Popsicle Stick Tutorials and Accesories, Lighting

I haven't pulled these out of my tool box in ages, in fact it's been so long that I'd forgotten I had two sets of these. I bought these Floral light strings way back around 2002 and was playing around with them lighting old maquettes that were in storage at the Blyth Festival.

I think my friend J.Wilson picked them up at a Michael's craft store, it may have been Lee Valley, but I'm pretty sure it was Michael's, I checked their website they have larger LED lights now that I think you put in the bottom of a vase to light flowers. It seems like such a crazy idea, the picture on this package, actually even the packaging looks like it's from the 60's, nice work Sterling Cooper. Anyways I'm going to stage and light a couple of sets over the next couple of days and then shoot them. Everything I've done looks so static and is shot from pretty much the same angle so you can see how it's built. Not anymore (not anymore for the next two at least) we're going to add light to them and when a light source is add, like any art, that is when it transcends and becomes truly interesting.

Working my way back through Book One of Any How Town and tidying up story bits that I dropped, trying to get a really good 2nd draft finished for the 29th.

send us your questions,

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Building A Popsicle Stick Army Checkpoint

Yesterday I posted a double slide top wine box conversion, here's what I did with a single slip top wine box. The top photo of the gates leading up to a checkpoint (no doubt going to the Gardan camp inside Any How Town) is made from the lid of the box.

The bottom photo is the rest of the box. The stairs are made of mini-jenga pieces that I added by putting the box on it's side and glueing the stair treads in place with the platform and supports. After that was dry it was easy to keep it on it's side and add all of the bricks, once all of that was dry I attached the ladder that I had built while waiting for the box to dry (always build things separately and then attach).

I may get to doing some tricks with lighting tomorrow and stage a full scene.

If you have any questions about the builds I've been doing or about Any How Town please don't hesitate to email me at madcraftshoppe@live.com I'd love to get a dialogue going with you. Questions and Answers will be published on this blog, names will be Anonymous or User ID names.

back to writing Book One and Two.

A.Shay Hahn

Building A Popsicle Stick Head Quarters, Wine Bottle Box Conversion

I'll probably just keep using the title "Buiding A Popsicle Stick (Blank) for these posts since they always end up being used somewhere, apologies if you find this to be false advertising. If you scroll down in this blog you can find the many different pieces and kits that went into building this set and others. This was a project that I built when I had run out of the Luon (is that how you spell Luon? I've never had to write it down) pieces that I use for bases and walls when I make these little sets. This was a double slide top wine bottle box that was in our basement and it quickly became this two tiered enemy headquarters.

How does this relate to the Any How Town books?  Featured here is a Gardan Sputterjack, yes our enemies from across the Golovin Sea also race sputterjacks they actually have more classes than just the Sputterjack but that is a story for another day. Late on this week I'll post the single wine bottle conversion that I did.
A.Shay Hahn
madcraftshoppe@live.com

Our Other Hero

Another redesign of our heroes, I decided it would be better to age both Oliver and Eaglet just a bit, they were 6 and 7 years old in their first incarnations when the series was about Brinker, Giveny, Wash and Denny (see character bios, 2009 entries) now those four are secondary characters, who are still very important to the story and Oliver and Eaglet are the lead characters.

In the first drafts of the first four books Oliver and Eaglet were 9 and 10 but I still felt that was just a bit too young for some of the situations they find themselves in so finally (hopefully finally) when I got into the 2nd/ 3rd draft writing I decided that Oliver should be 10 and Eaglet should be 11. I am happy with this choice for now and it feels right.

I jumped over to Book Two 2nd draft for this week and am trying to get over 10 000 good words down for the 2nd draft and track everything that happened in Book One and put it into the start of Book Two in a way that is clear and makes perfect sense, as the story of Book One begins the major arc another mystery presents itself in Book Two.

I'm having a great time with all this and by March 31st I'm hoping to have both 2nd/3rd drafts finished for final revision and then take a break to do a little painting and get into Book Three. I'll probably also be sending out some packages to agents then and starting that strange waiting game.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Building Popsicle Stick Windows

To build these window screens just go to the kitchen section of your local Dollar Store and buy the coffee stirrers, you get about 150 for $1.00 so you should be able to make quite a few of these. For the above sections of this build I used popsicle sticks to make sides for the pieces to make them look like grates. I want light to have more to do with the dioaramas when I actually start staging and shooting them and so these give great variation with light sources. As you can see the ground is just busted up ends from popsicle sticks, the walls are popsicle sticks placed to look like bricks and there are some stacked cubes added to give variations and support to the grates. I haven't painted it yet but this is a great basecoast colour as the look I'll be going for in paint is more of a Gears of War look, or maybe film noir, I haven't decided.

In the Any How Town series there are only about sixteen more pages to go until we're finished this draft of Book One. It feels great to get this close to having one book completed, it's a solid draft, now I'm just coordinating all of the players for the final confrontation and making sure I know where everyone is and what they're doing. Will be working through the weeked, at 40 000 words now and hope to hit 50 0000 on the 20th, since it isn't going to happen this weekend.

If you have any questions don't hesitate to send me an email at

madcraftshoppe@live.com

and remember to check out the mad craft shoppe to see what artwork I have for sale or just follow along on facebook at Andrew Shay Hahn (the mad craft shoppe) page.

A.Shay Hahn

Building Popsicle Stick WRECKAGE!

Awhile back I posted a picture of the Red Hulk figure and some great wreckage of a garage that was being demolished in a back alley on Queen West, I'd promised that I'd build some wreckage for the Any How Town sets. I finished these ages ago and here they are, as you can see it's mostly made of those great wooden cubes that I keep encouraging you to buy for your builds. I'm currently out of them right now and so is the dollar store where I usually buy them so some of the builds I've been doing have been put on hold. The bricks on the walls are popsicle sticks and the boards on the ground are just extra bits and pieces that I had lying around. The larger bricks (see last photo) are the supports that come in the package when you buy pre stretched canvases, they are great for all kinds of things when you are doing these builds.

Currently in Any How Town I'm assembling the last three chapters of the book and tying up all the loose ends. I can't wait for this draft to be finished, I estimate it will come in at over 50 000 words, it's a tight and economical story that really serves not only as an introduction to the world of Any How Town but is also a huge set up to go into Book Two of the series. I've been enjoying this time immensely and when it's finished and published I hope you'll like it too, I am still debating whether to epublish the book myself or go the old route of securing an agent and trying to have it professionally published. The first stop on this trip will be paying an editor to go over the manuscript and clean up all the crappy punctuation I've written.

 I'm sure I'll know the answer to the publishing question after I finish the Second Book. Luckily I already have 200 pages of it handwritten so it will hopefully take less time to get into proper shape.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Building A Popsicle Stick Army Barracks

I'm at around 32 000 words in Book One of the Any How Town series which means I'm about half way to my goal. Like I said previously I'm hoping to hit 50 000 words in the second draft by the 18th of February. I have a whole bunch of dioarma pieces I haven't yet painted so I'll add those here to keep you coming back to read about how the work is coming.

Notable stuff in this build is that the bench has a functional sliding hiding spot, the bench is a Domino set box that can be purchased at any Dollarama, the Domino's themselves are being used in a different build. The Bunk beds are made of popsicle sticks and the back walls are made of stacked toothpicks, held together by popsicle sticks just to give a different texture. I would've done the floor in popsicle sticks but it was faster just to rule it out since people will be standing on it hiding the lines.

Shown here we have our hero, Oliver Stinson (as always played by Anakin) and his new friend Canto (played by Short Round) trying to convince the army that they have recently uncovered an insidious plot by agents of the Gardan State to somehow harm every citizen in Any How Town. This happens somewhere around Book Five or Six and it's when Any How Town starts to feel more like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy as performed by short people in really big raincoats.

Back to Book One, things are really rolling.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

A Really Big Drawing cont'd

The really big drawing is coming together very slowly, I keep changing my mind as to which characters from the books I want sitting together, what they are doing etc. Anyways here are three of the boys from the 32nd Lemon Infantry, McGiveny Brigg, Brinker Ellis and Wash Stinson, haven't gotten to drawing McGiveny's tattoos yet, and next I assume I'll be putting Denny "Deathshead" Stinson on the girder somewhere. If you're curious just as to who these people are you can skip down to the 2009 section of the blog and read their early character profiles back when they were the leads in the Any How Town Saga not Olly and Eaglet who were just annoying kids that never left them alone.

We're at 25,000 words and hopefully we'll hit 50,000 by the 18th, aiming for the first book to be around 225-250pages long, Book Two is about the same, Book Three is a little longer and Book Four is very long, yes I've plotted them all out and written almost all of Book Two in rough and a good chunk of Book Three's beginning, in fact Book Three has TWO beginnings, it's that good.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com