Unlike other artists I know, I work best under pressure and within time constraints however, I’ve not left this project to the last minute by choice. It’s been so busy here at Pyewackett HQ that I’ve merely lost track of the hours, days and weeks and possibly even the year! Anyway, next Saturday is the Alternative Market in Derby hosted by Curiouser & Curiouser and I was planning a nice big centre piece for my display, namely a FeeJee Mermaid. One thing has led to another and as you may have guessed I’ve not even started so I had an idea...
Over the next few days I will be posting a daily blog on the build of the mermaid. It needs to be complete and ready to ship to Derby on Friday so it’s going to be tight! I’ve made many bizarre props and creatures over the years but never a FeeJee Mermaid so I will be pulling together a whole host of building methods, techniques and idea I’ve never realised to hopefully create something worth displaying this coming Saturday.
Not enough people in the prop building community share their ideas which is a shame. Some people guard their techniques like Smaug sat on his hoard of Dwarven gold. If we don’t share then our precious methods die with us. As Adam Savage mentioned at MakerFaire 2014 – no secrets!
In his own wise words -
"nobody is going to take your technique and then steal your ideas, nobody has a monopoly on being you and if you think that your technique is what makes you interesting you’re being ridiculous, so share your techniques! When you share an idea, somebody may come back to you with a better way of doing it and you’re going to learn something from them and develop your own techniques even further."
So, I’m going to cover what I do right here. If you want to try it for yourself and go for it, if you know a better way of doing something let me know! Either way sharing, experimenting and learning is what prop building is all about, so through my blogs and workshops I hope to promote that way of thinking.
Right, let’s get to it…
Here's what I've achieved at the end of day 1. We'll then look at what I did to get this far and any challenges faced....