Former podcast guests Garrett Kilgore and Angelo Thomas talk The Muppets Wizard of Oz.
You can listen, download and subscribe at the podcast site, or use the players and links below. The Royal Podcast of Oz is available on iTunes, Stitcher, Player.FM, Google Play Music and other podcast services and aggregators that mirror these.
Download this episode (right click and save)
Thursday, October 26, 2017
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Creating Oz dolls
When Oz the Great and Powerful came out, I decided to pick up dolls based on the characters. I didn't have a lot of Oz toys, and decided this would be a nice start. This was followed by picking up the new line of Barbie dolls based on the MGM film. Finally, I picked up a Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return doll that was the closest to her film appearance.
But being a fan of the Oz books and knowing of many of the Oz characters who have rarely appeared in film—much less be made into a mass-produced toy—I decided maybe to look into making my own custom Oz dolls. Specifically, Ozma and a Neill-inspired Glinda. (Thanks to the above, I had three Glindas already, two different costumes for Oz the Great and Powerful and MGM.) Getting another idea, I decided to add Polychrome to the list.
Finally, after spotting potential dolls to use for bases, I decided to go for it. I began looking online for dresses. I know how to whipstitch and mend clothes and back in the day made tiny plush characters, but by no means was I wanting to create a dress from scratch.
Here's what I picked up from Amazon:
- One rainbow dress.
- Two white wedding dresses. (Note: these came from a seller in China and took 40+ days to arrive, so plan ahead on this one or find another one.)
- One Barbie Fashionista Terrific Teal doll. (This would serve as my base for Glinda since she has red hair.)
These other items I bought on eBay or in stores, but I'm linking to Amazon listings for illustrative purposes.
- One Barbie Careers Farmer doll. (This would be my base for Ozma.)
- Kneadite (known as "greenstuff" by model makers).
- Various colored sequins.
- Red tulle
- Beading wire
- Rainbow colored ribbon
- Acyrlic paint, blue, cranberry (but I should've gone with metallic red) and metallic gold colors
- Hot glue sticks
- Paint brushes
- Velcro circles
- Small squares of red and green material.
- Red glitter nail polish.
- Black cylindrical coffee stir (this was free)
- A loose nude blonde Barbie doll from a thrift store, carefully selected for quality. (This would be my base for Polychrome.)
Items I already had at home:
- Needle and thread.
- Twist tie.
- Scissors.
I had all of Polychrome's materials together first and she was fairly simple The rainbow dress had a glittery belt that I didn't like, but it was easy to remove with scissors. I considered giving her the cap seen in Neill's pictures, and I suppose I could using a small amount of kneadite, but considering that kneadite + doll hair = a big mess to remove, I decided to use some rainbow ribbon around the head instead. Some more rainbow ribbon tied around her arms and shoulders, and the look was complete. I have since altered it with the use of hot glue, affixing the ribbon directly to her head and dress.
Ozma and Glinda both proved a little bit of a challenge. Their designs had been inspired long ago when I was digitally coloring a scan from the International Wizard of Oz Club's edition of The Oz Toy Book and I discovered a nice costume design for them that involved them having white dresses. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz specifically says Glinda wears a white gown, and Boq mentions that "only witches and sorceresses wear white." Ozma is neither a witch or a sorceress, but considering her level of authority and that she can do magic, it would not be disrespectful for her to wear that color.
Glinda has blue eyes according to Wonderful Wizard, but the Terrific Teal doll has brown. A task for a careful hand and eye (and I am nearsighted with glasses), I repainted the eyes using a bit of blue paint on the tip of a needle.
Although their dresses were actually completed last, I'll go ahead and detail what I did with them first. Note that I did cut off some material from the red square of material to make Ozma's poppies. The dresses I purchased had little brooches on the chest. Glinda's tore off while I was applying it. I didn't intend to show it, but had intended to hot glue red sequins over it. This allowed me to apply the sequins directly to the dress. Ozma's did not tear off, but I made a design with a bit of hot glue, applying a purple sequin at the top, a blue one to the right, a red one to the bottom, a yellow one to the left, and a green one in the middle overlapping the others. I had intended to put these on a base made of kneadite, but the design with just sequins looked better.
The Material was made into cloaks that flowed from their shoulders, tucked into the front of the dress and sewn in. Further tucks and folds were secured with hot glue.
Ozma's crown, I had to decide not to use the cylinder crown she has on top of her head in some illustrations. The only option would be to secure it permanently to her head with hot glue or kneadite. The circling tiara was made of beading wire, with the OZ logo made of kneadite and painted gold. The flowers were made of bits of red material folded in half and rolled a little crookedly, sewn to secure their look. They were secured to the crown using unpainted kneadite.
Now, you might say, "What is kneadite?" and it's a sculpting epoxy I first used back when I created Oz action figures. It's called "greenstuff" because it arrives in strips of blue and yellow epoxy, which you knead together into a green epoxy that can be sculpted into any form you like. It bonds to most surfaces.
Glinda's hair is secured in a hairnet that she wears in many illustrations. A hairnet worn for fashion rather than practical purposes is called a "spood," and I used red tulle to make the spood, bunching up the hair in the tulle and creating the hairnet look by twisting it together on the top of the doll's head, securing it with a twist tie.
The twist tie tie off proved to be the base of the cylinder worn on Glinda's crown that Neill designed. I went for a simple design, made completely of kneadite. However, before anyone copies what I did, I must stress that once that kneadite is on the doll's head, it's on there, so you're going to have to commit to making this change to the doll. It will be permanent. Once it was set and dry, I painted it with the cranberry paint, making it pink. I then hot glued some red sequins on it. A friend who has experience with redressing dolls suggested that I redo her crown with red glitter nail polish, which admittedly made a very nice effect, although I had to work around the sequins.
I decided to accessorize Ozma with her scepter and the Magic Belt. I picked up a coffee stir and trimmed it short, adding kneadite to cap off the bottom and creating the OZ logo at the top. Painting it gold finished the look. The Magic Belt was made with more of the rainbow ribbon painted gold. Velcro fasteners made it removeable, and a pattern of red then silver sequins were hot glued on.
That's it, that's how I did it.
I might do more. Mattel has a line of petit body type dolls that'll work for characters like Dorothy, Trot and Betsy.
If you use some of my ideas that I've detailed here, let me know with a comment. You don't have to use the same dolls I used or the same dresses or ideas. Make these characters the way you want. That's the fun of doing crafts where you create a customized figure.
But being a fan of the Oz books and knowing of many of the Oz characters who have rarely appeared in film—much less be made into a mass-produced toy—I decided maybe to look into making my own custom Oz dolls. Specifically, Ozma and a Neill-inspired Glinda. (Thanks to the above, I had three Glindas already, two different costumes for Oz the Great and Powerful and MGM.) Getting another idea, I decided to add Polychrome to the list.
Finally, after spotting potential dolls to use for bases, I decided to go for it. I began looking online for dresses. I know how to whipstitch and mend clothes and back in the day made tiny plush characters, but by no means was I wanting to create a dress from scratch.
Here's what I picked up from Amazon:
- One rainbow dress.
- Two white wedding dresses. (Note: these came from a seller in China and took 40+ days to arrive, so plan ahead on this one or find another one.)
- One Barbie Fashionista Terrific Teal doll. (This would serve as my base for Glinda since she has red hair.)
These other items I bought on eBay or in stores, but I'm linking to Amazon listings for illustrative purposes.
- One Barbie Careers Farmer doll. (This would be my base for Ozma.)
- Kneadite (known as "greenstuff" by model makers).
- Various colored sequins.
- Red tulle
- Beading wire
- Rainbow colored ribbon
- Acyrlic paint, blue, cranberry (but I should've gone with metallic red) and metallic gold colors
- Hot glue sticks
- Paint brushes
- Velcro circles
- Small squares of red and green material.
- Red glitter nail polish.
- Black cylindrical coffee stir (this was free)
- A loose nude blonde Barbie doll from a thrift store, carefully selected for quality. (This would be my base for Polychrome.)
Items I already had at home:
- Needle and thread.
- Twist tie.
- Scissors.
I had all of Polychrome's materials together first and she was fairly simple The rainbow dress had a glittery belt that I didn't like, but it was easy to remove with scissors. I considered giving her the cap seen in Neill's pictures, and I suppose I could using a small amount of kneadite, but considering that kneadite + doll hair = a big mess to remove, I decided to use some rainbow ribbon around the head instead. Some more rainbow ribbon tied around her arms and shoulders, and the look was complete. I have since altered it with the use of hot glue, affixing the ribbon directly to her head and dress.
Ozma and Glinda both proved a little bit of a challenge. Their designs had been inspired long ago when I was digitally coloring a scan from the International Wizard of Oz Club's edition of The Oz Toy Book and I discovered a nice costume design for them that involved them having white dresses. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz specifically says Glinda wears a white gown, and Boq mentions that "only witches and sorceresses wear white." Ozma is neither a witch or a sorceress, but considering her level of authority and that she can do magic, it would not be disrespectful for her to wear that color.
Glinda has blue eyes according to Wonderful Wizard, but the Terrific Teal doll has brown. A task for a careful hand and eye (and I am nearsighted with glasses), I repainted the eyes using a bit of blue paint on the tip of a needle.
Although their dresses were actually completed last, I'll go ahead and detail what I did with them first. Note that I did cut off some material from the red square of material to make Ozma's poppies. The dresses I purchased had little brooches on the chest. Glinda's tore off while I was applying it. I didn't intend to show it, but had intended to hot glue red sequins over it. This allowed me to apply the sequins directly to the dress. Ozma's did not tear off, but I made a design with a bit of hot glue, applying a purple sequin at the top, a blue one to the right, a red one to the bottom, a yellow one to the left, and a green one in the middle overlapping the others. I had intended to put these on a base made of kneadite, but the design with just sequins looked better.
The Material was made into cloaks that flowed from their shoulders, tucked into the front of the dress and sewn in. Further tucks and folds were secured with hot glue.
Ozma's crown, I had to decide not to use the cylinder crown she has on top of her head in some illustrations. The only option would be to secure it permanently to her head with hot glue or kneadite. The circling tiara was made of beading wire, with the OZ logo made of kneadite and painted gold. The flowers were made of bits of red material folded in half and rolled a little crookedly, sewn to secure their look. They were secured to the crown using unpainted kneadite.
Now, you might say, "What is kneadite?" and it's a sculpting epoxy I first used back when I created Oz action figures. It's called "greenstuff" because it arrives in strips of blue and yellow epoxy, which you knead together into a green epoxy that can be sculpted into any form you like. It bonds to most surfaces.
Glinda's hair is secured in a hairnet that she wears in many illustrations. A hairnet worn for fashion rather than practical purposes is called a "spood," and I used red tulle to make the spood, bunching up the hair in the tulle and creating the hairnet look by twisting it together on the top of the doll's head, securing it with a twist tie.
The twist tie tie off proved to be the base of the cylinder worn on Glinda's crown that Neill designed. I went for a simple design, made completely of kneadite. However, before anyone copies what I did, I must stress that once that kneadite is on the doll's head, it's on there, so you're going to have to commit to making this change to the doll. It will be permanent. Once it was set and dry, I painted it with the cranberry paint, making it pink. I then hot glued some red sequins on it. A friend who has experience with redressing dolls suggested that I redo her crown with red glitter nail polish, which admittedly made a very nice effect, although I had to work around the sequins.
I decided to accessorize Ozma with her scepter and the Magic Belt. I picked up a coffee stir and trimmed it short, adding kneadite to cap off the bottom and creating the OZ logo at the top. Painting it gold finished the look. The Magic Belt was made with more of the rainbow ribbon painted gold. Velcro fasteners made it removeable, and a pattern of red then silver sequins were hot glued on.
That's it, that's how I did it.
I might do more. Mattel has a line of petit body type dolls that'll work for characters like Dorothy, Trot and Betsy.
If you use some of my ideas that I've detailed here, let me know with a comment. You don't have to use the same dolls I used or the same dresses or ideas. Make these characters the way you want. That's the fun of doing crafts where you create a customized figure.
Monday, October 16, 2017
Ages of Oz: A Fiery Friendship
Gabriel Gale has been the subject of a featured article in The Baum Bugle, and has featured at Ozstravaganza in Chittenango, New York. I even had someone heartily recommend the book and tell me about his presentation.
Ages of Oz seems to be a potential franchise of books that they plan to branch into film. In fact, it seems it was originally planned to be a film franchise before they decided to make it into a series of novels first. That seems to explain why the book is written by Lisa Fiedler. Story by Gabriel Gale, written by Lisa Fiedler. The series is planned to serve as a prequel, midquel and sequel to Baum's books (Thompson and the rest are ignored).
A Fiery Friendship follows the adventures of young Glinda Gavaria as she sets out to seek her destiny as she seeks how to rescue her mother Tilda from the wicked witch Aphidina and rescue Ember, the Fire Fairy. Joining her are a number of new friends, chief among these Locasta, a girl from the Gillikin Country who she doesn't get along with at first.
I bought this book in late July, and only just finished today. You'll notice that late July was also when I when I posted my last book review here.
Although I realize that I am also a writer of Oz fiction and may have similar criticisms aimed at my work sometime, I'm going to have to say it...
I found the book exceptionally boring. There was nothing particularly interesting about the characters. Yes, I know, this introduces Glinda and Locasta as young women and supposedly sets up how the order of Wicked Witches took over Oz before the Wizard arrived, but besides that, I was left wondering "so what?" Glinda taking on a task that has the end goal to restore Ozma to the throne is basically something Baum established in The Marvelous Land of Oz, and fan interpretation that she may have orchestrated an event or two in Wonderful Wizard is so common, some of my ideas wound up popping up in another work I recently enjoyed by someone who I'd never contacted.
Oz prequels have been quite the trend. I've even thought of a few concepts over the years and even tried to pen them into stories. The one I did complete, The Way of a Lion, actually won an award. However, I wrote that to complement the events of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to provide a deeper story arc for the Cowardly Lion. The problem with many Oz prequels—including the ideas I've had—is that they try to define how Oz works in a way that limits future stories, or even prevents other stories from taking place in the same continuity. And these ideas are never universally embraced by the fans.
In addition, the story felt like it was the first third of a movie, novelized and stretched out to over 400 pages. A recurring motif that bothered me was splitting a sentence of prose into its own paragraph for dramatic effect, eschewing typical sentence structure. This is fine if you're blogging or writing some piece where you're addressing the reader. In storytelling prose, it's typically not done. It probably bugged me much more because I'd just done a sentence and paragraph structure overhaul of a story a couple of friends wrote.
Perhaps Ages of Oz will go somewhere interesting, but A Fiery Friendship failed to impress me. Okay, the illustrations are impressive, but they don't really feel like Baum's Oz. They're nicely detailed and all, but there's no spirit of fun or whimsy that's a trademark of Baum's Oz. In fact, that's true of the text as well.
Sunday, October 08, 2017
The Chronicles of Oz - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Sometime back, I noted that my own The Royal Podcast of Oz was the only podcast I could find dedicated to Oz. And while that's still true, there is another podcast that's doing Oz: Crossover Adventure Productions.
This podcast presents something I'd love to do: full audio dramas with sound effects, a full cast and music. They seem to be famous for Doctor Who dramas, but more recently, they've finished the first season of The Chronicles of Oz, which adapted The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in six episodes.
To be fair, I'm about to start the final episode, but I think I've heard enough to give a good review of it. And I do mean good.
If you're reading this, chances are you've read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and know the story, and yes, despite this being a "reimagining," it follows the plot of the book pretty well. The difference is how they do it.
It's clear that the writer behind the series—Aron Toman—knows his Oz and decided to present an Oz based on the entire Baum series, presented as a unified world. Lurline, Ozma, Jinxland, Oogaboo, Zixi and Mombi get name dropped. The Wicked Witch has an assistant named Ugu.
However, it's not quite as if this is going to be for all ages. There's some language parents would likely not want young listeners listening to, and this take on Oz gets more on the violent side. The death of the Wicked Witch of the East prompts civil war in Munchkinland. Boq is reimagined as a Munchkin who volunteers to see Dorothy to the Emerald City, but he's no longer around by the time Dorothy meets the Scarecrow. This is just giving you an idea of what you're in for, not a list.
There's some additions and changes to streamline the story and make it more dramatic, but since this is a free-to-access podcast, I'm going to let you discover it for yourself.
The voice cast does a very good job and manages to be very entertaining with the script. Being an Australian-based podcast, some non-American accents are present. The sound effects are nicely done and the music is excellent. So, it's not just a free audio drama, it's a free quality audio drama.
That said, I wound up enjoying the presentation. This is what I'd want from an Oz for more mature audiences, one that focuses on mature storytelling over reveling in mature subject matter. Looking forward to finishing the series on my way to work tomorrow morning, and look forward to future Oz stories from this podcast.
You can download the mp3 files from their website, or you can listen to the series on YouTube, or subscribe through iTunes or search "Crossover Adventure Productions" in your favorite podcast app, and if that fails, you can give it the link to this RSS feed.
This podcast presents something I'd love to do: full audio dramas with sound effects, a full cast and music. They seem to be famous for Doctor Who dramas, but more recently, they've finished the first season of The Chronicles of Oz, which adapted The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in six episodes.
To be fair, I'm about to start the final episode, but I think I've heard enough to give a good review of it. And I do mean good.
If you're reading this, chances are you've read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and know the story, and yes, despite this being a "reimagining," it follows the plot of the book pretty well. The difference is how they do it.
It's clear that the writer behind the series—Aron Toman—knows his Oz and decided to present an Oz based on the entire Baum series, presented as a unified world. Lurline, Ozma, Jinxland, Oogaboo, Zixi and Mombi get name dropped. The Wicked Witch has an assistant named Ugu.
However, it's not quite as if this is going to be for all ages. There's some language parents would likely not want young listeners listening to, and this take on Oz gets more on the violent side. The death of the Wicked Witch of the East prompts civil war in Munchkinland. Boq is reimagined as a Munchkin who volunteers to see Dorothy to the Emerald City, but he's no longer around by the time Dorothy meets the Scarecrow. This is just giving you an idea of what you're in for, not a list.
There's some additions and changes to streamline the story and make it more dramatic, but since this is a free-to-access podcast, I'm going to let you discover it for yourself.
The voice cast does a very good job and manages to be very entertaining with the script. Being an Australian-based podcast, some non-American accents are present. The sound effects are nicely done and the music is excellent. So, it's not just a free audio drama, it's a free quality audio drama.
You can download the mp3 files from their website, or you can listen to the series on YouTube, or subscribe through iTunes or search "Crossover Adventure Productions" in your favorite podcast app, and if that fails, you can give it the link to this RSS feed.
Sunday, October 01, 2017
The Royal Podcast of Oz: Garrett Speaks!
Jay chats with recurring podcast guest Garrett Kilgore to finally
discover his personal love of Oz and what he's been doing lately.
Garrett's YouTube Channel
The Art of Oz, Garrett's blog
You can listen, download and subscribe at the podcast site, or use the players and links below. The Royal Podcast of Oz is available on iTunes, Stitcher, Player.FM, Google Play Music and other podcast services and aggregators that mirror these.
Download this episode (right click and save)
Garrett's YouTube Channel
The Art of Oz, Garrett's blog
You can listen, download and subscribe at the podcast site, or use the players and links below. The Royal Podcast of Oz is available on iTunes, Stitcher, Player.FM, Google Play Music and other podcast services and aggregators that mirror these.
Download this episode (right click and save)