The birth of Tapidou
Greetings to you, visitor, curious mum or dad, uncle, aunt, grandfather, grandmother...
I'm the creator of tapidous, these little fold-out territories that allow children aged 3 to 12 to tell themselves endless stories...
I had a blast making them, and here's the story of how they came to be... ❤️ 🧡 💛
My little family, my boyfriend, myself and my 2-year-old daughter, live in a 36m2 flat. At the start of the new school year in September, I was (still) trying to find ways of making us feel at home here, while we wait for the day when we'll be bigger...
I said to myself, «With little figurines, she tells herself lots of stories, so I'm going to put all my efforts into this play option...».»
I quickly asked ChatGPT to help me create a mat suitable for his little figurines (the Sylvanians). And that's when it all started...
The file generated by Pitou (ChatGPT) has become too heavy to manage... So I asked Pitou to teach me how to manage this vector drawing myself...
This vectorised drawing then became the basis for work with image AIs. A graphic exploration between digital design and hand-crafted creation: I moved forward with the will and inspiration that came from the surprising results of AI.
Like a botanist, I cultivated certain effects, threw out the failures, cross-checked the results...
Then came the time to create my website. But other ideas came along the way...
Tutorials and items to download so that parents can make dolls' houses out of 2 shoeboxes in just one afternoon...
Creating café fronts...
And then: it's going to be Christmas: what if I created a special Christmas collection ?
And then...?
When I was little, I wanted to be a painter.
I let myself get sidetracked from this dream, but I think that today this project was born to bring me back to creation.
Les Tapidous has enabled me to rediscover the link between art, play and handicraft. - an accessible project that allows me to imagine making a living from my creation.
I feel that at last I'm ready to make a place for myself that corresponds to my deepest desires. creating worlds, drawing and imagining.
I'm imagining play mats inspired by countries, cities and cultures, each with its own unique atmosphere.
I imagine I'm still learning, take painting lessons...
I can imagine...