Howl's Moving Castle papercraft

February 25, 2008 11:33 AM

Howl's Moving Castle - in papercraft. Stop motion animation of the assembly here, flickr set of the finished product here, details on the kit here. Found via.
posted by jonson (12 comments total)

D'oh! Posted prematurely, apologies. The original kit from Studio Ghibli is out of print, I believe. A reaonable facsimile can be found here.
posted by jonson at 11:34 AM on February 25, 2008

Wow. Pretty cool stuff- equally admirable to the skill is the patience.
posted by farishta at 11:50 AM on February 25, 2008

There is a more ambitious version of this that looks like the moving castle that is present throughout most of the movie (and not the recreated version at the end). As far as papercraft goes, it is....complex. flickr is blocked at my work but with a bit of searching you should be able to find pics of it.
posted by MillMan at 11:50 AM on February 25, 2008

At last my life has a purpose!
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:51 AM on February 25, 2008

posted too soon - the "finished product here" link refers to the model I am talking about.

fyi I emailed that guy a while ago and got a scanned in pdf of the whole thing from him since it is out of print. you didn't hear it from me.
posted by MillMan at 11:56 AM on February 25, 2008

Pretty awesome, but I'd much rather see an Ohmu or something from a Ghibli movie that wasn't completely boring.
posted by absalom at 12:15 PM on February 25, 2008

Yes, wonderful, but not as wonderful as this.
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 12:47 PM on February 25, 2008

They're very cool, but they don't look anything like what was described in the book. Is the film worth seeing? I have long distrusted movie remakes of childhood favorite books.
posted by echo target at 1:22 PM on February 25, 2008

maybe it's just my long dormant anime dork coming out, but I found the flickr castle to be quite stunning. I've never done a 'papercraft', but I almost want to take a crack at it. It's lame, I know, but I believe having one of those would be a testament to dedication, precision and patience. At first glance, I just want to buy one, but then I realize that would be too easy and non fulfilling. Much like the themes in the story.
posted by thanatogenous at 1:33 PM on February 25, 2008

The film is good. It is a bit choppy; it's not explained that the scarecrow was the prince's brother or what have you, and some of the characterization and plotting is different.

It was done by Miyazaki. If you haven't heard of him, you have some wonderful suprises in store.
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:49 PM on February 25, 2008

Oddly enough, I'd think that Miyazaki would actually capture the slightly creepy weirdness of that book.

Wild paper castle, too.
posted by jrochest at 11:11 PM on February 25, 2008

I wish I had the skill to make paper models.

The film's great , but if you read the book first, I'd say there's a 50-50 chance you'll be annoyed too much by the changes in the plot, some of which are a bit puzzling IMO.

Diana Wynne Jones herself seems happy with the film.
posted by Phanx at 5:47 AM on February 26, 2008