Dan Swearingen | August 24, 2010

Andrew likes making projects that make people laugh when they see them. He particularly liked buildings found in this great book California Crazy.

We spent a couple days tagging pictures across many sources and then I photographed his choices and we printed them out and sorted them on the floor.

This technique really helps because you can start to see natural groups — clusters of pictures with similar themes.

Next we asked Andrew to pick his favorite group of pictures. The focus came down to storybook architecture and crazy roadside architecture.

I proposed a project that had a bit of each: part of the building could be a huge bust of Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the structure would be a storybook style building.

The left part of the building is based on a portion of the Normandy Village storybook apartments in Berkeley, California.

Andrew and I roughed out a “sketch model” in 1:12 scale (1 inch to one foot dollhouse scale) to see if we liked the shape and Andrew really liked the direction.

Andrew loves being a snappy dresser when photos or video are being shot in the studio.

Next we committed the project to lumber and plaster.

The Rush-bust part of the project is based on a hand puppet Andrew made for his previous project enlarged by a factor of three.

We made the head out of plaster cloth laid over a balloon and then squashed it between two pieces of plywood to give it a head-like egg shape.

We roughed up a base to hold the head at the right height.

Using strips of cardboard that Andrew cut and sorted we built up the framework of the bust.

Using more plaster-cloth we covered the framework.

With the head added the effect was looking really good.

We started preparing wood to use for the walls of the storybook portion.

We bought several dollhouse window sets and pre-painted them.

We went ahead and built up the walls like a real house with studs and siding. This gave Andrew lots of practice cutting and gluing.

The bust need additional coatings of plaster cloth.

The back of Rush’s head is left open so small people can be installed inside.

Framing the attic.

The attic was framed with small pieces of redwood.

We have not finished yet but here’s where we have left off:

The dining area inside Rush’s torso.

We are still building and should finish this semester but That’s all for now folks!

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Dan Swearingen | August 23, 2010

Our son Ian became interested in martial arts a couple years ago and at the beginning of this year we enrolled him in Kung Jung Mul Sul (Korean royal court martial arts, related to Tae Kwon Do) classes nearby. As a project, Ian wanted to build a diorama of his Dojang (Korean counterpart to a Japanese dojo).

There were two main threads of construction for this project: the figures of the fighters and the building itself.

For the building Ian wanted to base his work on the dojo used in the training scenes of The Matrix.

 

 

 

We built a wooden box and Ian and AJ made detailed walls which were mounted inside.

The figures were made out of polymer clay over a copper wire armature. I soldered up armatures while Ian and AJ prepared clay to build up the figures.

Meanwhile, back at the dojang, Ian built up the walls out of styrene and balsa wood.

The figures came out great.

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Dan Swearingen | August 22, 2010

Ryan is another of our railroad-minded students and he chose to model a railroad yard. We used a classic John Allen Timesaver track plan and we added an Atlas turntable at one end.

We built the layout on a block of pink foam-board and glued 1/4″ plywood on the sides and bottom making a light but extremely rigid foundation.

Ryan soldered all the electrical connections.

Here the ground has been painted and the track has been airbrushed. Ryan is cleaning the paint off the tops of the rails.

The temptation to run some trains as soon as possible was irresistible.

Next we ballasted all the track.

Then we got Ryan started building some structures. He quickly mastered the plastic buildings.

We have placed the buildings on the layout and we’ll blend the bases into the scenery in the coming weeks.

Ready for some more scenery, grass, trees and trains.

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Dan Swearingen | August 21, 2010

Corey loves movies and movie-themed projects. His last project was a mostly scratch-built diorama of a scene from the movie Milk. Taking a bit of a break, Corey chose a Polar Lights kit of the Mystery Machine van from the old animated series Scooby Doo.

The figure painting was perhaps the hardest part of the project.

The kit comes with stickers (!) for the decoration of the van sides. My past experience with this kit is that the stickers do not lay down well on the compound curves of the van body so we did some trial and error learning to make our own decals for the sides.

The kit is missing the bumpers but is almost done.

The figures came out really well.

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Dan Swearingen | August 20, 2010

One day Sarah was working on making figures for the first time using polymer clay. Breton decided to try making figures too as they were following along in a book. Breton’s first foray into polymer sculpture was The Elf.

Having made an elf, Breton wanted to make a small world for him. He decided the elf was a lawyer who lived in the woods. He quickly came up with this concept sketch.

And he started working on this design for a diorama.

As the project grew we needed a quick oven to fit the entire project into. What we came up with is a glorified easy-bake oven with four 200 watt bulbs.

I know Breton was pretty sick of working on it by the end but all his hard work has created a really beautiful project.

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Dan Swearingen | August 19, 2010

This is a quick progress update and a state-of-the-project report. Erik is one of our railroad-minded students. In the spring we brainstormed ideas by collecting and organizing photos of scenes that Erik liked.

We found several trends in the photos that Erik liked and the one we focused on was trains in and around Sausalito. In the 20s and 30s Sausalito had a large passenger facility with electric, steam, standard gauge and narrow gauge trains connecting to ferry boats to San Francisco.

After we negotiated a footprint size for the project, Erik started by making a foam base.

Erik has completed the bay shore with rocks.

Laid all the track and preparing the electric third-rails — actually fourth-rails in this case because the Northwestern Pacific had dual standard-narrow gauge track at this station. Erik also painted the rails and the ties.

The third (fourth) rails ready to attach and the station platforms.

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Dan Swearingen | June 21, 2010

Rinny has completed her first project which is a video promoting her book Sweet Wishes From Oz. She did a great job on this and it is her very first video project.

Her book may be purchased at Oz books from the Cowardly Lion—Baum and More!

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Dan Swearingen | March 4, 2010

Chelsea Mattoon has been filming our workshops for MONTHS and has made a wonderful short video documentary about Autistry Studios.

Available in HD at YouTube

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Dan Swearingen | November 16, 2009

Lots of trial and error learning goes on in our workshops. Sometimes the emphasis is on “error.”

One of our students from an early workshop, Reggie, wanted to make a globe. We said “sure.” Our strategy was to build it out of layers of pine — and that was REALLY hard.

We all took turns rasping and sanding that #$%@ thing:

We made a “skin” for it using gords painstakingly laid out with huge rulers and large homemade compasses and Reggie drew his ideas of an old-fashioned map onto them.

In the end we had an OK first effort definitely falling into the “Done Is Good” category.

If we were going to do it again I’d unhesitatingly buy a big wood lathe and simply turn the big ball on a lathe.

Or, I’d take other’s beautiful work as a good example:

Today I saw this great project at the MAKE blog

From MAKE: Flickr member davesbit built a globe by making a mold from a beach ball, and designed a map for it using The Generic Mapping Tools.

The globe is about 20 inches in diameter, made from fiberglass and filled with foam. The map parts are built with the Generic Mapping Tools and glued on…

Making-of photos on the Flickr photo page.

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Dan Swearingen | November 4, 2009

Phoebe made this AMV (more of an HMV since it’s set to a horror movie, not an anime) in 2007 in our early “Girls who love anime” workshop we started as proof-of-concept for the Autistry Studios idea.

Footage from the original Night of the Living Dead combined with Marilyn Manson’s cover of “Sweet Dreams.”

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