Steven Vasko’s 2001 Star Child

This is a scratch-built, LED-lit figure of the “Starchild” as seen at the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey”. The figure itself was the end result of four separate tries at sculpting a figure in various types of clay. The last attempt utilized a support made of cut pieces of illustration board and foam-board that were glued together in the rough shape of the child’s head, shoulders and arms and then covered in layers of “Das” air-drying modeling clay, whose seams between the various layers of clay can be smoothed together with water. (The child’s fingers were given a “stubby” appearance to match photo-references of the child as seen in the film.)

The sphere surrounding the child is a 4-inch acrylic hemisphere set bought at a local arts-and-crafts hobby store. Both halves of the sphere were sanded to diffuse the blue LEDs mounted in the rear hemisphere, leaving the front half of the front hemisphere unsanded, but treated with an enamel varnish to give the child seen behind this part a slight “soft focus” effect. At final assembly the rear hemisphere was epoxied to it’s supporting rod and the bank of two blue LEDs were installed and their wire leads snaked down to the battery case and slide switch in the base. The figure was glued in place with the help of a ultra-low temperature hot glue gun and the front half of the sphere installed with the use of white craft glue.

The 2001 title card at the front of the base was first a screen capture of the film’s title that was found on the web and printed at a small size and trimmed and spray mounted onto a piece of sheet styrene. The resulting item was then given a coat of decoupage two-part epoxy varnish to protect it and improve it’s appearance. Self-adhesive vinyl letters were then applied to the top of the base, completing the project.

Steven Vasko