Today, we have a special treat. What would Halloween be without monsters? I refer to the classic of all things that haunts our dreams at night, the Frankenstein monster.
Written by Mary Shelley anonymously in 1818 and then published under her own name in France in 1823, the novel, FRANKENSTEIN, was a look at science gone wrong, barriers crossed, the blurring of life and death. With the release of the classic horror film in 1931, the face of the monster was brought to life (and into our nightmares) forever after as played by Boris Karloff.
This scene of horror, the lab in which Dr. Victor Frankenstein worked on his hideous creation, was recently recreated in miniature by Debbie McGrath, (Debbie's Mini Thoughts and Creations).... Today, we visit the lab, which Debbie has called FRANK'S PLACE...
Debbie, who has been working in miniatures for eight years, usually did shabby chic creations, until she found this miniature body on a gurney. But what to make? "It had sat on my shelf, just looking at me and one day I had a light bulb moment, Halloween was coming up," she recalls.
"At first I was going to do a morgue - I could tell some very funny stories about that, I was a nurse for over 33 years and we have a wicked sense of humor - anyway after looking around the web for a while I came across and old clip of Frankenstein and I thought that's it! Frank's Place was born. As I wanted to make it different to what others had done I decided to put a modern twist on it, I got pictures of equipment that had been used in the film. I studied these, I made little drawings of what I thought I could recreate, I used the inside of an old tower from my son's old computer, plus anything I could find in my trash box."
And as all miniaturists know, this is what you save all that stuff for...
Debbie made the machines from bits and pieces that looked like the parts of the machine she wanted to create. "I would just keep adding bits till I was satisfied with the look of it," she explains. "One of the greatest finds from the computer was the little tubular batteries that are in there. Once the plastic coating is taken off you have fantastic containers. These were used for the bottles, I just had to add labels."
And that electric chair added later? Well.... "Now comes the confession, I had been reading 'Fifty Shades of Grey' (thought it was terrible, no real story line and full of sex) but read them all to see if it got any better, (it didn't.) Anyway they had spoke about his playroom!!!! and I thought of the electric chair...." (ha!)
The hardest to make, she says, was the power board since she had to match all buttons with the wires (and yes they do press down.) All are connected to the motherboard (from a computer.)
Tip: How to make a machine:
First get a picture of what you want to make, try to get as many pictures as you can from all angles, then starting form the base up, look through any bits that you may have and start to construct it. If it is a box shape I would suggest you make the shape with balsa wood, (this wood is very good as you can file it very easy into shapes.) Paint it either black or metallic silver, then add bits.
What else but a book on Frankenstein...
MONSTER by Dave Zeltserman, is a new take on the classic. Friedrich Hoffman, the so-called monster, recounts how he was falsely accused of killing his beloved fiancee, tortured and killed for his 'crime', and awoke on the lab table of Victor Frankenstein - a man with all manner of gruesome plans. We see inside his mind as he embarks on a single-minded quest for vengeance; but at what cost to the remnants of his humanity? Intense and Gothic, Monster conjures up nineteenth-century Europe in a blaze of depravity, excess and the supernatural, an ingenious tribute to one of literature's greatest works.
( - Christine Verstraete - http://candidcanine.blogspot.com)