|
Junior Member
Offline
-->
Posts: 15
-->
Join Date: Mar 2006
|
I go by the name Cap, which is short for Capolan, the fictional realm of Nick Bantock's great work, who is also the author of the Griffin and Sabine series.
My name is Eric, which I seem to share with quite a few fellow diorama artisans.
Been married now to another wonderful artisan, for 9 years. Prior to that I was married for 17. I have three kids, 27, 27(not twins, adopted), and 26. As you have guessed, I top the age chart at 47.
I've been doing diorama now for over two decades and counting. I'm a disabled fantasy artisan with a penchant for historical and fantasy portraiture. Been in art schools since grade school, but never worked in the field. Like many, been saddled with IT or computers to make sure the kids and family never went without.
My favorite dioramas to do were always the fantasy miniatures, which allowed me to create worlds from scratch. Whether of my own writing, or the realms of established fantasy(Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Lord of the Rings), if I can envision it, I can bring it to three dimensional reality.
I came to Joes through my son, who wanted some sets that were hard to find back in NYC. So I used the talents to make him everything from arctic realms, to covert headquarters.
Having made friends and acquaintences through the Joe hobby, this led to a very fulfilling but hardly lucrative hobby of building sets and terrain for my fellow Joe customizers. It probably all started when I had debuted the Hadley's Hope LV426 ALIENS diorama in which I recreated the township, operations, and environs of the movie for a entire round of my customs based on the movie characters. One thing led to another, and then I was making warehouses, operations rooms, labs, city streets, bridges, all manner of sets for Justin(General Hawk), Camper(dan), and Spin Doctor, all of whom have really great ongoing diostories. Soon thereafter, it was full on years after years of making everything from strip clubs, to entire Arabian and American cities, with full lighting and even shops with full items, such as Wowboy's Springfield City. Doing these were a labor of love, because you don't make much money with it because as I told many of my customers, were I to even charge for time, talent, and paint at minimum wage, no one could afford me. Also, doing this sometimes can often make you appear like a Foley Artist, where the actors and actresses get full credit, but the sound people are never mentioned or remember. Thankfully, a great many of the longer customers are pointing all eyes in this direction when people have stated
"Where on Earth did you get THAT???" Others like Wowboy, and Jedsoon, have always shared where they get their diorama. His Large Army Joe film won an award at an international film convention, and he sent me a news clipping from his local township, with a picture from the movie with my dio in it. That was very much a surprise.
Just recently I did a great back office and hallway for the JCW wrestling gents, and right now, for my good buddy and fellow Sword of Shannara reader, I am making backgrounds of the environs from the books, such as the castle interiors shown before.
Since I have been doing architectural projections for hobby for over 20 years, I brought that aspect to the hobby, years ago, where you apply specialized papers to commercial foamboard via adhesives, thus creating some very realistic looking sets. Since then, it has been growing in leaps and bounds. Sadly, one of my fellow friends in the Joe community was making a prediction that set building may be replaced in future years with digital bacgrounds, like those one can make in programs such as Vue, and Bryce. I hope not, because the hands on love of doing sets and terrain is passion, which I have loved sharing with many here and elsewhere for a long time.
Until then, I am just honored and happy to be amongst other set builders and fellow artisans.
|