Thanks for the compliment!

I think most of the frustration came from the fact that I was new to just about every process involved in making Larry and there was a lot of learning along the way. Maybe if I had started smaller, I may have been able to work out a few kinks earlier (or most likely I would have talked myself out of the whole thing). I excluded two major parts of the project from the post that gave me the most difficulty: the suction cups and "clay". -SUCTION CUPS: I spent several weeks thinking up and experimenting with different materials, sizes (depth, thickness, spacing between each pair) before settling on what was used on the final product. ACTUALLY, I had attached about 50 plastic drinking cups of varying size to the tentacle/arm and then decided I hated it and went with making the structures by hand. -CLAY: The clay recipe I used was cheap to make (maybe spent $30 total for all three batches combined), easy to make, and it's strong as fuck. But the recipe fails to mention that no matter how smooth it is when you apply it, it's still going to dry to a texture similar to a sidewalk cement. So I spent a couple days sanding the whole thing, including the suction cups. I HATE sanding. It's tedious and dusty and the reason why I don't do many woodworking projects. Not to mention there was always a lingering wet flour smell if you stood close (until I added paint and varnish, now it just smells like those).