Howl's Moving Castle: The Ingarian Empire (5th of July - Sculptor Needed)

[Mr.Marx]

As much as I love the movie, I think its a mixed mad in cinema. The painted background and general scenery are an absolute treat to look at, but some of the animations do start to look a bit flat when inflated to that size truth be. The war scenes with bird howl are probably the best as the smoke and grime add a lot of texture to the scenes that work great on the big silver. The fact that the castle was based on CG also showed a bit more, which was a pity. I think that while iconic the castle is my least favoured design in the movie actually!

The Eureka french could work (if you are looking for an EU stockist fighting 15's carry them) however they lack those front pipings on the jackets which is a shame. They are very close to the vehicle-mounted air corps I think though.

That's some interesting points. I've never actually seen a Ghibli film in the cinema, interesting to hear how they scale up. I've recently got the Howl's Moving Castle art book. There's some really nice stuff in there.

The castle has some real charm, perhaps more so if you read the book too, but I agree about it not being the best design. Some of the Robida-style airships are wonderful, particularly the one that flies over Howl's secret garden. I'm really hoping that somebody will make a model along the lines of it one day.

It's too big for this project, though. I'd like to include some of the Personal Ornithropters, but nothing like them currently exists in miniature, so far as I know. I'm hoping to badger someone into producing them, and I've not found any takers yet.

A unit of the Automatons from Laputa would not go amiss either - does anyone know of any figures in the 18-30mm tall range that would fit the bill for them?

And maybe a unit or two of the Knights with semi-auto rifles from Nausicaa.

What else am I missing?

MM.

[YPU]

You are missing the tank ofcourse ;p We clearly have fallen down the same rabbit hole here.

[OSHIROmodels]

I’d say that toy was closer to 1/600-1/700 

Anyway, still looking forward to the project 

Still want to do my own Ghibli project though 

[Mr.Marx]

You are missing the tank ofcourse ;p We clearly have fallen down the same rabbit hole here.

You mean This Tank? Because I've had this one on the shelf for about three years now, and wrote it up as a Strongold in Mayhem earlier this week.

I’d say that toy was closer to 1/600-1/700 

Anyway, still looking forward to the project 

Still want to do my own Ghibli project though 

By my crude maths, at 75mm tall the castle would be about 30' tall in 15mm scale, 90' tall in 6mm scale, and about 300' in 1: 600 or 1:700th scale. I've not been able to find any hard figures on the size of the castle - probably because there aren't any - so it'll come down to how the houses look next to figures. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

MM.

[YPU]

You mean This Tank? Because I've had this one on the shelf for about three years now, and wrote it up as a Strongold in Mayhem earlier this week.

I'm green with envy, I haven't been able to justify the expense to myself yet, but the fact must be it's going to happen sooner or later.

[Mr.Marx]

If anyone's interested, I think I've worked out all the figures that I'm going to buy for this project. I've popped up a post in the Bazaar to see if any of you fine folk can help me source them a little cheaper.

I'm green with envy, I haven't been able to justify the expense to myself yet, but the fact must be it's going to happen sooner or later.

It's a lovely kit, though I've not put it together yet. There are quite a few parts.

Fantastic bit of design work. Everything has logic, purpose and function to it. You can tell the designer knows their tanks.

MM.

[OSHIROmodels]

Got one of them and I'm still too scared to do it justice 

[Mr.Marx]

Got one of them and I'm still too scared to do it justice 

If you're really too daunted to give the kit a go, I hear YPU is in the market for one....

MM.

[Mr.Marx]

Hey All,

Nothing much to show by ways of finished miniatures, I've made a little progress.

I've drawn up a full army list for both sides, worked out the figures I'm going to use, and where I can source them from. As I've mentioned before, I've popped up a post in the Bazaar on this forum to see if any of you lovely lot can't help me pick some of them second hand.

The only character I can't source a model for is Turnip Head. Any ~15mm scale scarecrow would probably do. I've seen a few HO scale ones, but I refuse to pay out £15 for a single tiny horrible plastic miniature. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm sure it'd be a fairly simple job to knock one up, but I really can't sculpt at all.



All being well, the postman should arrive with my Howl's Castle tomorrow...

MM.

[N.C.S.E]

I love these Miyazaki threads. Looking forward to following along.

[OSHIROmodels]

A simple stiff wire cross with tissue soaked in wood glue for the jacket?

[Mr.Marx]

Okay......I had hoped to have posted up some pictures of my Moving Castle model by now. The package arrived late last week, but, well.

It did not contain a model of Howls Moving Castle.

It contained a false breast. As in, a wobbly pink silicone thing.

I did not see this coming.

MM.

[YPU]

That is rather disappointing but, if I'm being entirely honest also rather entertaining 

I hope you manage to get some decent customer care and actually receive the castle though, I was quite curious how it would look painted.

[Mr.Marx]

Hey LAF,

Finally, an update.

I've moved house since the last time I posted. (I live in Cheltenham now, if anyone ever fancies a game.) I've not got a dedicated 'modeling area' in my new place, but I have fallen into doing a few hobby bits in an armchair next to the coffee table, which is quite nice.

Biggest thing, my model of Howl's Moving Castle has finally arrived.

Took about two months to get to me in the end. They sent out the original parcel in about ten days - which is very fast from China - but it turned out to be a false breast rather than a castle. It took about ten days to get the seller to agree to pay the return postage to send them back their false breast, then it was about three weeks on the slow boat back to China. Then it was just another fortnight for the replacement castle to make its way to my letterbox.

Dozens of emails, written in fairly broken English. Not sure I'd do it again. On the plus side, I've got me castle. And, quite out of character for me, I'm not getting that nasty, resentful loss of enthusiasm for this project that usually accompanies a pain in the arse of this magnitude. 

Anyhoo, some pictures:









It's a surprisingly nice model. It looks like a pewter cast rather than a die-cast, which was a pleasant surprise. The details are nice and deep and well defined, and there's no sign at all of mold-misalignment. It even came pre-cleaned up - something that I was surprised by for some reason, expecting a lot of painful mold line grinding. In hindsight, as its intended as a display piece - and not a cheap one at £32 - its probably fair enough to expect it to not be covered in horrible lines.



There was a fair bit of gap filling and fixing up to do. Being a muppet, I decided to do all the filling in such a way that the model would still be able to come apart for painting. Things took a lot longer because of this. I've done a good job, though, I think. I won't know for sure until I've got it undercoated.



The model was advertised as being "1/100 scale", but clearly isn't. I don't particularly care though. Comparing the size of characters in the film to the model, I'd say it was about 1/200th or 6mm/1/300th scale.


^ The castle next to Sophie Hatter (Blue Moon 18mm)

The only thing that really 'sizes' it is the houses and other buildings that cover its surface - and they're not even in scale with each other. Some of the houses look about 2mm/1:1,200th scale while others look 6mm or maybe even 10mm scale.

Ultimately, the castle is a cartoon, and does not quite translate to a 3D model. The castle isn't really a "scale specific" object in my books anyway. A wizard did it. And that wizard would have known about the Disney Land castle, and the rules of forced perspective, and was never a fan of having anyone close enough to his home to look at it up close in the first place. It'd have been nice if it looked a little less off when next to 15mm figures, but as it is it makes an imposing centrepiece to my force.

[YPU]

Oh that does indeed look quite good! Like you say a tad larger would have been nice but you make a couple of good arguments. I'm still not sure what to think of that huge ear on its left flank. When I saw the movie on the big screen that stood out to me as particularly odd.