Hey you wanna know about Dan Reeder? Of course you do!
Guy wrote a book: Papier-Mâché Monsters: Turn Trinkets and Trash into Magnificent Monstrosities. And it was Very Good!
Enter me in as a Junior in High School and my English teacher assigned our Final(? maybe preemptive?) project to be a paper we have to write, do a presentation on and have something to show for our given subject.
There were the classic groans and moans, as the instructions were passed out and the list of topics we can pick from and- me, a denier of my autism at the time, was not prepared for how hard my brain locked in on "B Movies".
Because you see, my dad is a Huge fan of Godzilla and all of his pals! And ye olden 'Merica of Yore didn't think too much about Godzilla and friends so they decided to relegate them to the "B Theater" which is where "B Movies" get their names; as they are the movies you see in the B Theater!
And wouldn't you know! The "monsters" in B movies were often very cheaply made and also known to be a bit on the "has room to improve", so we say. And my beloved Commercial Art teacher had tease us about doing a project involving Dan Reeder's; but only as a Senior project and I think I tried to approach him to borrow his copy...? Which he would not let me do BUT allowed me to take notes from the book during one of my Junior year classes. And boy did I ever note taken and sketched!
The product of my first attempt into dabbing into Reeder's works and words, was Frank! Which is the lovely green dude in the drawing that a younger CAK made. While I do remember we took pictures of Frank, I don't know if I still have those photos nor even if I do I don't know where they could be in my home. And sadly, I didn't have the best materials to make Frank and he was literally making himself fall apart as time went on so I decided to send him off.
Benjamin Slurp-Slug though??? HE's from my Senior commercial art class and that project my dear teacher teased us about. He;s still very much with us and lives with my parents in their home; as requested by my mother when I moved out. I'm always happy to see my son when I come to visit. :'D
That photo of Ben menacing my dragon toys is an old one as that is literally my bed room door behind him when I still lived with my parents! I'll have to review my photos of the last time I visited them to see if I didn't take a sneaky pick of him and his place of honor.
I love both of these soooo much <3 And I also remembered that I did, one day, wanted to make a Frank 2.0, following much more closely to the letter of Reeder's book than I did on 1.0. :D
OH and I might still have my paper too from the English class? I thought I still had my 3.5 disk I was using during that class so it should ideally be there. Unless I did transfer it to one of my old flash drives and then buried it in my archived files somewhere
No promises on this, BUT if I do end up finding the paper, I'm gonna print to PDF that and maybe get it frame?! Huh... okay brain! XD
