Bringing There Goes the Galaxy to Life
Happy New Year, everybody! Last time I posted, I showed you my 1/6 scale characters from The Curious Case of Mary Ann books. So today I thought I’d share the figures I made for the There Goes the Galaxy trilogy.
It’s always a bit of a challenge to cast characters in action figures unless I had a particular actor in mind to lightly base things on — and even then, that person might not have a pre-existing head sculpt I can use. In the case of Bertram, I’d pictured sort of a grown-up Fred Savage or Elijah Wood type. Unfortunately, there was no good base to work from there because while there are Hobbit dolls, they’re way too short, even for our average height Mr. Ludlow. For Rollie, I envisioned a space version of an 80s rock star, so I had to wing that myself. Rozz, I had no one specific slated in my brain casting room to portray her but I could picture a pink-haired, punk bike messenger style for her. Meena, I always thought of as sort of an alienized Rachel Weisz— but alas, no Evie O’Connell heads to repurpose. And then, Fess, well, he pretty much says “kinder, gentler, shorter Cthulhu,” so I was definitely on my own there, as well.
So I scoured eBay and Wish for appropriate faces and bodies. Bertram started life as a US Agent figure (he would love that) and I sculpted the hair for him. For Rollie, I bought a completely a blank head, so I sculpted his whole face and hair. Rozz was a Barbie doll I dismantled and gave an edgier look to. And Fess was a Powerade bottle, wire, and a whole lot of Apoxie Sculpt! His glasses are made from wire and chandelier crystals.
Next, I built them an alien club to hang out in. The food serving robots are all made out of parts of Powerade bottles and bits of hardware I had squirreled away from other projects. Bertram’s snacks are all made from Apoxie Sculpt.
I thought the project was over — at least, for a while. But recently, I found a fold-up Barbie house for a whopping $3.99 at a thrift store, so I decided to transform that into Rollie’s hideout/library on the planet Ejellan, as a way of getting myself back into the Greater Communicating Universe again and potentially spurring on ideas for the next book. I’ll show pics of how that turned out when it’s done, but I thought you folks might get a chuckle out of Rollie doing his house tour in the Before pics. I can picture it now…
“Hm, some potential here, I s’pose. Nice kitchen. Decent plumbing. Proper power system. But the low ceilings and that fraggin’ color scheme…”
And with that said, I need to go sculpt a Hyphiz Deltan bed!
May this stellar new year bring you lots of joy, good health, and inspiration, folks!