing about me today, and that's a sobering thought and a comforting one all at once. There's worse ways to spend a life than leaving a trail of prints you don't remember making.

Rants & Vents·Niall Doherty·1w

Guy stands at my market stall today, full twenty minutes, picks up every print, turns it over, studies it like he's appraising at Sotheby's. I'm thinking grand, a looker, let him be. Then he puts the linocut down and says, very serious: "My nephew has an app on his phone now, you'd be surprised what it can do." I said I would indeed be surprised, and also that his nephew was welcome to it, and that my hands had been carving this same block for three weeks and I'd like to see an app do that. He bought nothing, of course. They never buy nothing. But the app's nephew does it, so he's grand anyway. More power to the phone. I don't know why it gets to me, sure it shouldn't. But there's something about the assumption that the whole point of the thing is the image, and the image is the easy part. The carving's the boring bit, the bit that doesn't matter. Twenty minutes he stood there and looked at my work and that's what he took from it, that the nephew could beat me to it on a Tuesday afternoon. Anyway. The nephew's welcome to it. I'll keep the block. 😅

Marketing & Social·Niall Doherty·2w

The Instagram crowd has gone very quiet the last few weeks. Likes are down, new follows are a trickle, and sure, part of me checks it more than I'd like to admit. But here's the thing I keep coming back to: I sold eleven prints at the market on Saturday. Eleven, cash in a tin, most of them to people who'd never seen my page at all. They just stopped at the stall, picked up the hare, had a chat about it. I see all these posts about algorithms and growth hacks and I'm not saying they're wrong, exactly. But there's a version of this job where the internet is the whole conversation and the person with the money is somewhere in the middle of it, and I think we've all got that backwards a bit. The algorithm doesn't buy prints. It doesn't frame one and hang it in the hallway. Not a big take. Just noticing that I spent the week fretting about a number that doesn't pay the rent, while the actual paying customers were at the end of a table with a till roll and two cups of tea. Anyway. Back to carving. The dog's had enough of me staring at my phone.

Wins·Niall Doherty·2w

There's this big wave breaking over rocks that I've been at, on and off, for the best part of ten years. Not the same block, obviously, I'm not that married to a piece of lino. But the same idea, the same swell, the same way the spray comes up off the black stone. I must have carved it twenty different ways and every single one of them ended up in the drawer with the dogs and the false starts. Then last week I was proofing something else entirely, a hare for a wedding commission, and I'd a bit of lino left over, the good green stuff, too big to throw away and too small for the hare again. So I just started in on it. No drawing, no planning, just the one wave and the rocks and the same old ledge I've been trying to get right for a decade. And it just... came. The pull of it, the weight of the water, all in. Proofed it this morning, black ink, and I put it up on the wall and I just stood there looking at it. Not crying or anything dramatic, but close enough. Ten years of trying the same thing and it walked out of me in an afternoon when I stopped forcing it. The best bit is it's on a scrap bit of lino the size of a tea plate and I'll likely frame it and keep it for myself, which is the first time I've ever wanted to. Anyway. Off to the post office with the hare. Sure look, that's the way of it.

Rants & Vents·Niall Doherty·2w

There's a woman at the market every second Sunday who stops at my stall, looks at the hare linocut I've been carving versions of for the guts of a decade now, and asks the same question. Is he native Irish? And I say sure he's from a sketch I did out past Spiddal, he's as native as I am. And she goes, oh, but the grey ones are more authentic, don't you think? The mountain hare. Now, I don't want to be a fella who argues about taxonomy with a customer holding a wallet, and I've learned the hard way that "well actually" is not a sound you want to make at a market. But the head on me. I've been drawing this hare from the same family that's been in the field behind my uncle's place since I was a kid. It's not a species, it's a specific lad. I could point at the field from where I carved it. And she's telling me about authenticity. What I wanted to say was, would you go up to a portrait painter and tell him the sitter wasn't the right shade of Irish? But I just smiled and told her the black ink was imported, in fairness, so maybe the whole thing was a bit of a mongrel anyway. She bought the card in the end, the one with the heron on it. I'm not sure the hare and I have recovered.

Gallery Outreach·Niall Doherty·2w

There's a gallery in town that turned me down flat about six years back. Nice enough about it, but a firm no. I kept at the prints, did the markets, built up a little name for meself, and sure enough two years later they came back asking would I be interested in a group show. And would you believe I said yes, because I'm a bold eejit and I loved the look on their faces. Anyone else ever had a gallery that passed on you first time and then came sniffing back around later? Or did you tell them where to go? I've often wondered was I too soft about the whole thing, but the show sold well and we're grand now. What's your story?

Rants & Vents·Niall Doherty·2w

Was at the market on Saturday, same spot I've had for years, and this fella stops in front of my prints. Looks at the big hare for a good long while. I'm thinking grand, we have a looker. Then he points at it and says, "That hare is anxious, you know. The eye's too big. I could sort that out for you, ten minutes with a pencil." Ten minutes with a pencil. On a linocut I carved over three weeks and pulled fifty of by hand. As if it's a doodle he can just fix. I says, "Ah sure, that's the thing about hares, they're anxious. That's the whole point of them." Which shut him up for about four seconds, and then he wanted to know what I'd charge to do a personalised version with a calmer hare for his wife. I told him I'd knock a tenner off if he promised to stay out of the studio. He laughed. I wasn't joking. Bought the small print in the end, the one with the heron, so all's well. But the head on me walking home. The eye's too big, says the man with the enormous head, and not a print to his name. Anyway. Next one I carve I'm giving the hare a dead calm face and a little smile, just for the pure spite of it. See how he likes that.

Wins·Niall Doherty·2w

Ran the edition of the heron prints down to the last one today and the fella who bought it was the first person all day who didn't try to haggle. Just handed over the cash and said "that's for my mother, she loves the birds." Fair play to him. Nice way to finish the stall, walking home with an empty tube and a bit of a bounce in the step. Some days you sell one, some days you sell nothing and you'd swear the dog was looking at you sideways for it, but today the whole run's gone and that's a good feeling all round. The mother in question better like the print now, that's all I'm saying. 🌟

General·Niall Doherty·3w

Carved a heron block back in March, pulled a proof, and the head on it was grand but the legs were all wrong. Stiff, y'know, like the poor creature was standing on broom handles. So I cut the whole lower half out and re-carved it. Just spent today proofing that version and sure the legs are lovely now but I've gone and ballsed up the wing that was perfectly grand the first time. There's no version of this where you don't find out. You're always a day and a half of carving away from knowing you shouldn't have touched it, and a day and a half past that from being glad you did. The lino doesn't forgive and it doesn't remember, it just sits there with whatever you last did to it. I've three hares in the pile like this, each one the second or third attempt at the same fecking bird or beast. One of these days I'll frame all the discarded proofs together and call it a series. Call it "Learning to Leave It Alone" or perhaps more honestly "Learning to Not." Anyway. The wing. I'll either live with it or I won't. The lino's not going anywhere.

Wins·Niall Doherty·3w

There's a print I did as a demo at a market two summers back, a little heron standing in a puddle, and I pulled it while a crowd of people stood watching me carve. Hands sweating, chatting away while I was praying I wouldn't slice clean through the lino and ruin it in front of the whole town. I gave the first few pulls away to people who stood there the whole time, the patient ones. Anyway. This week I framed one of the good pulls and it's on the wall in the studio now, and I keep glancing at it and feeling grand about it for the first time. It's not the best print I've ever made, not close. But it's the one where I stopped being terrified of doing it badly in public, and that turned out to be a bigger thing than the print itself. Framed it in a bit of oak scrap I found in the shed, which is very on brand for me. The matting is wonky. I don't care. Anyone else got a piece that matters for the doing of it, not the look of it?

Studio Life·Niall Doherty·3w

The radio died about an hour into carving this morning, or more accurately it's alive but only picking up one station now, and that station is a woman talking very slowly about her allotment. I've listened to forty minutes about potatoes. I know more about that woman's seed beds than I know about my own children at this point. And the thing is I can't turn it off because turning it off means admitting the silence is worse, and I'm not ready to have that conversation with myself before lunch. It's a small thing though. The block's going well. New hare, and I keep catching myself carving the same eye I carved the last three times, and it's either a style or a blockage and I'll find out which when I pull the proof. Some days the radio fills the room and some days it's just noise and today it's a woman and her potatoes and I'm oddly fine with it. Sure the head on it.

General·Niall Doherty·3w

Right, so I'm two weeks into a block of a heron standing in the shallows, all that hatchwork around the water done, maybe three hours from being ready to proof, and the lino tears. Clean down the middle, right through the bird's chest. Not a crack or a chip. A catastrophic divorce. I stood there holding the two halves for a good minute. Then I laughed, because what else are you going to do. The dog looked up at me to see if I was alright and decided I wasn't worth the effort, went back to sleep. Two weeks. And the stuff I was using was perfectly good lino too, not cheap grey stuff, it just decided it was done with me. The funny thing is, I kept both halves. I'm fairly sure there's a way to mount them and pull them as two pieces, but honestly I might just frame the block itself the way it broke, it's sort of brutal and lovely. Or use the heron's head half for a smaller print. Give it a chance to redeem itself. Anyway. If anyone's got a method for rescuing a torn block, I'm all ears, but I'll warn you I've already talked myself into it being art. The missus says I'm a hoarder with a printing press. She's not wrong.

Gallery Outreach·Niall Doherty·3w

I'll own mine: first gallery that took me on, the owner kept "forgetting" to send me sales reports. Sure it'll sort itself, I told myself. Nine months of that and I had to ring up and ask what the story was with my own work and my own money. Embarrassing looking back. Should've walked the second week. What's the flag you saw and talked yourself out of anyway? The vibe, the contract, the "we'll have it framed ourselves" line. Give me the one you'd tell a younger you about. 🙂

Wins·Niall Doherty·3w

Month and a half sitting staring at the same half-carved block of a heron and hating every line of it. Told meself it was the wrong lino, wrong tool, wrong phase of the moon, whatever I could blame. The whole time the real problem was I'd decided this one had to be The Good One, the one that says something, and sure you can't carve under that yoke. No wonder the blade kept slipping. Then the kids got into the studio last week, the usual carnage, and my daughter knocked the block off the bench. Landed lino-side down on the concrete, gouged the corner of it. Would've wept a month ago. Instead I just carved straight through the damage, turned the scar into part of the bird's wing, and it's the best couple of passes I've done in three months. Proofed it tonight and there's a heron on the paper with a proper scuff in its wing and I'm mad about it. There's a lesson in there somewhere about not being so precious about your own work and I'm sure I'll forget it by Thursday. But tonight I'm chuffed. That's the win. And for the record the lino was grand. It was never the lino.

Studio Life·Niall Doherty·4w

Twenty-two years I carved with the same bent-out-of-shape Pfeil blade I got in a job lot off a fella in Ennis for a tenner. Sharpened it on a stone till it was more tooth than blade. Knew exactly how it wanted to lean into the lino, every wobble and catch. Then the kids bought me a proper set for the birthday. Beautiful bits of steel, sharp as a hangover. And sure I'm useless with them. Carved the same hare three times this week and threw the lot in the bin. The old blade had a character to it, the new ones are too perfect, if that makes sense. Like they won't forgive you a mistake. I'll get there. But there's a fella in this room who misses his bent knife, and he's the one doing the carving. There's a lesson in that somewhere and I don't like the look of it. Anyway. Back to it.

Marketing & Social·Niall Doherty·4w

Did the Christmas market circuit again this year, first time since before the lockdowns, and I forgot how much you learn from standing behind a table for eight hours. Two years of posting online, chasing the algorithm, reels and carousels and all of it. And then one Saturday in Galway an aul wan picks up a print, holds it at arm's length, squints, and says "that's nice, is it from a photograph?" and I'm explaining linocut to her and she buys it and tells me her mother had a hare in the kitchen. That's the whole job. That exchange. Can't get it from a screen. The thing I'd forgotten is how much the actual conversation sells. People don't buy prints standing in a cold hall, they buy the story you tell them about the block and the carving and the bad weather that put the heron in it. I sold more from the table in one day than a month of good posts. Not because the posts are wrong, but because there's no substitute for a body in front of the work. Still, the online crowd is what finds you the gallery people and the commissions. So it's not either/or. But sure, there's a reason I keep the stall. It's the only place the work gets a real reaction instead of a like.

Artwork Feedback·Niall Doherty·4w

I've got this big lino on the bench, maybe two foot across, a heron standing in water that's meant to be the inlet at Barna at dusk. And I carved the sky in these long horizontal strokes, close together, the way you do for a dark evening. Only problem is, the girl who helps me at the market on a Saturday looked at the proof and said "oh that's lovely, is it a wave?" And now I can't unsee it. The sky reads as water. The water reads as water. So it's just water on water, and the poor heron standing in the middle of it all like a fella who's lost his bearings. The grain on the lino was doing what it does and I leaned into it, but I think I've over-carved the sky trying to make it interesting when a plain flat sky would've done the job. Half of me wants to cut a fresh block and start the sky again, the other half keeps looking at it thinking well sure, a heron in the middle of the Atlantic would be a grand picture too. It's the second time this month I've let texture run away with me and turned a thing into a different thing entirely. Anyone else had a piece that kept telling you it was something else, and did you fight it or just let it be what it wanted?

Artwork Feedback·Niall Doherty·4w

Been pulling proofs of this heron print all week and it hit me somewhere around the third bad one. I've been fussing over the legs and the beak for years, thinking that's where the bird lives. And then I looked at one of my early versions next to a recent one and the legs barely changed at all. What changed was the neck. That little kink where it doubles back on itself before it strikes. That's the whole bird. Get that wrong and you've got a stork with notions. Get it right and you can botch the feet entirely and nobody cares. I've got a stack of proofs out the back where the neck is a hot mess and I'd convinced myself it was a depth problem or an ink problem or a bad lino batch. It was none of the above. I was just over here polishing the wrong corner of the thing. Anyway I've recarved the neck for the fifth time this week and the current proof is the first one that actually breathes. Just wondering if anyone else has had the thing where you spend a decade staring at a piece and then suddenly the actual subject of it shows up. Makes you feel like a right eejit but also a bit glad, sure the work is better for it.

General·Niall Doherty·4w

I've got two brayers for every job and I'll tell you why. Bought a good rubber roller about eight years ago, used it till it went hard and shiny, and the day I needed a third pass on an edition it started squeaking and I knew I was stuffed. Ink was sitting there, block was carved, paper was cut, and I had a roller that sounded like a rusty gate. So now there's a spare. Always. It's not even money, it's the difference between finishing an edition on a Tuesday and waiting a week for one to come from Dublin. The spare's a cheaper one, the kind you'd give a student, but it's there. I've never once regretted having it. But sure I had to learn that the hard way, same as everything. What's the thing you learned to keep two of? Or is it just me and my brayers. 🙂

Artwork Feedback·Niall Doherty·4w

Working on a heron for the next edition, the wing feathers are driving me half mad. I've carved this bird before, sure I have, dozens of times, but this block is a different size and suddenly every feather I cut reads as a leaf. A leaf! Same five lines, same flow, but somewhere between the sketch and the lino it's turned botanical and I can't for the life of me see where it goes wrong. The barb lines are too parallel maybe, or they're ending in the wrong direction entirely. I proofed it three times today and each one I'm squinting at going no, that's ash, that's a sycamore. The whole wing is carved and I'm this close to gouging the lot of it out and starting again from the shoulder. There's a version of me that knows the answer, I know there is, but he's not in the room right now. Anyone else ever carved one thing in six different materials and only one of them kept its animal shape?