And so, we come to the Part 3, the final part, in our epic chat with model maker and book nook maestro Adam Casey. If you haven't already check out Parts 1 and 2 and then rush back for the conclusion...
Luke Searle
Luke Searle
And you're back! So awaaaay we go...
Do you have any other influences, or other inspiring creators that you’d like to shout out
So there are a couple of creators who I give massive props to, one of them is Nerdforge. Her work is beyond…I cannot even fathom how she does that. Her imagination, her attention to detail is exemplary. So basically she set me on my Book Nook creating journey. She made an infinity library Book Nook, Harry Potter themed. I studied what she did there. I thought - I can do that...I will make similar things but with my horror movie twist.
There's another curator called Abandoned Miniatures on YouTube and he does wonderfully realistic abandoned places in miniature. I take a lot of influence from him. Outside of the miniature builders, there's an artist called John Ken Mortensen and he creates these little pen and ink sketches on post it notes with very folk horror and spooky vibes, whimsical fantasy horror in very small spaces. That's inspiring for someone like me trying to cram a lot of storytelling in a tiny little space. That's far out.
Your voice is really strong. It's really evident in all of your work. Do you feel that you’ve found your voice or are you still striving to find your voice, do you think?
I think with all of my sort of creative endeavours since I was doing graphic design and art and painting and stuff throughout the years, everything I've done has had this kind of tinge of gothic-y darkness, horror. So I think it's always been there. I struggle to do anything but that. When somebody tries to paint lovely landscapes, I don't know, can I put a big pile of skeletons in the middle of it?! I just think it's just the aesthetic that I'm drawn to and it's what I like. I just try to make things I think look cool, and if other people think that too, then I guess that's my voice.
Has your creativity and your creations positively helped your mental health in any way you can talk about?
Yeah, very much so. I think when I first started in 3D art, I was going through a depressed time at that point. A relationship ended, I'd lost my home, various things, bad stuff had happened. A friend of mine who was studying special effects model making basically just gave me some clay and said, “work with that”, she gave me some materials to have a go. It was very therapeutic and cathartic and through all that mess and chaos that I was going through at the time I'd made this thing - it was a kind of a weird zombie head - but it was the thing that I made that felt good. It feels good to create something. It's a cliche to say it's easy to destroy, but hard to create. But that kind of rings true. When you do, when you create something and no matter how simple it is, you brought something into being and that should be applauded. Now I think the hours that I spend making things is an escape from just the sheer horrors of…you know, it's weird because social media is my enemy and my friend at the same time. If it wasn't for social media, nobody would have seen my work. Also social media throws an endless array of horrors my way. I will absorb all that for a while, but then the creation of my work gets me away from that for hours at a time. Then I can just make things and feed it back into the social media machine to make myself and other people feel happy.
To see you creating in the realm of social media and doing it so successfully is inspiring. We think it's really important to see people creating things and to get inspiration from it. Thank you for being a part of that.
Thank you! I mean, when I started, when I was posting all my stuff, I would always include a 'making of'. I break down how I did it and I show other people my tricks. I'd always say, I'm trying to inspire you to be creative and have a go yourself. So that's why a lot of the time I was using very basic materials. I was saying to people, you don't need a 3D printer, you don't need a laser cutter. You don't need all these skills. You just need some time, some junk, a hot glue gun, some paint, and just have a go. That's why I share tutorials. Some people have been saying, why are you giving away your secrets? You should be selling all this stuff. Well, that was never really the point. I was never really in it to make money. That stuff has come, surprisingly. I think, especially with AI, I think more people need to just disengage from that and just have a go and make stuff, you know.
To get a more tangible, fulfilled response from the thing you create. Maybe that isn't the case if you can just type a prompt in and see the thing that you envisioned in a rough estimation on screen - missing such a huge gulf of experience between idea and creation and the joys that that brings, even when it is the delayed joy of learning from a catastrophic mistake that you absolutely despised at the time…Speaking of despising parts of the process, how do you know when to step away from something that isn’t quite working or when to keep going with a project?
That's an interesting question, because at first I thought I do abandon things, but actually I don't. I don't have an unfinished project. Everything I've taken to its conclusion. There's that cliche of art is never finished, everything's just merely abandoned. I don't think I have that. I am so far from being a perfectionist. When things look good enough for me, that's good enough for me. I don't need to do anymore. If I think the overall vision is there, then it's there. And I'm happy to leave it, because I'm only really making these things for me. It doesn't really bother me so much. It's different when I'm doing things for a client. Yeah, I will put that extra mile in just to give them a little bit extra. I actually like this notion of when I create something, I want them to go to look at every single part and find something that they hadn't seen before.
Looking back over your work, are there any pieces that stand out sort of for any reason? It might be because you've learned a new technique or they've levelled up a certain skill or they're just personally evocative or important to you in some way?
Yeah, I suppose there's three. They sort of telegraph the way my journey is coming on. So obviously there's the first diorama I made with the Evil Dead cabin Book Nook. That's when I first stumbled upon the “I'm making horror book nooks now and I love doing this!”
Then the second one would be my first holographic Book Nook, which is the infinity library I made, which is like an infinity mirror abandoned library with a ghost of a librarian floating through it. That was my first experiment into infinity mirrors and holographic projection. Not quite the technique that I use now, but it was just an experiment that worked really, really well and gave me a, “oh, my God, I can make really cool stuff now!”. That was the first thing that I showed to people and that blew people's minds. That was like - no one's ever seen anything like that before. You know, it's a miniature, but how are you projecting it? Where is this all coming from?
I guess the third would probably be the New Orleans cemetery with the ghost flowing over it. So that's my first foray into proper 3D printing. Because it spurred me to be me, to be more proactive in my creation of things. I saw what AI can do and I thought, I want to do this better than AI. I want to do this entirely myself. I think that was a weird catalyst in the sense that it showed me an easy way of doing it. I do not want to do it the easy way. I'll do it the hard way.
Have you got any advice you'd give to sort of anyone who's maybe thinking about starting a creative journey like your own?
I mean, to be honest, the only thing I could say is just get it out there. Don't worry about the feedback. If you're worried about sending it to the great social media gods, then do what I did and just find those little groups because you will find a group that you can join, and they're the best places because there'll be people like you who are on similar journeys. They're looking to learn and to share tricks and ideas. And I think that's how you get more comfortable. You'll make friends, you'll get new ideas, you'll bounce off them. That's definitely the best way of getting started if you don't have the confidence just to jump all in and throw all your work out there.
Just get started. Even if you just have a pencil and a bit of paper or a piece of clay or just some cardboard boxes, the possibilities are endless for what you can do. People say, I can't do this. I'm not talented. But no one is born talented. Some people might have more of an affinity for being able to create stuff than others. But everyone, all those people practised, they started from making things that look rubbish and then it's just...You just do better the next time. That's basically what I did.
You don't need fancy equipment. You don't need years of experience. You just need the willingness to have a go, the tenacity to keep going and the joy of wanting to create something. I think if you have all those things, what's stopping you? I've gone a bit Bob Ross there.
Adam, that's a wonderful note to end things on and we think it exemplifies the entire interview that we've had. Thank you so much for your time, and we hope to sit down with you again soon to catch up on all of the exciting things that will no doubt have happened to you over the next few months. Thank you for such an inspiring, insightful chat.
We're constantly on the look out for new artists, creatives and initiatives to feature in TheNeverZine - so if you are, or know someone who is going their own way and doing their own thing on their own terms and would be a good fit to feature please smash that button below and get in contact. By talking to each other, and sharing our journeys, ideas and insights on creativity, art, mental health and resilience we can all create, share and thrive together. Nice thought that.
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