Here he is, my knitted rendition of the One-Eyed Raccoon from the much-anticipated Southern Gothic graphic novel Bayou Arcana. Ol' One-Eye is going to be at the Bristol Comic Expo May 12th - 13th if you fancy meeting him in the the knitted flesh along with Bayou Arcana's creator Jimmy Pearson.
I based One-Eyed Raccoon on Sara Dunkerton's original concept drawings from Bayou Arcana and started off by knitting him as she had drawn him: a scrawny, half-dead fella. What looked great on the page just didn't work out in knitting. Cue much unravelling of yarn and a bit of a think.
In the graphic novel, One-Eye is a dead raccoon whose body is possessed by a malevolent demon who is taking his final breaths and needs to find a new home for his evil spirit. So, I decided to knit him as a cuddly plush toy who had the misfortune to have the same experience, keeping Sara's original touches of the missing ear, wounds, and tail hanging off by a bone.
I do often feel sorry for fictional bad guys. I sit there watching Die Hard, thinking "Poor Hans Gruber, he must have had an awful childhood". I felt the same for this poor raccoon who had his corpse reanimated for such evil purposes: he didn't choose this to happen, it wasn't his fault. I think this comes across in my knitted version. One-Eyed Raccoon: evil through and through and stuffed full of bad intentions but you can still see the fluffy creature he was before the bad times began.
