Getting on my Wick

It still bemuses me when I throw out an everyday word or phrase and find that no-one here in America knows what the heck I'm on about. A week ago, in a shoe shop, I asked the bored twenty-something female staff where the 'trainers' were. This was met with confused stares quickly succeeded by giggling. Here in America they're not 'trainers', they're 'sneakers'. I don't want to train, I want to sneak up on people, apparently. My friend translated for me and after I'd been led to the right aisle they asked "what word did you say before??!!" followed by "what language is that?" I said, "oh, it's what we call them in England" to which the response was "oh, is it like old English?"

Similarly I recently learnt that Americans don't use the phrase 'getting on my wick'.

Yesterday's commission saw me making dozens of 1:12 scale fiddly realistic candles with dripping wax, and minuscule wicks that I had to attach using jeweller's tweezers. The phrase "getting on my wick" sprang to mind for obvious reasons. Points if you bother to Google the definition and etymology!

On a side note, I was so pleased to attend the Annie Awards on Saturday evening with friends from Dreamworks who worked on the film which won Best Animated Feature - How to Train your Dragon 2. However, it was hard to see The Boxtrolls not receive as much recognition as I think it deserved.

And just because it's too cute not to share on this blog, my friend Nicolas Marlet (character designer on How to Train your Dragon 2) did a new drawing of me. It's meant to be me sitting at my local coffee shop, The Alcove, sipping tea.


Here are some quick candle photos from yesterday. They are not wax, but a blend of polymer clays with enough translucency that they do look like wax when you hold them to the light.
fantasie miniatuur modellen

Think outside the Box

Does anyone reading this blog not know that 'The Boxtrolls' came out last weekend?! No, thought not. Living up to their reputation, Laika (creators of Coraline and ParaNorman) delivered another visually stunning masterpiece of stop-motion film-making, in 3D - and it was simply flawless.

Only recently I stood at a party, in the middle of a crowd of Dreamworks artists and declared that no-one anticipated seeing 'The Boxtrolls' with more eagerness than myself. At that moment a tall and unassuming chap entered the conversation with the response that he might be just as keen..... seeing as he wrote it. Yep - that's how I met the brilliant writer of this film - Adam Pava. (Doh).

I usually encourage people to go and watch these rare and beautifully made stop-motion films for the aesthetics, but for this film I praise the writing as well. Travis Knight (Laika) described the story as "Dickens by way of Monty Python". Sounds about right. The script was loosely based on book 'Here Be Monsters' by Alan Snow and became a tale about a small English town of toffs with an underground community of misunderstood 'boxtrolls' who raise an orphaned human boy. Knight went on to describe the film as "a moving human story with timelessness and powerful emotional resonance." So there you have it - go and see it, enjoy the story and don't switch off in awe of the visuals!

I watched it last weekend and was hugely honoured to be invited to the celebratory Boxtrolls party at the home of the writer. I replaced the label on a mini bottle of Moet, with a Boxtrolls Champagne label I made. A small gesture considering the insanely impressive cheese display at this party. Watch the film and you'll get the cheese reference...!

Here are some gorgeous stills and behind-the-scenes photos of the making of 'The Boxtrolls'. There were 79 miniature model sets and 20,000 props created. (The last photo shows the scale quite well - much larger than most of my work). The seamless facial expressions of the characters were created using 3D prints (see first photo below) which the puppeteers switch out as they animate. There were 53,000 3D printed faces used in the film for all of the characters. It took the animators a week each to complete 3.7 seconds of footage.

For clarification I should add that I didn't work on this film!