Here’s my Sleeping Beauty Castle diorama. It’s been sitting on my shelf for almost two months, and it’s still not finished. I still need to add water, trees, and maybe some low shrubbery. But, I thought I’d take some quick photos of it in its current state, then update the photos whenever I get around to finishing it. I still want to visit that hobby store that I found online—I much prefer to view things in person prior to buying. But, with the price of gasoline, I don’t drive to as many places as often as I used to.

I got a little surprise in the mail today, something that I had completely forgot about. It was my customized set of Walt Disney World maps.

Everything is beautifully themed and very . . . well, beautiful. The set comes in an envelope designed to look like a portfolio. The maps themselves are full-color prints on large sheets (14” x 20”) of parchment (printed front & back). The four park maps (Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, Disney’s Hollywood Studios) have all of the major attractions highlighted, along with my favorites. Though I’ve never been to WDW, I picked out some attractions that I’d like to see one day. A sticker sheet of gold dots were also included so that additional attractions can be manually marked.

I don’t see how anyone would ever want to take these to the parks. They’re just far too nice. If I had the wall space, I’d frame them. But, for now, they’ll stay tucked away in their portfolio.

Did I mention they’re free? I stumbled upon the link several weeks ago; I’m not sure where, exactly. But, you can customize your own here. I think there’s a limit of one set per household per 6 months.

The Skyway bucket paper model is here! This is the very first model that was designed entirely in Blender. I’ve only ridden the real thing once or twice before it was shut down, and the sights were amazing. Ah, memories . . .

I’ve been wanting to mention an awesome Web site for the past few days, but I’ve been busy with a new project (can’t tell ya what). I’ve had Joe Cardello’s Virtual Magic bookmarked for quite a while, but I never really stopped to look through it. Until last week that is, when I stayed up all night (3-4am!) watching his videos. Boy, howdy, what an ambitious project.

Virtual Magic is a site dedicated to Joe’s goal of creating a CG Disneyland. We’re talking about the entire park . . . in detail! The real meat & potatoes of the site are his Blog, Flickr photos, and YouTube videos. They can all be accessed from the main site, but for easier navigation and better viewing, it’s best to bookmark them individually. I really can’t recommend one over the other, but as a fellow Blender user, I’m a little biased toward the tutorials. In fact, that’s what inspired me to start posting occasional videos of my own, rare though they may be.

I just want to shrink myself down and climb into Joe’s CG Disneyland. Blender is also capable of creating 3-D games, so it is theoretically possible to walk around the model just like in a first-person shooter game. Exactly how far Joe’s expertise with the program is uncertain, so I may never get that chance . . . but I can dream.

Here are the current collection of 634 icons. This doesn’t include the 300+ icons that are in separate, specialized folders. If you look quickly, you can see the Pirates of the Caribbean system icons in use on the Desktop. I have no doubt that many of you will be pausing the video many, many times to see what I’m holding out on.

I may post other videos in the coming months. Maybe I’ll do a time-lapse vid of designing an icon from scratch, or maybe a time-lapse of designing a new paper model in 3-D. Who knows.

Oh, and ignore the corny Last Starfighter music. I was in a good mood, and that music randomly popped up on my playlist.

To break away from all of the recent pirate activity, here is the last triple feature, staring Pluto.

For those of you dying to complete your Dead Man’s Chest paper model, here it is: Davey Jones’ key!