Meet Fill Spector: A Mysterious Puppy That Fits Everywhere

While Phil Spector generally gives us the creeps, [“Fill Spector,”]( http://www.w0w.co.jp/#/en/original-work/short-films/36fillspector/) created by Tokyo and London-based design studio WOW, is a different species that’s sure to attract your loving affection. In designer Kazumasa Teshigawara’s creative imagination, Fill is a fluffy dog-like creature that likes to squeeze itself himself into any space. While Fill’s story and its actual function is still being developed by the designer’s team, it currently lives on online.

Along wiith WOW’s previously released Visua Musio app, which allows you to compose music with geometric shapes, Fill Spector is another example of WOW’s originality that inspires creative ways to communicate visually. Curious about the quirky concept behind Fill, we caught up with art director Kazumasa Teshigawara to find out more about his unusual pet.

Creators Project: How did you come up with the idea for Fill Spector?
Kazumasa Teshigawara: Well, I am always intrigued by the sense of being compressed or pushed into something. Something is supposed to be inflated, but then something else pushes and forces that something to take shape. I can see that there is a relationship of force between things. That can be fun and full of humor, or it can be very frightening. I got a hint from this phenomenon to pay attention to space and how it is being filled. Say, for example, if you shove a stuffed animal into a small case or some sort of a mold, while that stuffed animal gets squashed, the space inside the case gets “filled,” which is why I decided for this little yellow thing to have characteristics or tendency to fill in the gap, and named him “Fill.”

Fill was born out of that attraction towards the sense of being compressed. Something like that can be found very often in our everyday lives, and I was actually inspired to make Fill Spector from a type of food. What kind of food? … That is something I could not tell you here.

Does Fill Spector have anything to do with Phil Spector?
Absolutely. I have listened to The Beatles since I was young, and knew about the strange ways of Phil Spector’s sound production. His work, like “Wall of Sound,” is just like filling a gap with each sound. Fill fills space, and Phil Spector fills space with sound. Quite a match, don’t you think? In Japanese, there is no difference between Phill and Fill. Pronounced or spelled, they are both just “フィル,” so I swapped Phil for Fill… and we got Fill Spector.

Where does Fill come from? What is he made out of? And how old is he right now?
We are going to be revealing the story line and where he came from later on in the project. He is an extremely lightweight being. He can change his shape in any way he likes, but he was molded to what looks like a dog for a long time and is comfortable in that shape. What is inside of him is supposed to be that very important “something” that is within each one of us. How old he? Well at least in human years, he is about 10-years-old (that is since he was reborn).

Besides the website, where else can we see Fill in action?
Right now the only places you can see Fill in action are his website and his Tumblr, where there are some pictures and conceptual animations.

How do you see Fill Spector developing in the future?
We are planning on launching web-based series for Fill, and also planning on releasing a “Fill Spector” iPhone app, both at some point in 2013. If you have some input or an opinion about Fill Spector, please feel free to contact us at: info[at]w0w.co.jp I would be very happy to hear your insight ;)

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Images courtesy of WOW.

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