I got my current schedule back from
Arisia for next years con (about a month from now), and it appears that modeling as a topic is not in the works. I did get the paper modeling workshop scheduled and that's good. As a result, I've started to edit some kind of a handout for the workshop, mostly to provide links for tips, reference information, and of course, downloads. Still, I couldn't help but worry if anyone will show. I can only hope that the panel discussion didn't work out because there was insufficient panelist interest,
i.e. talking heads, to do it. I hope there will be attendee interest anyway given what appears to be a high level of gadget and fashion interest among participants. Still, is it that dress up is ok, but little ships are not?
As I was writing the handout's introduction I noted something universal. All of us as children at one time or another entered into other worlds through miniatures. It may have been a doll house (or action figure headquarters), or it may have been horses or a truck, or even a vaguely spaceship shaped razor case. These were probably the earliest stories we created on our own. Sure there were books, but at first these are read to you, and often full of pictures. In our miniature worlds, they were our stories and our landscapes. It's true that this wasn't our only imaginative game play. We had our costumed games and our role playing to be sure. Therefore, grabbing our miniature representations of the world, say a
metal die-cast P-47, flying it around the room while making engine noises and strafing the mad scientist's missile base was just part of our childhood repertoire. Inevitably, at some point, like reading quietly to yourself, you realize you shouldn't do it out loud anymore. Play has to be reasoned somehow as sport, or theater, or
team building exercises. Imagination becomes more part of reading quietly to ourselves and we put away childish things.
Nothing terribly wrong with that I suppose. There were for me at least many worlds to go to in stories. There were strange planets, weird landscapes, bizarre situations and funny moments. There is also theater of the mind in radio and new scenes to be seen on television and movies. Invariably though, you cannot "go" to these worlds anymore than you could actually sit inside the capsule you saw at the museum (or in a book of a museum). The miniature can then return as a way to somehow
be there. I can't touch the real thing, because maybe it is long gone, too far away, too rare or because it was never real to begin with. Maybe it is a way to make real something you have always seen in your mind, but never realized like you saw it.
Some can write the world they can see inside into some version of reality. Others will paint and sculpt it out or try to live it out in costume. There are also some like me that want the solidity of the miniature, so as to see the curves and corners, the colors and lines. With a model you can try to visualize the inhabitant's point of view, or picture the scale of the
real thing (be it the
real Saturn V stack or some television starship). You can even somehow re-enact some historical moment, or a story scene like the
HMS Thunderchild facing down the Martian tripods. Needless to say it is also nice to be able to grab the thing, and when no one is looking, fly it around the room while making engine noises.
