September Sketch Fest Part 55

More selections from Sketchbook #29.

I like C-3PO.

I've been drawing Star Wars imagery since the first movie came out in 1977 when I would have been all of five years old (turning six in October of that year).

Preliminary sketches for (abandoned?) puppet show.

That's right: I was going to make a William Shatner-as-Kirk hand-and-rod puppet and perform Shakespeare monologues with it. I figured performing this material would be easy, since I could sorta do a passable Shatner impression and memorization* wouldn't be an issue because I could refer to the script while being hidden from view myself. I thought I might take it around to various venues in Prince Edward County, singing for my supper, so to speak...maybe open for real performers...

I hadn't (and still haven't) built a puppet of this kind, but once the idea entered my head and I started sketching, I grew more excited about the proposed project. Will it ever happen? Who knows? The night is still young...

Jim Kirk–on...tour?

It had to be Shatner in his Captain Kirk costume from Star Trek for recognizability and for fun. Making this kind of hand puppet would allow for a pretty good likeness, depending on my sculpting/modelling skills, but I began to feel that a sock puppet alternative would allow for greater expression. I guess it depends on the puppeteer; a good one could "act" well with the original design.

The inner workings.

Not that this was necessary, but my excitement got the best of me and I did this funny but redundant drawing showing how my hand would operate his head. It did, however, show potential scale issues relative to hand size.

WTF?

I don't remember exactly what this was supposed to be or what it was for, but a friend sub-contracted me to conjure up an illustration of a very complex geometric structure for a project he was working on. I realized this in the end in the computer using CorelDraw, but this preliminary drawing helped me to figure out what the heck was going on with all those curved planes. It's pretty –and pretty interesting, actually.

*Normally, my terror of having to memorize anything for a performance would sabotage any attempt at such and I would fail, miserably. I'm more confident speaking in front of a crowd if I know the material very well (like telling a story from my life) or if I could refer to notes (or both!).

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Axel Foley's Chevy Nova (1/25 scale model)

Multiple tributes, here. I remember first seeing Beverly Hills Cop on video at my friend Chris K's house, 'cause his family had a VCR and we'd watch tons of movies (and record music videos) together. The summer of 1984 was a special time for us (having created a strong bond in school since Grade 6 a few years before), going on biking adventures around the 'burbs and into the city, etc., and home video played an important role from then until I moved to the opposite end of Scarborough just before we started high school. We liked the movie a lot, both of us fans of Eddie Murphy from his Saturday Night Live days. I don't think I'd seen the movie since then (it would have been 1985, probably summer, since the movie came out in late 1984) and I became curious to see if it still held up. It did. It does. I found Murphy as charming as ever and the comedy (and even the action) holds up very well and its very re-watchable and very entertaining. Beverly Hi...

Time Travel Helmet

The theme for this year's Firelight Lantern Festival is The Time Machine , and Krista and I were going to put together steampunk-inspired costumes for ourselves (which is why the helmet's painted in hammered bronze), but, after shooting the announcement video (second video at the bottom of this post) I decided I'd look better with a lab coat, bow tie, and goggles for a generic 20th Century scientist look. I'd previously built a jetpack as sci-fi costume accessory for stiltwalking purposes back in 2015, so if I were to combine this helmet, the jetpack, and my refurbished blaster and I'd have a pretty good, mostly homemade, sci-fi costume for...something...down the line... Creature! It sorta looks like a weird electronic sea cucumber or sea anemone from the top. More dieselpunk than steampunk; I like it. They were originally crystal clear plastic, but I sanded the insides and outsides to better disperse the light from the LEDs (which I bought, pre-wired...

YT-1300 Freighter w/Cargo Carriage (scale model), Part 1

For a couple of decades, now, I'd been curious about two things concerning the Millennium Falcon: what it looked like as a brand new, unmodified ship ...and how exactly did it work as a "freighter," anyway? That other build takes care of my curiosity about the ship, this one takes care of my curiosity about the freighter question... Hail, Bandai. Bandai Star Wars kits are amazing. Their larger models are super detailed, but even these tiny kits (the Falcon here is about 1/350 scale) are superior to many previous and current Star Wars kits by MPC, AMT, or Revell. Mini sprue tour. Interestingly, this version of the Falcon is the one from Star Wars , having only three landing gear boxes (two more were added to the front for Empire ), but the larger version I built as factory stock had five because it was the version from The Force Awakens . My only (very minor) complaint is that these smaller kits only have stickers instead of decals (the larger kits...

The Naked Silo

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