All 7,777 of them come off the same bench, in the same five steps, by hand. Here is the bench — and the order form, if you want a go at one yourself.
No generator, no shortcut, no exceptions. A chimi that skips a step does not leave the room.
Before the face, the mood.
No Chimi starts as a drawing. It starts as a feeling someone had and could not put down — curiosity, patience, mischief, nerve. If the feeling is not clear enough to name in one word, nothing gets drawn that day.
Pencil, badly, on purpose.
The first pass is deliberately rough. A shape, a stance, an idea of where the weight sits. Most of them die here, and they are meant to — the bin beside the desk is part of the process, not a failure of it.
Ink it and commit.
The scribble gets inked by hand, one line at a time, no generator anywhere near it. This is where a Chimi stops being a pose and starts being a person you could pick out of a crowd.
Skin, fit, and the one bright thing.
Colour goes on last and it goes on with a rule: a warm ground, a fit that argues with it slightly, and exactly one bright thing you notice before anything else. Break the rule and the Chimi reads as noise.
The part that is not drawn at all.
Every Chimi leaves the bench carrying one charm — a short line about how they move through the world. It is written, not rolled, and it is the only trait that cannot be redrawn later.
Pick a skin, a fit, a head and a charm. The order form fills itself in, and tells you which of the four your mix takes after.
Pepkin
This mix comes out nearest to Clov. Always first through the gap in the hedge, and always fine about what he finds on the other side.
The bench does not draw. Every Chimi that makes it out of here gets inked by hand first — this is the order form, not the artist.
Inked, coloured, named and carrying its charm — that is a chimi. 7,777 of them, no two alike.
The bench is still being set up. Five steps, a charm each, and a place to mix one yourself — opening soon.
Chimikinz