We’ve frequently featured Steven Richter’s hypnotic timelapse videos of the artist sculpting memorable Marvel characters like Thanos. But Richter is clearly just as talented with a brush as they are with a lump of clay, as they turn a plastic recreation of the Jumanji board game into a prop that looks straight out of the movies.
What started as a children’s book released by author Chris Van Allsburg back in 1981 has turned into a full-blown Hollywood franchise with Robin Williams first helping to bring the story to the silver screen in 1995, and then stars like Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart continuing the story in two more Jumanji films released in recent years. As a result, there’s also no shortage of non-cursed Jumanji board games available in toy stores now, but Spin Master’s $US45 (A$62) Jumanji Deluxe Game stands out from the rest with lights and sounds and a plastic case featuring a 3D relief that almost looks like the version of the game featured in the movies — almost.
Richter’s upgrade starts with adding a custom fitted wooden backplate to the otherwise completely hollow plastic game board so that the final results genuinely look like the entire thing is hand-carved from wood. From there they masked the actual playing surface with painter’s tape and gave the whole thing a blast with some brown spray paint before carefully removing the lid sections and working their magic.
Spin Master’s version of the game is admittedly already lavishly detailed, but Richter takes it several levels beyond with a hand-painted treatment adding colour, shadows, and extensive weathering so it looks like this copy of Jumanji has genuinely been lost and found again and again through the ages. It’s a one-off creation, but Richter has actually made it available for sale through Etsy, and for $US200 (A$274) it actually seems like kind of a bargain given the amount of work that went into its magnificent facelift.