The Wheelchair (The Castafiore Emerald)

The Castafiore Emerald (French: Les Bijoux de la Castafiore) is the twenty-first volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It was serialised weekly from July 1961 to September 1962 in Tintin magazine.

 

In contrast to the previous Tintin books, Hergé deliberately broke the adventure formula he had created. It is the only book in the Tintin series where the characters remain at home in Marlinspike Hall, Captain Haddock’s family estate in Belgium, and do not travel abroad or confront dangerous criminals. The plot concerns the visit of the opera singer Bianca Castafiore and the subsequent theft of her emerald.

 

Although The Castafiore Emerald received critical acclaim for making its characters follow a lead of false trails, it was not a commercial success due to the experimental nature of its narrative. It was published as a book by Casterman shortly after its conclusion.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The story:

There’s really not that much to say in this case. The Castafiore Emerald is basically Hergé’s attempt to deconstruct his cast, so the idea of having the blustery “man of action” like Captain Haddock confined to a wheelchair and at the tender mercies of Bianca Castafiore is an interesting take.

The confined “stage” of the album does make it a bit of challenge to draw inspiration for my Tintin 1/72 project.  Of course, I started with my Peugeot 403 project, and have solid plans for Thomson and Thompson’s comedy-rife Citroën 2CV, but when I was looking around for some side projects to fill in “around the edges”, this one really stood out.

There isn’t a ton of movement to be had here, but I felt like there was a lot of pent up “potential” movement. It almost feels like Captain Haddock is going to spring out of the chair at any moment and launch into one of his iconic tirades, doesn’t it?

Speaking of cast deconstruction… I also felt like this was a great opportunity to showcase the Milanese Nightengale’s domestic side, as well as Professor Calculus away from the zany inventions, at home in his garden.

The build:

Not much to this little mini project, to be honest.

Besides adding a cast to Captain Haddock’s left foot, most of the 3D design was spent working on the wheelchair itself. I’ll be honest, at first I thought I’d be able to just find a wheelchair STL file online and print it myself. However, if you look closely, Haddock’s wheelchair is actually a rare retro-style. The main difference is that the small little wheels are on the back of the chair instead of the front.

That mean, if I wanted to be accurate – and I do – I had to design the wheelchair file myself. Luckily it follows a relatively intuitive design, so I was able to get a fairly good file created.

The only other part worth noting is the roses. It’s amazing what a few dabs of paint on some otherwise green moss will do to jazz up a scene. 🙂

If you’d like to try your own hand and printing and building the Captain Haddock’s retro-style wheelchair, you can get a copy of my STL files here. You can use the coupon code: STROBEZ to get 50% off.

All in all, I’m happy with the final result.  Feel free to check it out below: