Boodle, Boodle, Boodle! (The Shooting Star)

+

The Shooting Star (French: L’Étoile mystérieuseL’Étoile mystérieuse) is the tenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was serialised daily in Le Soir, Belgium’s leading francophone newspaper, from October 1941 to May 1942 amidst the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin, who travels with his dog Snowy and friend Captain Haddock aboard a scientific expedition to the Arctic Ocean on an international race to find a meteorite that has fallen to the Earth.

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The story:

Similar to my Nice Little Llama project, this project also has its genesis as a request from a fellow Tintin fan. It’s a humourous scene from the album, The Shooting Star, and depicts a rather strange greeting ritual. After the Aurora docks in Iceland, during its race to find the meteor Tintin and Haddock have the good fortune to run into Captain George Chester, captain of the Sirius, and an old friend of Haddock’s.

Although the pair meet by accident, they quickly fall into lock step, saying:

“Fidgy, Fidgy, Fidgy!”

“Boodle, Boodle, Boodle!”

“Aya, Aya, Ayaaaaaaaa!”

All while tapping their heads and rubbing their bellies in a circle – much to the amazement of Tintin and Snowy.

It’s quite hillairious actually – or at least my son, thought so when he was about 6 or 7 years old. At that time we were watching the Nelvana animated adventures of Tintin, and he was quite drawn to the silliness of the scene. What really makes it a great memory for me though, is that we both used that “greeting” for several weeks afterwards. I would walk him to school in the morning, and before the bell would ring, we’d say our good-byes by reciting the verse – usually trying to draw out the final “Ayaaaaaaaaaaa” as long as possible.

So, even though it’s probably not one of the more iconic scenes from the albums, it has a special place in my heart… and obviously someone else’s too, otherwise I couldn’t have been asked to create this model in the first place.

The build:

Like most of these little side projects, there’s no really all that much to tell. Modifying the model of Captain Chester into Captain Haddock wasn’t extremely difficult – and it’s handy that they’re supposed to be basically mirroring each other’s pose anyway. The trickiest bit was probably creating Tintin’s coat.

I mean… where did he get a coat like that in the first place – it’s HUGE! In the end, I think I made it a bit too square, but basically it does the job. It was also fun to put Snowy in a little matching outfit – complete with little pink bow.

All in all, this was a build was a fun little distraction, so mission accomplished on that end. But check it out and leave me a comment to tell me what you think!