#throwbacktoythursday: Toy Diorama Dreams
My fascination with "toys" now in my adult life, no doubt grew from my enjoyment of cartoons in my childhood, and from my early teens; "comicbooks", but thinking back, they provided me with the allure and freedom of "imagination" … but the notion of "toys in hand", where from viewing Gerry Anderson's "Supermarionation" shows like "Thunderbirds" and "Captain Scarlet" - whose presentations of puppets in obvious built up environments constantly left me in wonder and awe - especially knowing the characters were shot within built up dioramic backgrounds, and model vehicles were used for wider shots, as seen in the video documentary featured above.
What I had gleaned from much earlier on, was the context of "space" to a figure, providing a semblance of "life" beyond a display shelf, even via miniaturized props and settings, to create a faux normality in a built-up environement. Or simply, it takes less of an imagination in an attempt to picture the character figure "come alive", when he/she/it is in an environment which essentially helps suspend such believability, IMHO, of course.
That, and also the conceptual notion of having your favorite fictional characters re-created in scale, and of the "potential" that "play" could be also "work", intrigued me! Of course you could say I was a boy dreaming to "get paid for playing with toys", and I will not deny you your opinion! LOL
Years later, as a working adult, as I begun to delve into the 1/6-scale hobby, "Thunderbirds" popped immediately into mind, and henceforth my constant fascination with building scaled sets in which the action figures were in, and no doubt this fascination resonated / affected my penchant for designing for television and feature films too.
Last year I had a chance to lecture (part-time) in "art directionand design" for a filmmaking class in a local institute, with one of the modules being "scaled model making", which alas I was not apart of the initial brief and plan, but came on board only near the end of submission … now THIS would have been absolute FUN and a joy for myself personally! LOL
Seen below are a selection of snap shots of some of the students' work, since Instagrammed, and as well uploaded in this dedicated Facebook album - of course featuring toys I'd brought to school specifically to take pictures with (yes, I am incorrigible, deal with it :p) MUAHAHAHAHAHA
Having blogged about X BOMBER brought up numerous views of Gerry Anderson shows, which led to this (near) random post - PERFECT somewhat for a #throwbacktoythursday, isn't it? Heh.
Featured below are some of my own toy smaller-scaled temporary diorama set-ups (mostly 1/6th / with pics clickable to original blogposts on my dedicated 1/6 hobby kitbash blog), done so many years ago … and I hope to delve back into doing them again soon - gosh knows I have the "props", I just need "space"! LOL
Cheers, and have a terrific toy-day ahead!
Andy TOYSREVIL
