Yes, I could be posting some badass Halloween picture I drew last night or something, but I didn't do one. What I did instead is right there to the left of this paragraph. And yes, I think that's the first photograph to ever appear as a thumbnail for the blog, and I didn't take it (my wife did). But more on that later...
Flames - Christmas 2010
We start quite a while ago. My Son loves firefighters and anything to do with them. Looooves.
He has a collection of many firetrucks from the very small, to the very large. He has a dolls-house thing from Sylvanian Families that exists primarily to have fires fought in it. He builds Lincoln Log structures just so a "fire" can spontaneously break out.
You can buy a lot of firefighting paraphernalia for kids, but my Son hit upon the one thing you can't buy - kid friendly fire. As tempting as it is to burn his dolls-house down it's not really very safe.
He has firefighters, yet they have no fires to actually fight. He pointed this out in his Christmas list for Santa last year, which I dutifully transcribed: "Fire, for my firefighters to fight." Sound logic there; doesn't miss a trick this kid.
So, what's a Dad to do? That's right, I sent off his Christmas list to Santa and let him sort it out. But he couldn't. On the phone he was the very next day (Post to both Greenland and The North Pole is very fast these days).
"Mr. Taylor," Santa says "I cannot bring your son fire, it's not safe!"
"Yes Santa, but he really wants some - I was hoping you could come up with a child friendly solution."
"Hmmmm," replied Santa, and went dead quiet.
"What you could do," I said, interrupting his no doubt unprintable thoughts, "Is take some coloured foam and stick it together in the shape of flames. You could do two versions, one with regular flames, and one with sort of pixelated ones for use with Lego."
"Yes," and unconvinced sounding Santa drolly commented, "I could do that, or rather the elves could." and he rung off.
Unconvinced or not, on Christmas Day there in the boy's stocking were two sets of flames, one regular, one pixelated, just as I'd suggested. Brilliant!
I don't have any photos of the regular one, but here's a couple of shots of his Dolls-house aflame, with the various Lego firefighting kits he had along with them. I have to admit I'm including the second one because it makes me laugh.
Update: My wife managed to dig out this slightly blurry shot of both flames from Christmas morning. Bless her.
"Droideka" Destroyer Droid
"Daddy," came the question, "Can you make a Destroyer Droid out of Lego?"
I have no idea what a Destroyer Droid is, so I look it up online. Oooh, it's a Droideka from the Star Wars prequels. I've never heard of them referred to as Destroyer Droids before (but then I avoid as much to do with the prequels as possible - apparently he saw one in a library book, and of course they're in the Lego Star Wars videogames).
I agree, and set to work. I spent ages on it, over thought it, made it far too complicated. I got fed up, finished it, hated it, went to bed.
He woke up, saw it, loved it. Kids eh?
But I could do better - if I cheated! I would look it up online to see if anyone else had made one. I would copy their design and, like the very best supervillains, claim it for my own! (Only to my son you understand, I was planning to be very honest about the whole thing to anyone to whom hero worship wasn't on the line).
I found the plans, I stole them, cackling and grimacing with glee. I finished it, loved it, went to bed.
He woke up, saw it, went and played with the original! I fessed up after that.
"It's not as good as yours Daddy." Kids, melt your heart so they do.
Here they both are - The one on the white background is mine, the other you can find all over the net. Yes, I think theirs is better, my son doesn't, so neeer.
Jack Skellington
I've been messing around with a piece of Software called Sculptris. For 3D Artsy folk it's a bit like Z-Brush for morons, for everyone else it's a bit like sculpting clay, but on the PC. It's free for download (currently) so go search for it if you're interested.
Anyway, my son had seen me flailing around with it and asked if I could make a head (which was what I had been doing - badly). I hummed and hawed and eventually asked who's head he wanted me to make. The reply, as you may have surmised, was Jack Skellington; the Pumpkin King.
OK, that should be easy, he's just a ball with some skull details in. And it wasn't to bad, right up until I had to add the inside of the mouth. This did not go so well, as you can probably see from the image. Not very exciting, but he liked it, so that'll work.
Interesting side story - he loves Jack Skellington because he's heard and loved the soundtrack to A Nightmare Before Christmas and seen pictures. He'd never actually seen the film. We decided to rectify that, since it's Halloween and all.
He got through 20 minutes of it, hiding under my arm for the first 10, and my wife's for the second 10 before we had to turn it off because he was shaking. After he went to bed he woke up from nightmares on a few occasions, one of which memorably began with him screaming "But I just wanted to watch Cars!" Parents of the year here... "Children's film" my arse.
C-3PO (on acid)
"Daddy," came the question, in the now instantly recognizable cadence, "Can you draw C-3PO?"
For once this would be easy! I could do that! It's C-3PO! How naive I was!
I knew things were not going well when he handed me my designated drawing materials: My newsprint sketchbook, a broken red pencil and yellow and black felt-tip pens (running out). I asked if I could at least use my pencil as well, and he said OK (Phew). That's really all there is to it, I was quite pleased with getting orange by blending the two felts and the red pencil together, but other thand that it didn't go well (and scanned even worse) - here's the result.
Link's Hero Shield (and a sword) from Windwaker
Link is the hero of the Legend of Zelda series of games, and Windwaker is a cartoon styled Zelda game that my son happens to love. He's never played the others as he's seen shots and had deemed them "Too skeerwy". He wanted to be Link this Halloween.
My wife took on the task of making his costume, while I was left with making the sword and shield. The sword was easy - he had a foam buccaneer sword from a while back that had broken, I just chopped up the handle and cut it down to size, glueing the end onto a part further down the shaft. It's not a very authentic Link sword, but it's the right length and looked cool.
The shield was a bit trickier. I wanted to make it out of polystyrene and then glue foam to the outside to colour it and give it a nice texture. The problem was that foam and polystyrene don't have many compatable glues that'll actually hold anything. I tried a few tests - Super Glue? Nada. Gorilla Glue? Nope. Foam Glue? Zip. Polystyrene Cement? Hahaha!
Eventually my wife took pity on me and suggested a hot glue gun. I ignored her, convinced that the hot glue would damage the polystyrene (and also secretly thinking that I knew better, what with helping Santa out with that flame idea last Christmas), but in the end I tried it out on a bit and it worked brilliantly. Rule of thumb: always listen to the wife!
After that it was just a case of cutting the bits and gluing them on (and gluing various bits of myself to both the shield and other bits of myself). I wish I'd bought more foam as I could have done the front surround in one piece if I had, but without it I still managed, with some unsightly seams here and there. I also had trouble attaching the sides to the front, so there's a gap there too. Hindsight is always 20/20 and so on, but the wife joked they were the lines from the cel shading (look it up if that meant nothing to you).
After that the only problem was attaching the straps (which were strips of elastic), but eventually the hot glue gun came to the rescue again, this time in a number of layers - one holding the elastic to a layer of foam, one holding a pin that went through the elastic and foam to the polystyrene backing, and one final layer holding the foam to the polystyrene very securely in those contact points. It held up pretty well.
I though the result was a bit crap, but it was all I could do without buying more stuff. He, on the other hand, thought it was the schizzle. Even better his costume in general, and his shield in specific, got quite a few compliments throughout the day, and savvy gamers were even able to identify him as being from Celda (as Windwaker is occasionally referred to. So, chuffed parents are we. It almost made up for the Nightmare Before Christmas fiasco. Almost.
Here he is in his full garb. The wife was especially proud of finding those boots, which were pretty much perfect, and his hat. You can't really tell in this photo, but the shield is curved ever so slightly - I was quite pleased with that.
Supercool, daddy-o!
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