Wednesday, August 18, 2021

The Narnia Nook and Eustace the Dragon

Not all of my artistic endeavors are video game related.  

When we first toured the house we now live in, I noticed a space that seemed perfect for a through-the-wardrobe Narnia nook.  At the time, it was only a few bricks knocked out of a wall, apparently in order to direct a refrigerator water line through the space behind it.  It took me a while to widen the small opening in the brick wall into a child-sized door, then chisel off the excess mortar from the back side of the brick wall, and off of the floor where it had dripped and dried.  I painted the whole space with layers of primer to fill in the uneven gaps, and then I started painting.

Here is my original rough concept, painted on a piece of cardboard that folds into four walls and a ceiling.

Lantern Waste, Caer Paravel, The Dawn Treader, and Aslan's Country

It's a tiny space, so it's a bit difficult to photograph, especially with a phone camera.


Very rough brick with lots of gaps

I used my phone's panorama to capture this in a tight space.

Rainbow above the Dawn Treader

The Dawn Treader

The Lion and the Lamb

I might go back and redo this castle; it's pretty basic


Peacock


Birds of Paradise

Another bird of paradise in Aslan's Country

And flying above the Dawn Treader, Eustace the Dragon, made out of clay with a wire skeleton

The lantern and sky

I used glow paint on the galaxy on the ceiling, and other elements such as the waves and snowy trees and hills.  It's difficult to see in pictures, but the effect is pretty cool when you turn out the light.



A great place to sit and read a book

Clay Figures With Family

 I took some clay over to my brother's house, and me and the kids (and my sister-in-law) made some clay figures, some Nintendo themed, some not.

Clay figures, ready to be fired



Abi's Poochy Pup

Shoshana's Ghost

Natasha's ...cat?

Eric's Mario

My Okami didn't turn out how I'd hoped

Becky's flower, butterfly, and ice skater

My Yoshi, also not up to par

Lucy got into the action later on with home made play dough

As did Shoshana

Abi sculpting

Shoshana's owl

Abi's Owl

Some sort of creature made of modeling clay by one of my daughters

The girls made a bunch of animals out of modeling clay

The creature from Fe

Figures made by Abi

Figures made by Shoshana

By Shoshana: Charmander, the salamander spirit from Frozen 2, and (on the left) also from Frozen 2: the nose of a troll, leaves representing wind, water, and the spark of the fire spirit.

Lucy from The Lego Moi


Clay amiibo Figures with Lessons Learned: Okami, Ittle Dew, Gris, Child of Light Aurora, Dixie Kong, Arlo v.2

 

Aurora from Child of Light.  The first time I tried using wires for support.

Gris

Before I figured out how to use wire in my figures (and other useful tricks), I had a few, shall we say, learning experiences, where figures didn't turn out as well as I had hoped.


Ittle Dew, made without wires, with some compromises


Okami.  This was my impetus to start using wires.  The legs buckled during firing.

Dixie Kong, using wires

My second try at Arlo with Pikmin, using wires for support


Here's a video where I discuss the making of these figures, and experimenting with wire framing.



Poochy and Poochy Pups Clay amiibo Figure

The Yarn Yoshi amiibo figures are wonderful and cute, but if you have a mind to complete the set, good luck finding a Poochy amiibo for a decent price. They regularly go for over $100 on eBay.

Thankfully, I have another way of obtaining a Poochy amiibo: making it myself.  I'm not a knitter, but I do work with clay.







Bwario and Bwaluigi Clay amiibo Figures - And More From My Kids

 

Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle is a lot of fun.  Rather than making boring old Wario and Waluigi amiibo for my collection, I decided to make the Rabbids incarnation of these characters.

The visual style is perfect for clay at this scale, and I'm very pleased with how they turned out.  I half expected Bwario's mustache to break or fall off, but (knock on wood) so far the worst that's happened despite a decent amount of handling to shuffle around my shelf is he's fallen off his base and I had to re-glue him back on (this time with super glue rather than hot glue).

I was home sick with my kids the day we did this, so they also made their own figures.  We made a video to show them off:


Here are some shots of their figures: