This is what it’s supposed to look like... (Done by Rik Pierce) Last week I went on “vacation.” I drove down to NJ for a week-long workshop where I’d build a “medieval watermill” - very cool. Classes were listed as 8am-5pm M-Th, but they ran more like 7am-midnight+. I was the slowest one. I’ve never been the slowest at anything - except sports. The teacher said I was just “meticulous.” I told the others in the class that if I was going to be spending the next X years staring at this big thing in my living room, I don’t want to wish I’d done it better. But, it’ll be something I continue working on for a while.
...and this is mine
When it’s done, I’ll have the corps come over and
look at it. Bill says, “So it’s like a house you
live in? Or a dollhouse?” I
said, “It’s a house for mice and rats.” “Oh,
well a mouse and rat house would be cool.” “I don’t
do dolls.” I actually found
that once you meet some of these miniaturist people, you realize
it’s got very little to do with dolls. They make miniature
furniture, and food, and plants, and just about everything. For
me, “It’s
more about the architecture.” A lot of others
agreed with me. I never liked Toys-R-Us dollhouses because
they were so... plain, unrealistic, plastic and boring. What
do you do with a dollhouse? Shuffle around furniture? Play “the
Stepfords” with dolls? I never got that part. It was more
interesting to me to build a house out of a box and construction
paper. If I want occupants and drama, that’s what “The
Sims 2” is for.
This is where those delinquent
pigeons hang out and smoke...
(Taken from a church bell tower
in Basel, Switzerland)
I’ve decided on at least some of the occupants when I’m done. I’ll need
pigeons. Lots of them. I’m going for authenticity, and those suckers
do a lot of damage to buildings. I’ve blackened up the brick and
plaster above the fireplaces, burned the mantles, and there’s pigeon-poo
all over the chimney, gargoyles (grotesques), and everything else.
Again - what’s the fun in dollhouses if they’re pristine and not
realistic? :-) But, other than pigeon poo and soot, I’ve still
got a lot of work to do on the outside filling in the bricks and
stones.
As for other occupants... I told Matt I was going to build him more tudor-style
structures so all his transformers and Gundams have a place to
live. He said, “There’s a web comic out there just waiting to be written
about that...”
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