Second Star on the Right

Second star on the right and straight on 'til morning.....
.... yep, we're off to Never Neverland today to see my Captain James Hook.

If you follow Tall Tales Productions on Instagram (here) or Facebook (here) or even Twitter (here) then you've probably caught some behind the scenes of this character coming to life. If you live in Los Angeles and can get over to Burbank tomorrow night (Friday 5th May) then you can see him in person! He is about to become part of a group show at Center Stage Gallery, Burbank where the theme is Neverland. So he's a great fit!

About how he was made...

Like most of my work, he was made using polymer clay over wire. I sketched him first and tried all sorts of different ideas based on J.M. Barrie's description of him in the book. I wanted to give him a huge flouncy beard but since none was mentioned, I resisted. He is described as imitating King Charles II in his personal dress and wig, so I went that direction whilst trying very hard not to let him look like Disney's famous interpretation of Hook.

Captain Hook holds a lantern with Tinkerbell trapped inside it.The lantern is wired to flicker with a battery powered bulb.

He's 1:12 scale (standing at about 6.5 inches without his hat) which would make him 6'5" in real life. A tall and imposing bloke.

Enjoy the photos below and if you want to see more then do make sure you follow along on social media places so that you don't miss out. There will be a short video about him soon and I have a new witch character from Good Witches Bad Witches ™ for you soon as well.

“You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting.” ~ J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

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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!

Camera Test Take 2

The first test I did the other day (blogged about here) had some problems. I tried again last night and have popped the results up on Vimeo so you can continue to see my progress.

Annoying thing is the quality of my video went to hell when I had to compress it to upload it to Vimeo... vexing. On my computer it looks so sharp and beautiful and really got me excited about how gorgeous 'Myrtle the Witch' is going to look, but on Vimeo it looks so bad! Nevermind - gives you an idea of the camera motion which is what these tests are all about. :)

Again, the set is not dressed. This is not what Myrtle's world will look like... it will be far far better. What's filmed here is again what was left out from a recent photo shoot for Pixie Dust Miniatures.

I put some stills of these new miniatures below for your interest. 

Watch the most recent camera test here or by clicking the image.

Flash back - 'Ín the Workshop' (2010)

Because some people have emailed to see more of a project I did for Christmas 2010, I'm posting pictures of this. It's called 'Ín the Workshop' and I had a lot of fun with it. The 'workshop' consisted of an 'L' shaped conveyor belt in front of a Christmas tree and surrounded with little worker elves and a plump foreman. The elves were preparing for Christmas by making cakes, candy, gingerbread houses, gifts etc. All in miniature (one inch scale) of course and designed, built etc by me.

Caroline McFarlane-Watts miniature sets miniaturist miniature model-maker stop-motion film Nightmare Before Christmas