Digitprop – Paper design

Variation on a theme: Janus dog

As you may or may not know, Janus was the two-faced Roman god responsible for doors, gateway, beginnings, endings – anything transition.

One face would look back, and the other into the future. Whooo – the symbolism!

Now, for the first time in history, man’s best friend and this mind-blowing concept of ambivalence have been amalgamated into – the Janus dog.

Depending on how you approach him, he is a happy go lucky doggy or a miserable, tormented soul. Perfect toy to teach children a valuable lesson about the joys and perils of living.

Obviously, since the two faces look into opposite directions, this beast is somewhat hard to capture in a photo. Anyway, above are two copies, facing in different directions. This is how it looks from the side:

Actually quite some fun to use in playing with a kid:

“Eat your vegetables!”

“No. Noooooo. Noooooooo.”

“Oh, come on – look how sad doggy is.”

“Mmmhkay.”

“Ah, that’s better. Now he’s smiling.”

Results may vary, though, and  it’s likely that you will need other things besides this toy for raising a kid. Reality tends to be complicated, after all. Speaking of complications, this is what a pre-assembly double face head looks like:

And finally, as a direct comparison, happy face vs. sad face:

And here is the template (see also instructions here):