SANTA CLAUS DOES HIS RESEARCH
By Robert Karr
One Christmas season a few years ago, I decided to take a break from my usual modeling activities and make something a little seasonal. I'd been building figures for a long-time and thought maybe Santa Claus would be a fine break from the usual stuff. This was a fun project because for once it was great not to be buried in research material, drowning in a pile of books and magazines, with construction being delayed until the last and tiniest detail had been considered. Hey - all I needed to know was that Santa is a chubby guy in a red suit and white beard and that he checks his book to find out who's naughty or nice!
"Might as well build a room around him" I thought. If he's working late into the night marking in his book, he needs some refreshment, and a clock, and table on which to put the clock and cup. One wall would have room for pictures, and this is where I made my own little mark. The pictures can be changed, and currently featured are photos of my family. One year it was all my close friends. Everyone always seemed pleased if they made it to my Santa wall!
The figure is based on a wooden armature with epoxy putty surfaces. He's about 9" tall and is built to 1/8th scale. I should have made him much rounder, but this was my first "large size" figure. (Keep your eye on Internet Modeler in 1999 as I hope to have a more detailed explanation of how I build these figures). The room is made from scraps found in the garage: a piece of Philippine mahogany door skin, some Masonite, and a few balsa sticks for the ceiling beams. The clock was cut from balsa with a scrap-box airplane turret blister segment for the crystal. The table is balsa scrap and the cup was originally some prop spinner. The photos on the wall are photos of photos. I used existing pictures and simply took pictures of them!
The header photo of the model was done with a Pentax SLR using 100asa film. A piece of black cardboard with a few glow-in-the-dark paint dots slopped on it was placed behind the window to act as the night sky. The scene was lit from the front with a regular 40 watt bulb which casts a warm light, perfectly duplicating the glow of an imaginary off-camera fireplace, and a blacklight was placed along the side to fire up the stars and also cast a little reflected color into the room for "atmosphere". Locking the camera down tight on a sturdy tripod, I set 
the aperture to f22 for good depth of field. With the lights off, and a crude black cardboard hood plopped over the lens, I locked the lens open with my cable release thumbscrew. Switching on the black light, I removed the hood for maybe 35 seconds. Replacing the hood, I switched on the 40 watter, removed the hood and gave it another 8 or 9 seconds. Replacing the hood, I flipped the thumbscrew and closed my lens and came up with this kinda neat time exposure. The only computer fiddling done to the shot was to back off on the color saturation a little!
Well, I hope y'all get a little holiday kick from my effort. Just remember that modeling doesn't always have to be planes, tanks, ships, cars or soldiers!