After building Howl’s Moving Castle, one of the questions I’m asked the most is if I’m going to
make the other versions of the castle. There's flying version from the end of the movie, but I also
really like the stanky walkin' two legged version that just keeps on truckin', so let’s do that one.
Dan offers some great advice on how to repurpose the last model for building it.
But you can also build it from scratch, starting with a pair of
chopsticks from your kitchen drawer where you specifically hoard takeout utensils.
We'll also need a few dozen coffee stirring sticks as well.
Like the last build, I’m distressing stirring sticks until they look like sticks that would
give your tongue splinters. (Don’t do that.)
I’m assembling the deck upside down on the stick side of some masking tape,
then made the edges perfectly uneven.
Chopsticks aren’t just the ideal grasping tool for crafting
They also make pretty decent scale lumber. The wood is soft enough to scratch in some
exaggerated wood grain, then I’m laying down a line of glue to secure these beams to the deck.
I’m going to mount the two legs from the center, so I’m bulking out the middle
beam with more chunks of chopsticks, then a couple beads for hip sockets
Here’s a zip tie. Shh shh, let’s listen for where it lands.
Echo location is key for finding craft projectiles
There’s another detail needed for the hip sockets. Tell me those aren’t exactly horse shoes.
I bought a bulk pack of these horse shoe charms a while back and now I’m cursed to
use up the rest of them in every project or I’ll be haunted by this little guy.
Time for a delicious honey graham cracker. The worthless crafting tip of the day is you
might have marginally more fun crafting when you use just the clipped out food
graphics from scrap food packaging. I’m supergluing pieces of paperboard
to make all of the metal plating that holds the beams to the wood deck on the underside.
Now release the rainstorm of rhinestones
Micro dabs of super glue Then tiny 1mm rhinestones as rivets
Ah nuts, if only I had a special tray designed for
holding and orienting rhinestones and not just a disposable plastic plate.
Previously on Studson Studio
Hmm, I don't know what this is. Do you? Please let me know if you do.
Ironic that I destroyed something that could have been a useful tool, It happens sometimes.
On the underside is the castle’s last remaining gear doing the hard work of pumping those legs.
Using a safety pin, I removed the safety part, then glued on
a gear charm from a steampunk snack pack. I’m gluing the gear in place, so no spinning
allowed, then capping off the other side with a piece of a plastic tube. And then a couple
metal bead caps to cap off the ends. I’m using fire to slightly soften
this plastic lollipop stick so I can release some carbon monoxide
and form the tube into some sort of exhaust pipe hanging off the underside of the deck.
Deck done. To make the legs,
I’m using a couple safety pins as armature wires. I used two pairs of pliers, because despite their
name, stretching and bending these wires by hand felt a little dangerous and occasionally pointy.
Then these bones are covered in a leg exoskeleton, which is composed of beads,
more lollipop tube, and these metal cone beads I acquired specifically to make these legs.
The end of each leg also features feet, which I’m making from these clock hands that came in a bag
of miscellaneous gear charms. I’m using a dab of CA glue,
then with a droplet of CA glue accelerator, it locks the clock hands together into a full foot.
This is looking pretty good, which is pretty bad. I want it to look pretty bad, because bad is good.
The castle just crumbled apart, so it needs more wood debris to achieve
a less manufactured, [more] messy look. The placement of each wood crumb is movie accurate,
but it still looks off, so I’m roughing it up a bit more to add a little more wear and tear
Oh what a mess I’ve made. But the good news is I like mess because
this bounty of sawdust will be used later. A friend recently gave me this filter top cover,
which will make a great base for mounting this leggy platform.
But it needs something to mimic the rocky, mountainous details details seen in the film
Bark? That’s a great idea, Heen. Time for a scavenging excursion at the beach.
Tree bark makes excellent scale rocks, cliffs, and sediment layers.
After making some choice selections from this wood buffet, I boiled it for cleanliness,
strained out the tree broth, then baked it low and slow to dry it out.
Glue hates smooth plastic, so I gave it a good sanding, then slashed it up a bit. This
gives it some tooth for the glue to grip onto. But the fun part is finding the perfect bark
arrangement. It’s like a secret puzzle that you get to invent.
I first saw this technique of using bark as rocks from Scratch Bashing. Go check
out his various wood bashing and junk bashing videos for a balanced diet of scratch building.
Once you’ve found the perfect pieces destined to fit together,
flip it over to find your reward. A glob of molten hot glue,
ready for a support block of foam to hold up this wooden clam shell on its base.
As much as this looks like one solid piece, there’s still a lot of gaps that need filling
I watered down some spackle to make some seam cream to fill in all of the hot glued edges.
While the goop is still moist, we can sprinkle on extra bark pieces and other rock flock. But
this layer of cream is making me crave more cream. From this sour cream container, I’m sprinkling on
some pebbles and dirt to add some ground cover and fill in any last areas of exposed wet goop.
Then I’m spraying the whole mound in an even wetter goop of watered down white
PVA glue to seal in all of the rock and bark into one waterproof lump.
♫ Lump! ♫
After priming, it looks like this, but we’re gonna paint it later. First
it’s time to paint Howl’s Walking Platform. The first step was to seal the deck in mod podge
and black paint, then good news, we’re using wood hues, starting with an overbrushing of dark brown.
Then an ever so lighter overbrushing with something like a terracotta or a chestnut.
Then finishing it off with a khaki drybrush to kiss the edges with a highlight.
For the metal sections, I’m keeping it simple with your everyday basic silver dry brushing,
partially because these details are hardly seen on the underside, but also, I lack a creative
vision for making it interesting. I lightly grazed everything in silver, making sure to retain some
of the black primer for a tarnished look. We can’t forget the legs, which also get a
silver dry brushing. They’re not much to show off, but you know what is much to show off?
This drawing of Howl’s Moving Toaster from Kai, the son of one of my supporters on Patreon,
complete with a rivet count of 122. In fact, here’s a lovely compilation
of Ghibli-related art created by many of the folks supporting me on Patreon. Thank you all
for your support in helping me make these videos! Since this video is a bit shorter than last time
and somewhat of a part two to the last video, I’m saving the new patron shout outs and my mediocre
sing song rap abilities for the next video. I know in the past I teased that Howl’s Moving
Castle would be my final entry into the Ghibli series, but the lie detector test determined
that to be a lie, so keep on the lookout for more Ghibli-related crafts in the future. I have a few
ideas bumbling around in my brain, but what other Ghibli crafts would you be interested in seeing,
let me know in the comments. But no one is allowed to suggest I make the flying version of the
castle, otherwise I will be obligated to take the one I already made and launch it with a trebuchet.
Thanks for sending in your lovely Ghibli art everyone, now back to my lumpy Ghibli art!
Wow. Impressed? The next step for this pile of bark I’m
calling a base is painting, using a wash method I’ve seen on both Scratch Bashing and Luke’s Geek
Gaming Scenics. Starting with a base of white, I’m doing several passes of different colored washes.
The first pass is to make about a third of it look like scrambled eggs with a yellow wash,
then make the next third a little spicy with a reddish brown wash.
Then we’re gonna blend it all together with an extremely wet brown and black wash.
First up... ♫ Scrambled eggs and chocolate milk. ♫
First we cover the whole thing in a generous coating of brown wash to tie it all together,
then throw it in the trash because it’s been bad.
Bad boy, take this coating of watered down PVA glue.
Then the black wash, which always looks a bit darker when it’s first applied,
so do not fear the wet look. Wait for it to dry and you’ll see the magic. After a couple passes,
followed by an off-white dry brush to bring back some edge highlights with a cheap makeup brush,
it’s looking pretty gray and rocky with some slight color variation showing through.
Next this gray rocky needs some green flocky. Speaking of Rocky, here’s a sweaty Rocky Balboa
sculpture I saw in Philadelphia one time. While I love adding flock, I didn’t
want to entirely hide the rock, so I kept the greenery to the crevices or areas where
I thought moisture might accumulate in nature. It helps to try to think like a thirsty lichen
when mossing cliffsides. Grow where you think you’d get the deepest drink of water.
To seal all this fragile flock in, I misted these sierras with an isopropyl alcohol spritzer,
then followed it up with a white PVA glue chaser cut with water.
After painting the edge with a flat black, it was time to finish up Howl’s Walking Wood Floor
This is gonna be kinda tricky to glue it into an action pose without having the wait for glue
to dry. Hmm…
Okay, here’s the plan, add a drop of super glue,
then a drop of CA glue accelerator, then there’s no time to screw around because we
have to set up the pose within two and a half seconds before the glue has time to fully cure.
Nice, it worked and I definitely didn’t rip the legs off and try that shot multiple times.
Let’s add a little more glue and accelerator into each of acetabulum just for good measure.
I destroyed more safety pins to give the castle pointy feet to stab into
the bark and now it stands on its own. One of the movie details I wanted to
incorporate into the base was the trail of destruction as the castle hobbles along.
Here’s the leftover wood clippings from earlier, sorry, no tutorial on how to make
them. I stained them with a few drops of burnt umber ink. Then I grabbed a handful of plastic
junk from the last episode and made some metal shrapnel to join the debris trail.
Now please enjoy this montage of gluing trash onto the ground.
All right, that’s the last of the junk debris, now let’s make it a little dirtier with an oil wash.
Be careful with mineral spirits. Mineral spirits are actual poison,
so I wear a mask and do this near a window, which I keep open by the way.
Everything gets a bath of burnt umber to tie it all together for an even coat of brown grime,
but before it dries, I dab off the extra where it’s pooling together with a paper towel. I didn’t
limit this dirty wash to the metal sections, I also dabbed it sparingly on the wood boards to
add some variation. This is looking okay, but it's really just a deck, it’s lacking CHARACTER, so let’s make one.
Someone cute. Ah, perfection. There’s our very recognizable Turniphead.
If you’ve seen my Kiki’s Delivery Service video, you know exactly what
disaster is coming up and I’m sorry.
KIKI: This is terrible
Turniphead needs a turnip head
not this human thing, so get this outta here, but don’t throw it away,
you never know when you’ll need a loose skull. Turniphead is also ragged from the knees down,
so let’s release that torso. And this arm pose is completely wrong
I reoriented the arms with a metal wire, than produced this second mystery
arm off camera, and the T pose is complete. Continuing with the safety pin theme, I gave him
a sturdy metal neck and made his head from a bead. For Turniphead’s top hat, I hole punched the brim
from a sheet of scrap plastic, then slipped it over the metal rod piercing his skull.
For the main barrel of the hat, I used the inner peg from a Gundam leg from my bits box.
But you’re not a scarecrow unless you’re skewered on a stick,
so let’s use a pin vice to drill out some of that crotch chaff so we can impale him on a toothpick.
The general shape is there, now for some detailing, like the open
lid for this can of beans. And some ragged clothing.
Using a tissue and watered down glue, I draped it around his waist to make the coat tails,
gave him a tiny paper bowtie, then added some more ragged tissue paper as the fabric for his torn pants.
I stabbed a safety pin into a toothpick and clipped off 99%
of each to be left with Turniphead’s tiny pipe. After priming, I’d say he’s looking pretty good,
though he looks a little lonely without the rest of the family.
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. How about Farmer Leonard here...
FARMER: Ow, my back...
He can play the unconscious Howl. I covered up those overalls with a tissue
paper tunic, then gave him a beautiful head of hair using green stuff epoxy.
He’s far from perfect, but Howl is too focused on his looks anyway, so we’ll stop there.
Using another waving person, I severed a glued them into a kneeling position as
the base structure for a kneeling Sophie. I gave her some hair that looks far from
starlight, then some spaghetti octopus tubes that I attempted to sculpt into
hands holding Calcifer and Howl’s heart. After a tissue paper dress, Sophie’s done.
But can you guess who this lump is? Yeah, you got it!
In addition to this clay mistake, I gave tiny Luke Skywalker a bowtie and called him Markl.
And this chunk of green stuff is Heen. After priming, this messy family looks
slightly more forgivable. Let’s fly through the painting though because this section
of the video would make a poor excuse for a tutorial on how to paint minis.
I’m again employing a painting technique called passing the "Across the Room" test. The goal being
for them to look passable from 15 feet away. The quick steps being base coating,
applying some washes and flesh shades, then dry brushing to save any highlight details that were
lost to my smothering basecoats. The family is all done, but one of
them still has no face. It’s Turniphead.
I’m using a Gundam marker to draw his deceivingly simple dot eyes and toothy grin.
TURNIPHEAD: LOVE ME!
And that’s it, stay tuned for the beauty shots as well as the answers to a few
common questions on the last video. Howl and Sophie’s lumpy family may not be perfect,
but who needs perfect? Oh yeah, and if you didn’t already,
please watch this video from across the room and don’t lean in just to look for flaws.
And now for some quick Q&A about the Howl’s Moving Castle build from last month.
How long did it take to build the castle? 300-400 hours spread out over 61 days.
How long did it take to edit the video? 15 days. How long did it take to make the Patreon shoutout
song at the end? About one day. I write and record it in chunks,
so I start to run out of rhymes near the end. How much does the castle weigh? 4.2 lbs on my
food scale. I should have used more diecast metal to make it a collector’s edition.
How many Gundams gave up their life for the build? Four. Rest in peace.
How much? It’s not for sale, but feel free to leave your valuation for a
trash sculpture in the comments. Thanks for watching everyone,
tune in next time for something entirely unrelated to Studio Ghibli as well as a
Patreon shoutout song for all the new patrons that have joined recently. See ya next time.