Waiter, There’s a Fly in My Blog

Question: What you get the entomology student who has everything?

Answer: A Croshame figure of the creature from the 1958 version of The Fly!

Knowing that this commissioned piece was going to a movie-loving bug enthusiast (a friend of a friend), I wanted to make it somewhat accurate in the insect’s details while simultaneously capturing the weird cheesiness of the film’s main character.

The creature’s head only shows up for about 3 minutes during the entire film (if that), so getting a clear picture of what he really looked like was tough. I kind of made it a cross between the original Fly and the one from its 1959 sequel, Return of the Fly. (Move along, Cronenberg; you’re not needed here.)

His head (which was VERY difficult to photograph accurately, by the way) was made of a crazy, fuzzy-bumpy novelty yarn I bought ages ago on a trip to Portland, OR.

The facial features were made from a pipe cleaner wrapped with eyelash yarn and needle-felted “mouth” details. (Check out those maxillary palps!)

The creature in the film has one normal human hand and one deformed, hairy fly claw — which, again, I needle-felted with love.

Naturally I had to include the blanket that the good doctor drapes over his face whenever dear ol’ wifey comes traipsing through his household laboratory. And the handy pocket on his lab coat is perfect for concealing that hideous fly-claw!

After all that hard scientific work, I’d say the experiment was a rousing success!*

*Unless you count that whole grisly “assisted suicide via crushing with a mechanical press”  part of the movie. Then probably not so much.