Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Meet Jen Schachter, from the cover of Make Magazine!”.
I have a super exciting one super fun one for you. This is the cover of the latest issue, and this is Jen shacker. Who was on the cover? Am I saying shacker right? Wonderful, awesome! That’S Jen there on the cover. That’S Jen right there and behind us is the outfit from the cover and I’m going to ask Jen a bunch of questions and she’s going to tell us about it all right. Okay, so all right Jen we have.
I have questions. Tell us about this costume, first of all, for people who aren’t familiar. Who is it? What is it this is and swette uh? She was the queen during the French Revolution and uh. As you know, she was overthrown so of violently and uh.
She seems to have lost her head, so I made a wig of her towering hairo out of EVA foam uh and I got a costume dress to match, which is not historically accurate, but I thought it would be a cool mash up to do like 80s Glam Meets Versa and uh yeah, the the wig is all EVA foam uh, it’s thin 1 mm foam on top of an under structure, that’s also made of foam and, if you’re familiar with EVA foam, it’s these like flexible, very soft. You can carve into it really easily with a rotary tool. So that’s what I use to make the hair sort of patterns and then the curls you take a a heat gun or a haird dryer, and you can the thinner foam. You can sort of roll it into a sheap, and I made these little coils uh for the curls and then once they cool they stay in that shape.
Oh, that is so cool, and it it’s it’s big. Is it heavy? It is not as heavy as it should be for the size, but it is a lot to wear so when it’s on on your head, the weight is, you know, sort of higher above so you’re having to kind of balance like a little bobble head and after A while it just strain your neck, but it is much lighter because it’s Eva home and did you make the dress as well. I didn’t I, I found the dress, but I picked them specifically to match and the metallic colors I tried to pull in.
It’S sort of like a silver Lade, it’s so cool. Looking so Jen, you are known, maybe on our cover as the person with the costume, but you do tons of stuff. What do you do? What what’s your? What’S your deal, I I wear a lot of hats. Um, I also make uh Miniatures model kits and props uh, so I made a prop for Marie. This is a nice dark for Halloween nice, dark black piece of cake, uh there’s another one on the cover, so I make all sorts of uh prop things for different projects, and you know TV shows and sets.
I work with the um, the tested team and uh over here. I also have on display some miniature diaramas that I made uh, which are laser cut, and I kind of showed the process of how they were made. So I make all sorts of things. Okay, these diaramas are really cool.
Can you tell me about like? Did you did you design these? Did you make these? What is this uh? I designed them uh as a miniature that can fit in side of a pumpkin. That was my original idea was like carving pumpkins diaramas. That seems like you should be able to put those two things together, so I started off with uh some sketches, so I brought my Sketchbook to kind of showcase that and then from the sketches I make a phone core mockup. So I have a couple of miniature versions that I sort of figure out the form in phone core and try to figure out how everything’s going to fit together and then from that I start to uh. Draw the design, digitally and you’ll see in the versions that I have here. The first version is pretty sort of flat and angular.
It does not have a lot of personality. You can clearly see it’s a laser cut box. It looks like a laser cut box, but I figured out a way to disguise it, so it doesn’t look like it’s made out of plywood. It’S hidden finger joints, so I take the um, the slats of the building and hide the finger joints in those and then uh the walls themselves. Instead of being straight up and down, I made them on an angle, so the whole house has this kind of movement and personality which I was really excited about. So I brought all of my different iterations to show and uh.
Once I get to the details, I take a a drawing tablet and I actually draw by hand into Adobe Illustrator and then these are laser Cuts. So the laser cutter basically follows my drawing and transfers it onto P. That’S so cool, so tell me: is there a place like online where people could find you and and learn more about you yeah um? I am uh sha attack uh on Instagram and all over the Internet, um jfa.jp .