Care of Magical Creatures - Part 2
Michael MacWolff
I couldn't come up with a clever name for the second installment of my magical creature lessons, but honestly, if you're here for my wit alone, I can't imagine this blog is very satisfying. Let's just get right down to those curious creatures you're all here to see!
Pixie
Pixies are incredibly mischievous creatures, delighting in all types of tricks and practical jokes. Their favorite is to seize unwary humans by the ears and hang them from the tops of tall trees and buildings.
Harry Potter and his friends had to deal with a swarm of Cornish pixies in their second year when Professor Gilderoy Lockheart released a crate of them during a Defense Against the Dark Arts class.
My pixie is primarily made from Sculpey clay. The ears and arms, however, were made using a combination of liquid latex and blue acryllic paint, which was coated over layers of tissue and wire, and then cut into the desired shape. The antennae are small bits of wire, and the wings are loops of wire with translucent liquid sculpey baked into them.
Demiguise
The demiguise is a clever, gentle, graceful creature found in the Far East. These beasts can make themselves invisible when threatened, and have minor prophetic powers, allowing them to see breif glimpses of the most likely immediate future. As such, they are incredibly difficult to capture. They are, however, quite valuable as their silvery hair can be woven into invisibility cloaks.
My demiguise is actually a large, fluffy teddy I found at the thrift store. I slit the back seam and unstuffed him a bit so he'd have a sleeker figure. This also allowed me to create a wire "skeleton" for him so I could pose him and he'd have the structure to sit upright without falling over. The bits I added were the tail, hands, feet, and face. The hands and feet are fabric, with chenille stems underneath so I could pose them. The tail was extra white furry fabric that I had leftover from my Ashnard cape. The face I made rimarily out of worbla, using large epoxy domes for the eyes, and painting the contours on the face. It's hot glued onto the head of the bear (whose nose I squished in when I was playing with the stuffing inside it), but in retrospect that wasn't the best idea as the hot glue made the edges wobbly as the worbla became soft.
Doxy
The doxy is another mischievous little humanoid creature, related to faeries and pixies. Known as the "biting fairy" for their sharp, venomous teeth and proclivity for sinking them into people's fingers, these creatures are best handled with care.
Harry Potter and much of the Weasley family dealt with a nasty infestation of doxies in the drawing room of 12 Grimmauld Place while they stayed there in summer weeks leading up to Harry's fifth year at Hogwarts.
My doxy is made primarily from black chenille stems, which works quite well as doxies are covered with thick black hairs all over their bodies. The wings are transparent plastic with fine point sharpie for the markings. The eyes, much like my bowtruckles, are small black spherical beads on wire.
Dragon
Dragons are some of the most well-known magical creatures, all scaled and reptilian in nature, and varying greatly in size and appearance depending on the particular breed. All of them are very aggressive and dangerous, and as such should only be approached by highly trained witches and wizards. Dragons have a wide variety of magical properties, also varying greatly depending on their breed, and many parts of them are used for a variety of wizarding goods, to include potion ingredients and wand cores.
My particular whelp is not based on any of the 10 existing breeds in the wizarding pantheon, but most closely resembles the Peruvian Vipertooth in shape and color. This is one of the few creatures I did not make myself, actually commissioning it from Claude Raymond Designs, who makes these little guys in a number of varieties, along with a myriad of other incredible creatures and magical artistry. You should definitely check out his wares because they're fantastic. This little one is even designed to sit on your shoulder hand has a base plate with a magnet so you can wear him around.
Horklump
The horklump is widely considered to be one of the least exciting magical creatures known to wizard-kind. They use their tentacles to burrow into the ground in search of earthworms to eat, but otherwise have no particularly interesting attributes nor uses.
My horklump is made from pink and off-white felt. I sewed the cap and body sections on my machine, and hand-stitched them together. There is a wire understructure in the bottom through the tentacels so that they;re posable, and the pink & off-white panels are hot-glued together, sandwiched around the wire. the little black hairs are thin black wire pieces, all connected underneath and simply stabbed through the top felt piece. The spots on the bottom of the tentacles are little dabs of black fabric puff paint.
I plan to make another one of these with a slightly more striking color of pink felt & a somewhat more interesting shape for the cap. We'll see how the new pattern turns out.
Jobberknoll
The jobberknoll is a minuscule bird found in northern Europe and the Americas. These small creatures make no sounds at all during their life until the very end of it when, moments before their death, they regurgitate every sound they've ever heard backwards in rapid succession. The noise can be quite alarming for any who are unprepared to hear it.
MY jobberknoll is actually just a tiny blue bird I found in the floral section of Pat Catan's craft store. The only things I did to it were adding the brown mottling to the belly, and adding the yellow irises to the eyes.
Swooping Evil
The swooping evil is one of the most widely feared magical creatures known to wizard-kind, and consequently is one of the least understood as it has not bee studied at any length. Most witches and wizards are unnerved by its skeletal face and the knowledge that it will feed on people's brains, however these creatures are highly intelligent, and their venom is known to have the ability to erase bad memories when properly diluted.
This beast, which is my most recent, and arguably my most impressive to date, is primarily plush in nature, with a wire understructure such that it can keep its shape, and makes its wings fully posable. The head is a 3d printed wolf skull found on thingyverse here. I am fortunate enough to have a friend with a home 3d printer who made it for me. I used black acryllic paint to add some depth and texture to the face, and glued black marbles into the sockets for the exes. To hang, I sewed a small metal ring to a point on its back where it balanced so it can hang as though flying. While he can, essentially, curl into the cocoon-like ball we see in the movie, mine does not have the armor-looking plates, though I may try to find a way to produce something similar.
And that, my friends, is all! During the month of September I'll be taking a hiatus from cosplay commissions to continue preparing for my Harry Potter weekend and I will be creating even more magical creatures to share with you all. I hope to eventually make some sort of compendium with my creatures and get some nice shots of them with good lighting and backgrounds and all that, so I hope you'll enjoy seeing even more of my fantastic beasts!