Blog

OMFG.

New Homemade Heroes entry, and it is so fucking awesome words fail me. This one from Mia, who is apparently from here in NYC. Check this shit out. You can click on the pictures to enlarge them:

Hi. Attached are photos of my entries — the Sharik Hora, a sand demon and One-Arm.

I never intended to enter for lack of skill and experience. But I found myself thinking of the project. Around Halloween, I hung a 5 skeleton garland outside my apartment door and it struck me I could cannibalize it and make it part of the Sharik Hora.

Re the Sharik Hora: a task that got away from me and grew beyond what I intended. The dome-like top was part of a puzzle I embellished with tiny skulls. The dome sits on remnants of a cut-out puzzle that looks like the outline of bones so I thought it’d create the effect of letting in natural sunlight. There are 6 pillars — 2 fully warded pillars and 4 skull-adorned pillars made out of molding trim.  The pews were made from pegs, wood pieces, and my cannibalized skeleton garland. The altar has a replica of the chalice with a skull sitting on a forearm, standing on a foot.  The ceiling view from the inside consists of larger skulls and hand bones with my little skull chandelier hanging in the middle.  The outer ring of the floor is warded, of course, and is intended to have a glowing effect.  I randomly sponged white paint on it for a weather-beaten, desert look.

Re the sand demon:  Was a pteranodon — removed wings, remolded and reattached arms, made ragged teeth from toothpick ends, painted, glued all over then rolled in sand.  I wanted it to be able to stand on its hind legs as well as move on all fours for speed.

Re One-Arm: More comical than I intended. I planned to make it purely out of rocks like cairns, but it was extremely heavy and unbalanced. So I molded the parts from air-dry clay and stuck a few actual rock pieces. The feet/talons are formed over chopped up Mr. Potato Head feet and the one arm is also from Mr. Potato Head because I wanted to be able to move the arm.  I sponged black nail polish all over for a granite rock effect. Supposed to look imposing and strong but not graceful.  Well, it’s certainly not graceful.

Thanks to this project, I now own a soldering iron, miter saw, several types of glue, air dry clay, knives of various sizes, skeleton parts, puzzle remnants, among other things. I’ve also glued together my fingers several times. Tried gloves but couldn’t work with them. I also still have a Prince of Persia figure that I wanted to make into an Arlen but everything became a bigger project than I intended. Thank goodness for insomnia.

You’re very welcome to these creations, if they’re to your liking. I live in NYC too and would be more than willing to bring them to you as I don’t think they’d survive shipping. Honestly, I only entered for a shot at the Great Bazaar which I couldn’t find despite all efforts (including emailing international bookstores). I know there are copies on ebay, etc. but I oppose the idea of overcharging for books unless it’s for a cause.  But, win or lose, I surprisingly had a lot of fun doing it.

Mia

Unbelievable. My jaw literally hit the floor. My first guess was that  One Arm’s… er, one arm, was made from a Mickey Mouse arm. Awesome.

Still more than two full days to submit an entry! I will accept them up until 12:01 am this Friday. I will be adding some awesome runner up prizes (Including at least one Great Bazaar) to the list soon. They are well-earned, with all the amazing things people have put together.

Posted on November 23, 2010 at 6:25 pm by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Desert Spear, Fan Art, Fans, Homemade Heroes, Warded Art
13 Comments »

With only four days left until the deadline, we have another fantastic Homemade Heroes Contest entry today! It is getting increasingly difficult to pick a winner, but I hopefully have a lead on a couple of killer runner-up prizes. More on that when/if it is confirmed. In the meantime, check out this amazing entry from Carol in the UK, who you may remember from her awesome prize-winning tattoos in the Warding Contest:

Hi Pete,

Just managed to get an entry in for your latest competition. After looking through all my son’s toys I found a dragon that looked a little like how I imagine one-arm to be.

I took off his wings and half an arm and changed his tail for a spikey one. He’s also had a coat of paint and I set up the scene where he loses his arm. Hope you like it.

I am trying to make arlen from a doctor X figure but after a torture session with a scalpel and sanding tool he isn’t looking too good !!! I’m still working on him but I don’t think he’ll make it on time.

Bye

Carol

Posted on November 22, 2010 at 4:07 pm by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Fan Art, Fans, Homemade Heroes, Warded Art, Warded Man
2 Comments »

I was starting to worry I overreached a bit with the Homemade Heroes Contest. Oh, there have been some absolutely fantastic entries, but just a trickle compared to the other contests. Part of this I realize is that this contest was a little more skill-specific. Far less inclusive than “ward something” or “take a picture of yourself with a book”. Even the Fan Art contest had a lower bar for entry. I tried to keep it as inclusive as possible, but I knew Homemade Heroes was going to demand more of its participants, in sheer hours and material, if nothing else.

But damn, I thought the idea was cool. I still do.  So I made the prize the rarest and most valuable books I had to give, a complete signed worldwide first edition set of The Painted Man, The Great Bazaar, The Desert Spear, and Brayan’s Gold. I figured that would help make the extra effort worthwhile.

But then I think I got a little greedy, asking the winner to send me their creation in exchange for the prize. It felt… mercenary, and didn’t sit well with me. Why should I ask people to give up something they had spent so many hours working on? You people already gave me a prize. You read my books and visit my website. The pictures of people’s entries give me SO much joy, I don’t need anything else. So for the record, Whoever wins the contest gets to keep their creation. This Thursday is American Thanksgiving (and the last day to submit your contest entries), and I already have plenty to be thankful for.

But regardless, competition in the Homemade Hero Contest has officially become fierce, with not one but TWO spectacular entries that came in today. The first from French Jess, and the next, just a few hours later, from Yelie:

Peat,

I love your contests and love seeing what everyone comes up with!  I have said every time that I was going to enter but never actually did.  When I saw this contest I knew this was the one I had to enter!  I had about 20 ideas that I really wanted to do but alas, I did have to make a teeny bit of time for studying.  I figured that most people would do Arlen all warded up so that one was out. I decided to get my husband in on the fun and made him help me narrow it down.  His only stipulation was that he got to use Legos at some point in the process (I really think he just wanted to ward the itty bitty spear!).  I really wanted to do Leesha with her warded cloak and Rojer with his fiddle so since we couldn’t decide on one, you get both!

For the Lego part I knew we had to put the sandbox to use!  One of the most memorable parts in the book is when Jardir takes the spear from Arlen and leaves him in the pit to die (I mean really, what a chach!) so thats what I decided to recreate.  Jardir standing above the pit with the warded spear and Arlen having to face a sand demon with Jardir’s crappy unwarded spear he threw down to make himself feel better about leaving his friend to die.

Next came Leesha and Rojer.  First I had to convince my 6 year old daughter that her Barbies would look amazing in the clothes I was going to make and that Ken didn’t really need all 5 fingers…It took lots of coaxing (and I am certainly not above bribery) but in the end she decided that as long as I would make some clothes for her other barbies, she didnt really need them back 😉    I had the best time drawing the wards on Leesha’s cloak and making her apron with lots of pockets full  of blinding powder.  I should mention that my sewing machine decided to crap out right before this contest so I had to find ways to make clothes with no sewing at all!  Thank goodness for fabrics that don’t fray when cut!

My husband was the genius who made the rock demons and woodies.  He also carved out Rojer’s fiddle for me.

The scene I was going with is Leesha and Rojer walking along the path back to the cabin with lots of demons around them but the cloak keeping them away from Leesha and Rojer’s fiddle keeping the rest at bay.

Anyways I hope you like them!

-Yelie

Posted on November 22, 2010 at 1:44 am by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Desert Spear, Fan Art, Fans, Homemade Heroes
Comments Off on Homemade Heroes: Legos and Barbies

Usually, I laud the awesomeness of my readers before showing you their entry, but sometimes, when the reader is as awesome as French Jess, there is nothing I can add that competes with her own words and pictures. You will see therein that her boyfriend is awesome, too. This is good. I wouldn’t want her dating some chump.

Just a quick reminder, there are only five days left to submit your Homemade Hero Contest entries, so finish up the paint jobs and take some pix! Competition is fierce, but there are lots of prizes.

On to Jess:

Hi Peat,

I finally finished my entry for the contest. It took me a lot more time then I thought, but this morning, seeing the closing date approch, I decided to take all the morning to finish it and here it is!

Here is how I made it :

-It’s my boyfriend who gave me the idea, certainly exhausted to go every week end in search of hold toys in the bric-a-brac trades near our appartment. He is a great fan of role playing games ( he even succeded to recruit me for several Live action Role Playing games next summer! ) and figurines games (like Warhammer) so he told me he had a Balrog figurine from the Lord of the ring game he wanted to use in his warhammer game but he changed his mind so he had this Balrog and nothing to do with it. Like he told me, One Arm, on the cover of the french version of L’Homme Rune, his really alike a Balrog. I decided to do One-Arm, and we search in the Game Workshop website what could make a fine Arlen or Jardir. I remembered the warriors of Harad from the Lord of the Ring, so we want to the store and bougth a box of this warriors. One made a fine Jardir and I decided to make some Sharum as well.

-First, I had to cut all the different parts of the figurines and glue them together. I cut some parts that had nothing to do with the characters I wanted to make. For One Arm, I had cut a lot of parts, and I decided to create some new parts to ressemble more. I cut some horns on warhammer demons my boyfriend hadn’t use, and stick them after creating a base in modeling resin. I also created some horns from the same resin to give One-Arm his horned back and tail.

-After a few days of drying, I spray all the figurines with an under-coat of black paint.

-After a day of drying, it was time to begin to paint all of them. I decided to had some touchs of fantasy for One-Arm (painted the horns in silver and gave him some green glow from the Core) to give him more relief.

-After that, I decided to had sand on the base of each figurine, by glueing it.

-Finally, I draw wards on the spears with a permanent marker.

And here is a little group with Jardir as Shar Dama Ka and his Sharums vs One-Arm.

Hope you’ll like it 🙂

I also hope all this is comprehensible, because I have to admit it’s not a vocabulary I’m used to!

Have a good day

Jess

Posted on November 21, 2010 at 9:51 am by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Craft, Desert Spear, Fan Art, Fans, France, Homemade Heroes
1 Comment »

Just a reminder that Thanksgiving is almost upon us, and that means 2 things:

1. Buy pants with an elastic waist (my wife also suggests overalls)

2. The deadline for submitting your Homemade Heroes looms before us

So take a break from midterms/pie baking/leaf raking/hibernating and start sending in those entries!

Dwayne from the UK sent in his (possibly) preliminary submission:

Hi Peat,
This has been a long hard struggle and a far cry from what I set out to do. I had set out to make a complete set of chess pieces for each faction (Alagai, Chin and Sharum). But alas I had not the time nor funds to complete such an ambitious task, with university lectures and essays and my time away to study in Germany. But after blood, sweat, and a hilarious incident with framing wire, I had moderately finished two of them: One-Arm and Jardir. I also managed to squeeze out my centre piece and largest piece: approx. 10″ of One-Arm (complete with wound leaking green ichor). In time I hope to finish the set but alas this is all I have to enter this time.

Jardir, One-Arm Mini and One-Arm Maxi.

Regards,
Dwayne.

Posted on November 19, 2010 at 6:28 pm by PeatB
Filed under Contests, Homemade Heroes
3 Comments »