So, its been a long, long time since I’ve had the chance to post anything. I’ve had this character on my brain for a while so I’m glad I finally got the chance to do a bit of work on it.
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Here is the background on this one. If you get the chance to read this I think you’ll know why I had to sculpt it.
I have a Czech friend who is a puppet sculptor and lives just outside of Prague. He is a great artist, and when I was there last he had all these various marionette designs of a “Stinky Cheese Man”. Its a local mythology that dates back to sometime in the early sixteenth century. His English is about as good as my Italian so from what I gathered the synopses of this “Stinky Cheese Man” story is as follows.
A small stinky man, presumably made of cheese, had been seen living in the surrounding woods of their town. The villagers set up various traps but the Stinky Cheese Man was smart, and evaded them for several days. He was seen by many villagers on different occasions, and each of their descriptions varied slightly. However, the general consensus was that he was around three feet tall, smelled profusely, and had a big round head of cheese. Finally, on the fifth day a trap of different sorts was set. A large bucket of alcoholic beverage was left near the woods where the Stinky Cheese Man was last seen. The next day he was spotted in plain view and easily captured. The town was so pleased with this rare blessing they decided to partake in the fruits of their triumph by eating the Stinky Cheese Man immediately. They began by carving up his legs and handing out the spoils along with their finest breads. After tasting this rare cheese, several of the villagers soon became sick, and it was decided that the Stinky Cheese Man was no longer fresh, and what was left should be thrown into the river where his remaining cheese body would dissolve and be carried away by the current.
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Seems like your average “middle-age” folklore, but the difference with this account is that several writings still exist all describing the same event in relatively the same way. There is only one document that describes it differently. In this stand alone version, after the villagers got sick from eating his legs, the Stinky Cheese Man sprang lose from his captives, made new legs from sticks, and escaped into the woods never to be found again. Supposedly there are other “Cheese man” stories in Europe, but this seems to be the first.
So, the F’ed up thing is that now, because of the rare preponderance of documentation, they are investigating these events to see if there are other potential explanations. A Czech TV station is suppose to air a special researching the evidence to see if the Stinky Cheese Man could have actually been an alien. How awesome would it be if those crazy bastards actually ate an alien.
I really dig **** like this so I had to do a sculpt about it. This is my variation of the character as described by the villages. I’ll post more about the technical approach and what not soon.
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Later,
