Episode 44: Can We Bring More Abstraction to Miniatures, and Considering 3D Printing vs. Scratchbuilding
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On this episode, your hosts tackle two big ideas they’ve been thinking and talking about a lot lately. First up: The notion of throwing away all the “rules” and thinking more abstractly. This has been on Barry’s mind a lot, and he was struggling to articulate what he meant when he saw the piece above by Rich Bruna and exclaimed, “That’s exactly what I was talking about!” As was the piece below by Gary Baker, which we’ve talked about and featured on this blog before. (Gary also appeared on Episode 37.)
As a box diorama maker, Barry’s been pondering the abstraction/surrealism/expressionism (choose one or all of those terms) seen in the work of some pioneering filmmakers—those who didn’t try to capture the world we see but one that only existed on their screens. He’s wondering about the possibilities of incorporating those sorts of visions into modeling, specifically citing the 1928 French film The Passion of Joan of Arc directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. Jim adds Metropolis (directed by Fritz Lang, 1927), and F. W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu as good examples of abandoning realism in favor of a style that was, either by design or the limitations of the medium at the time, much more impressionistic.
The boys cite some inspiring miniaturists who’ve been mined these sorts of ideas with great imagination, including Kostas Kariotelis (below is his piece “Mephisopheles,” photographed by Penny Meyer) and the late, great Fletcher Clement. (Download the issue of The Scabbard that paid tribute to Fletcher here.) The podcast also praises Ingvild Eiring for her unique vision, which was highlighted on Episode 33, and can be seen in the piece below, “Eminently Severe in the Work of Violence.”
Your hosts’ own tentative first steps toward some measure of abstraction are perhaps best seen in Barry’s 2022 box diorama “Beyond the Seventh Moon” and Jim’s recent attempt to offer his take on the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage.
The boys feel like they’ve only begun to scratch the surface on this topic, but as always, they’re eager to hear from listeners about what they think. Leave them a message to air on the show here.
While Barry’s been pondering abstraction, Jim’s been elbows-deep in white styrene, enjoying the joys of scratchbuilding as he attempts a WWI Zeppelin gondola in 1/32nd for his next box diorama. He’s convinced that, although things could be a lot easier if he could simply 3D print one, he wouldn’t have nearly as much fun as he’s having with his big box of Evergreen and Plastruct pieces (below, with his gondola in progress).
As Barry points out, there is no stopping the forward march of technology—it’s happening whether we like it or not—but Jim is no Luddite. He readily grants that there are some fantastic uses of 3D printing, like the toy garbage truck he used for another recent box. He’s just reluctant to spend the hundred or more hours it would take him to master computer design for 3D printing; he’s in front of the computer enough, and it’s too much like work! In the end, it’s partly about using the right tool for the job, and partly about using the tools you enjoy using.
A topic only briefly raised on this episode: How will AI, another of those technological developments that can’t be stopped, change modeling? Is the day coming when Jim can say, “AI, make a design for a WWI L Class Zeppelin gondola circa 1915 for me to 3D Print?” Some may find that notion unsettling, or at least a big step away from the kind of thinking outside the artistic box that was the topic of the first half of this episode. But Barry is optimistic about all of this (and unusually so): One thing he says about technological innovations is that they can remind us what we value about being human and about art.
