The Chip Monsters
July 2017
Dave
Dave
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I came across The Chip Monsters about six months ago on Twitter. The Chip Monsters are the inspiration of an Australian artist living in Texas.
The concept: create photographs using Hasbro Black Series 6 inch Star Wars figures in poses that look like they are actually real people. The result: absolutely fantastic pictures that really do look like they could be real people, cosplayers perhaps, in costume. The Chip Monsters as a brand are relatively young, and have only been posting pictures for about 12 to 18 months, but in that time they have amassed a decent following. Almost 14,000 followers on Instagram alone. And looking at the pictures I can understand why. As well as photos, The Chip Monsters have also posted a number of videos showing the level of effort that goes into creating their masterpieces. From painting and customising the figures to create variations, weathering to add realism, seeking out the ideal location to pose the figures, the painstaking posing itself, the patience when figures don’t always want to play and then post production to add special effects. The excellence of the photos is testament to the level of work involved. Typically, the artist uses helmeted figures and droids, as the figures themselves are closer to the original characters from the Star Wars universe, given the struggle of making a plastic representation of a human face that looks like actual flesh. That said, there has been some photos posted more recently featuring human characters from Star Wars, carefully posed so as to overcome this obstacle. And, the artist has also customised Stormtroopers by using heads from Hasbro Marvel Legends Series figures (which seem to have better mastered the replication of human heads). This has led to Chris Pratt featuring as a Stormtrooper in a few of the photos! The Chip Monsters also takes the time to position his subjects within settings that really set off the figure and the pose. Just looking at the pictures included in this review there is a mixture of industrial and natural backgrounds. From what I understand the artist works at a technical college as his ‘day job’ and so uses the machine parts he has to hand to arrange the figures within industrial settings and he uses different real world backgrounds to create outdoor situations. This level of attention really adds to the realism. Depending upon the photo, he also uses focussing to bring the figures forward whilst pushing the scenery backwards. This increases the sense of depth that you find in photos of ‘real’ people. Lighting is also used to create striking scenes, with lens flare and reflected light again being used to make the photos look real. And special effects are also included. In some of his battle scenes The Chip Monsters uses small scale fireworks to create smoke, flames or sparks. And post production he adds blaster fire and lit lightsabres. These take the photos even closer to scenes you would expect from a galaxy far, far away and are very welcome addition. |
The final result are photos reminiscent of real war photos of the style taken of American GIs in World War 2. The pictures often feature a gritty realism, with the figures posed dynamically, looking to have been captured mid action. Now, for anyone who collects figures, you can imagine the level of work required to pose some of these figures in such a way as to look real. The Hasbro Black Series are, for their scale and price, an excellent choice to achieve this. The figures themselves have a high level of articulation allowing them to be posed in a wide range of postures and their scale makes them much more stable than the smaller 3¾ figures. As such, The Chip Monsters have chosen well and the results are plain to be seen.
At this time The Chip Monsters is not a commercial artist. He is doing this because he loves Star Wars, photography and the challenge of making figures look real. His photos are free to access on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I would recommend that you enjoy them whilst they are free.
Would I buy his pictures if he chose to sell them, as that is perhaps the best measure of his talent? Yes, I would. I love the final result and it adds another level to the wider Star Wars universe, allowing me to see scenes that I would not access from the films alone.
At this time The Chip Monsters is not a commercial artist. He is doing this because he loves Star Wars, photography and the challenge of making figures look real. His photos are free to access on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I would recommend that you enjoy them whilst they are free.
Would I buy his pictures if he chose to sell them, as that is perhaps the best measure of his talent? Yes, I would. I love the final result and it adds another level to the wider Star Wars universe, allowing me to see scenes that I would not access from the films alone.