Hello everybody,
I've been a mostly silent observer of this forum for some time now (I randomly commented here and there on a couple occasions) but I haven't really participated otherwise.
So let me briefly introduce myself, I was born in Italy but grew up in France and I now live in the US (yes I'm fluent in all three languages) and have been collecting figures since before I can remember. When I left for college in the US I had all my animals in boxes, and my mom told me to either sell my collection, donate it or do something with it. Needless to say I decided to do something with it (I would never give it up duh), so I decided to display all my animals in my family's country house and make a giant mural out of it.
This was done in several steps, I started in the summer 2015, and then expanded every year after, every time I went back home. I just came back from there and have now, after four years, gotten it to a point where I feel somewhat okay sharing it with this wonderful community.
It is really big so I tried to keep the photos to a minimum for it to be legible, but I have more closer ups shots if anyone is interested.
A coupe facts about the whole display: it represents four "vertical attractions," the zoo, the aquarium, the farm and the museum of natural history. The total coverage is 42 square meters / 425 sqft and comprises 910 figures. Each wall has its own "punny" name, unfortunately most of them are in french.
Here is the full room:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Some of you may wonder how the animals are standing, let me reassure you they are not glued or nailed through, I would never damage or harm my animals! I simply put nails on the wall and the animals are standing on the nails. And yes, I painted all of this.
ZOO MUR (read "Zoo au Mur" meaning "Zoo on Wall")
Size: 4,25m x 5,15m / 14' x 17'
Total area: 16.5 square meters / 177 sqft
Total Animals: 538
Started: 2015
Organised by geographical region: South America, North America, Arctics (both poles) Europe, Asia, South East Asia, Oceania, Tropical Africa, Africa and the Reptile House. I know there are a couple inconsistencies like the penguins and the bats etc but generally that's the way they're organised.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]AQWALLAND (I'm kinda proud of this one, two puns in one word!)
Size: 4,5m x 2,6m / 14'7" x 8'5"
Total Area: 9 square meters / 97 sqft
Total Animals: 81
Started: 2017
Organised somewhat by geographical region (it's harder since they're in the water): Tropical Indo-Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic, Temperate Indo-Pacific.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]FERMURALE (Literally works in English too: FARMURAL)
Size: 7,6m x 2,75m / 25' x 9'
Total Area: 15 square meters / 161 sqft
Total Animals: 283
Started 2019
Not geographically organised since they're all domestic so the origin matters less, but spread on two walls, one big one being the farm and the other being all the horses.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]MUREUM (Basically it's Museum but with the word "Mur" (wall))
Total Area: 0,8 square meters / 8 sqft
Total Animals: 8
This one is a work in progress. As you can see it's so small because it's literally just the prehistoric mammals series from Schleich. I never really collected prehistoric mammals but I need to start in order to expand this wall, so any suggestions of nice figures are welcome! No dinosaurs please, I don't have the money to go down that rabbit hole haha.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]So there you go, that's my collection that I unfortunately rarely get to see because I live on the other side of the world, but I still felt like sharing it with all of you! Let me know what you think and if you have any questions!
Thank you all for reading!
PS: sorry for the long post I tend to ramble on way too much...
PS PS: Hopefully the images work...