Incredibuilds: Buckbeak: Deluxe Model and Book Set (Harry Potter) by Jody Revenson
| Incredibuilds: Buckbeak: Deluxe Model and Book Set (Harry Potter) by Jody Revenson | |
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| Category: Children's Non-Fiction | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: If you can't make something featured in huge-budget cinema films just yet, you could do worse than make your own memorabilia from the films you know and love. We all need a commanding hippogriff in our life, of course… | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 40 | Date: November 2016 |
| Publisher: Studio Press | |
| ISBN: 9781783707232 | |
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The general perception is that to become a leading British actor, you need the fillip of Eton or somesuch education. But you don't have to be an actor to make a great film. Gravity for instance has extended scenes where the only thing natural is the performers' faces – everything else, even their bodies, was made in Britain by people using computers. The eight Harry Potter films, also made in the UK, needed a lot of computing power as well, but also a lot of craftsmen with their hands on tools and a keen eye. What better way to start training the young reader into that side of things, than with tasking them with making a, er, hippogriff?
A hippogriff, if you're not completely au fait with things, is a quarter eagle, a quarter lion, and a half horse. The name is a bastardisation of both Greek and Latin – and people used to say the same of the word television, pointing out that that scuppered its success before it had begun. But Buckbeak the hippogriff only went from success to success – a CG creation seen in broad daylight in the third film, with a story that ranged from him lolling, legs crossed, in a pumpkin patch to flying exuberantly round with Harry on his back. The creation of him, therefore, required no end of talent, and this short book will tell the young reader just how he came to life – a mixture of ultra-sized puppet, CG, and fragmentary stand-ins.
This is the third and last of these books I've had the privilege of sampling (frustrating when we're every time exhorted to collect all four), and there are some superlatives here. The script is at the smallest font size yet, and the wordiest text so far nudges this from the under-ten market of Dobby's kit/book towards the 9-13 age bracket, in my mind. It does have to its favour the fact it only relates to one of the movies, where the others featured elements that had a longer shelf-life during the film cycle. But of course I don't have to consider just the making-of (and if you don't know the publishers involved, their metier is in producing wonderful making-of books) – I have to consider the extra elements involved in this product.
I access those by lifting the sticky tab, and unlatching the bonus material from the hardback front cover – and lo and behold, that bonus material proves itself to be a plywood sheet and a simple paper instruction booklet. Shove item A into slot B 22 times and you have a model of Buckbeak, and – those superlatives again – this is the biggest one of the three I've met, stretching all of 224mm (whatever that is in English). Of course, you also have a heck of a paint job, akin to the painstaking feathering job the original designers and CG crafters had to do for the high-definition movies. Which brings us to the reason for these products. Yes, my local multiplex is currently dragging all the Harry Potter films out for random-seeming reshowings, but they're not vitally current. The fact I take from these gift items is that you have something clever and substantial to make and keep, alongside the reasonably clever and substantial little book. CG artists don't make anything they can keep, so even if you're not quite at their level, you may well have an edge over them.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy. We also have a review of Incredibuilds: Aragog: Deluxe Model and Book Set (Harry Potter) by Jody Revenson.
How about taking a break from all this crafting and modelling in the kitchen, with perhaps Gruffalo Crumble and Other Recipes by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler?
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You can read more book reviews or buy Incredibuilds: Buckbeak: Deluxe Model and Book Set (Harry Potter) by Jody Revenson at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Incredibuilds: Buckbeak: Deluxe Model and Book Set (Harry Potter) by Jody Revenson at Amazon.com.
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