You’ve seen dozens of wood builds, metalworks, and resin casts on SolidSmack, but there’s a real scarcity here on sculptures made of cheese.
You heard me right: cheese. Not many people in their right mind would dare work with such a mushy, pungent, and easy expiring material, but thankfully Lawrence Becker is the exception to the rule.
Becker decided to pay homage to Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit stop motion animated comedy series in the best way possible: through a cheddar bust of Wallace, the cheese-loving human half of the cartoon duo.
Just like with the cartoon, his sculpture is done beautifully in stop motion. Using a number of well-photographed frames, he gives the illusion that crafting a bust out of a 40-pound block of sharp cheddar is as easy as plucking out chunks of cheese.
Unlike wood or metal, working with cheese poses a number of dairy-related problems. First of all, he has to make sure he isn’t sculpting in too hot an environment so the cheese doesn’t melt. This means being in a low temperature room and keeping the cheese as far away from the lights as possible.
The second problem is time. Seeing as it takes next to no time for most cheeses to spoil, Becker has to finish his sculpture and take still photos of each important part of the video in a set time limit. Finish too late and the whole room will start to smell of cheese.
As the video shows, he managed to complete Wallace’s smug mug without too much difficulty. What wasn’t shown in the video however, was the demise of this cheese creation. Instead of crying over spoiled cheese, Becker donated chunks of it to his friends to eat. Whatever was left went straight into his stomach.
Lawrence Becker has loads more stop motion animation videos on his YouTube channel and Instagram page (not all of which involve cheese).
