Dec 21

Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Daniel D. Brown PhD, 2021

“Spider-Man: Miles Morales” is finally complete! Over 250 pieces of wood from 5 species, hand-cut on scrollsaw. No paints or stains – only natural wood colors (except the web). Built from bloodwood, wenge, walnut, purpleheart, and holly. The web was cut from high-density polyethylene (HDPE).

This piece is based on the final shot in the @insomniacgames Miles Morales game (it’s amazing!), which I screen-grabbed myself many months back. The moment I saw it I thought it would make a great wooden piece, though it took a while to convince myself I could pull it off. I initially intended to include a background with Peter’s version of Spidey swinging behind him as well. But once I realized how complex and time-consuming Miles would be, I decided on a solo no-background piece. This work took almost a full month to complete. Ihave no idea how many hours total, but it was in the many dozens. Obviously I took some artistic liberties with the suit; I really wanted to include some purpleheart.

I made the blurred New York street background just for fun, from an in-focus photo from the Wikipedia entry on William Street in Manhattan (credit “MusikAnimal” Creative Commons license 4.0)

Dec 05

Doctor Strange Clock, Daniel D. Brown PhD, 2021

I saw a random image of this Doctor Strange symbol while surfing the interwebs last week and thought “that would make a cool clock design.” Appropriately, this symbol also adorned his pendant holding the Time Stone. I had an old clock left in our house by the previous owner I’d been saving for just such a project. However, it turned out the clock mechanism didn’t actually work – so I bought a new super cheap set of hardware. 😂
I cut the background from partially spalted yellowheart, the symbol from walnut, and the frame edge from mahogany (which is actually from a very thin piece of scrap, cut and glued to the yellowheart).
I don’t have the tools or practice for cutting precision angled segments like this on a table saw (e.g. a good miter gauge or sled). So I just designed all the cuts in Illustrator and cut everything on my scrollsaw.

Sep 30

Captain Link Skywalker, Daniel D. Brown PhD, 2021

One day I thought “hey I should mashup a few of my favorite geek franchises” to go in my geek lair.
That’s pretty much the whole deal here. Link from the Legend of Zelda, Captain America shield to represent the Avengers (I could have gone with several options but I didn’t want to clutter it, and a shield fit perfectly), and then of course a lightsaber for Star Wars in place of the Master Sword.
Yes the blade should blue with that hilt. But the green light looks better. Eat it, nerds (@cyclocrosscutter).
This is a hybrid of using natural wood colors (bloodwood and holly shield, African stinkwood harness, walnut boots, holly pants and shirt, maple face, mulberry hair, yellowheart buckles and shirt) and alcohol dyes (the blue, green, and red highlights). Link’s tunic needed to be a vibrant green and the shield needed the blue – natural wood just wouldn’t do. The dyed wood is ash or maple.