The Devil's Workshop

Cauldron Creep 2.0

2011-10-11T23:56:00.000-07:00

Like a red moon rising in the dark Autumn night, The Boogey Man cometh..

2011-10-10T21:28:00.000-07:00

I am sick as a dog but I can't wait until tomorrow to show you this.

Cauldron Creep has been reborn. He ships tomorrow.

More pics tomorrow.

Cauldron Creep 2.0 - The Boogey Man Cometh

2011-07-15T19:42:00.000-07:00

Cauldron Creep 2.0

2011-07-12T23:58:00.000-07:00

After three years of wear, tear, and disrepair Cauldron Creep is getting rebuilt. In honor of the original creep I tore him limb from limb and measured each part of him. I am using the same 1/2" PVC frame, same dimensions, and the same motors. The improvements include updating the mechanism for his head movement into a more compact design, new skull mold, 2-part urethane foam bones cloned from a blucky, a new cauldron, new ribs, new hunch back design, and a Pacemaker controller from MonsterGuts.

I'll be posting some sneak peaks and build photos on here over the next few weeks. This project will generate more mold making tutorials (which have been put on hold by OT at work and building this guy). At the end I'll have three Cauldron Creeps. One for me, one for a client, and one for I dunno. Maybe he'll be for sale, maybe a fundraiser, maybe you can win him, maybe he'll be donated but either of those will see at least 50% of the proceeds go to charity.

Also there will be a definitive cauldron creep how-to with exact measurements, parts list, and a video. I am thinking of releasing this as a DVD for $15 and also as a kit with DVD (price to be determined). If you like either of these ideas please comment. Our haunt has fallen on hard times and due to lack of funding and we will not have much of an upgrade from last year's haunt. If you know our haunt then you know we'll work 6 months making everything from scratch to blow your socks off.

Here is a little peek at what I have got going so far:

Keep an eye on this blog because the Cauldron Creep 2.0 is going to be awesome.

Try his for your next drink and think: Lagunitas Undercover Investigation Shut Down Ale

Mold-Making Theory: Is It Hard or Is It Soft?

2011-05-09T19:47:00.000-07:00

The first step in any mold-making project is to consider what you want your cast item to be used for. Do you want a solid skull as a base for building up a zombie face with clay and maché? Maybe you want a squishy dismembered hand that looks and feels lifelike. You have to consider what you want your casting to be. You will have to build your mold to the casting material you want to use. This is not absolute, but generally you won't be able to make a hard casting and a soft casting from the same mold. There are ways to try to game the system, but they are compromises to quality and/or ease of use.

Hard molds make soft castings ∞ Soft molds make hard castings

If you want to make a hard, bone-like skull, you will need a soft, flesh-like mold. Inversely, if you want to make a soft, flesh-like hand, you will need to make a hard mold.

Why?

Friction. Why does friction matter?

When you pour casting material into a mold, you are making a copy of that mold right down to the molecular level. The casting material and the mold have no space between them. If you hadn't used a release agent, they might have even fused together chemically to become one piece.

These parts want to hold onto each other. Imagine you are climbing a rock wall and your hand melts to perfectly fit and grab each rock as you grab it. The mold has the perfect grip on the casting and will not let go if they are made of materials that are too similar in density. The reason you use a hard mold for a soft casting and a soft mold for a hard casting is so that one can give. You need that give to be able to work the casting free from the mold—to peel it away or wiggle it free.

Like I said earlier, there are ways to try to game the system. You could use a "soft" mold that is still harder than the material used for casting. However, as their shore hardness gets closer to one another, it will be hard to separate the casting from the mold without either getting a friction lock or damaging the mold or casting while trying to pry a casting out of a mold so soft you can't get any real leverage to pry the two apart.

Another solution is to increase the complexity of the mold by making extra parts. Instead of having two halves you could have three sections. Or you can break down the original item into smaller pieces and make a series of smaller more simplified molds. While this may solve one problem, it creates others. It slows down your production and your castings now require assembly.

In the next installment of Mold Theory I'll talk about mold making materials that work best for haunting.

I can only promise you 2.

2011-05-09T16:17:00.000-07:00

I am the laziest blogger ever. It's ok because I am just using this free blog as a free webpage. I'm gaming the system. I'm stealing bread from Google's table and I am ok with that. I don't post very often. I don't think of this as a news site, but as a depository. A library of my How-To contributions to home haunting.

So let's just get right to it. Last year I promised all kinds of how-tos and I didn't deliver. I changed themes on my haunt and it took way more work than I estimated. I did get up two how-tos but so what? Who cares?

So. I am going to be frugal in my promises this year and say I only have two. Two how-tos. They have been filmed. One is 95% done and one needs editing and voiceovers. If I do three I'll feel awesome.

The first how-tos are both about mold making. One is pretty elaborate. So much so that instead of making it 20 pages long I am going to preface it with some mold making theory. Watch for these to start rolling out in the next day or so.

I'm decompressing from the National Haunters Convention right now. I'll see ya soon.

- DC

Halloween Forum Secret Reaper Gift has Shipped.

2010-09-20T12:47:00.000-07:00

Sculpting the Dead Mouth

2010-05-07T12:57:00.001-07:00

This is the second in a series of videos showing how I make my corpse heads. In this video I will focus on making the mouth of a dried out corpse. I used the same tools and material as the first video. If you need more details on tools, just go back and watch "Sculpting the Dead Eye". Hope you enjoy this one.

Sculpting the Dead Eye

2010-02-04T16:20:00.001-08:00

This is the first in a series of videos showing how I make my corpse heads. Each video will focus on one small detail or aspect. This should make it easy to absorb the techniques more easily and keep the videos a lot shorter. I'll cover making undead lips, rotten ears, shriveled noses, and gross out skin, but the first one is sculpting the eye sockets of the dead.

2010 - A New Year's Resolution

2010-01-25T17:59:00.001-08:00

To keep this blog interesting, make it a better resource for halloween prop makers, and to make the posts more frequent I am going to make a few changes this year:

Smaller How-To's
I am going to make smaller How-To's that are easier to absorb. Usually I make a how-to after a prop is done, but since I work on multiple props at a time, it can be months until something is finished. These smaller How-To's will focus on one small technique that will be easy to learn and apply to your next prop. For example, how to make muscle tissue, how to sculpt sunken looking eyes, or wrinkled lips.

Material How-To's
I'll be doing some how-to's on using different materials than you might be used to when it comes to prop building, or maybe you've wanted to try them out, but don't know enough about them. I love to fool around with new materials, so when I find something good, I'll post it.

Painting How-To's
I'll be doing some painting tutorials where I'll paint one piece from start to finish, and show the techniques used up close and in detail, and show how washing, dry brushing, layering, and detail work can all come together into a fast and easy workflow you can use.

Photography How-To's
I'll also have a how-to light and photograph your props article finished before next halloween to help you document all your hard work on that big night. I'll also post a few articles about setting up your camera and processing your digital images.

ETc.
I'll also be posting about some more random stuff. I'll post about art and movies that have inspired me, props I dig, and haunt product reviews, ya know etc.!

Wacky Zombie - Part 3. Paper Mache and Corpsing

2009-12-02T21:41:00.001-08:00

FInally to the good part!!! Well almost. Painting is my favorite part, but paper mache means your almost done!

This corpse has a few special corpsing techniques, since it need to be grodey but still needs to be flexible, since this guy is meant to be posable. The and joints in his legs can be restricted or covered but still need to be sturdy. So lets get into it!

Mr. Chicken's Mache Technique

I heard from Mr. Chicken that he had built one of his ground breakers using paper towels and house paint. I had also heard someone mention in a thread or chat about using blue shop towels for mache. I need a very tough skin for this posable guy. So I have used the very tough and smooth blue shop towels and laytex exterior house paint. The paint I got from various sources; Biglots, "oops" paint form the hardware store, and salvaged from abadandoned properties. The glossier the better, as this makes it stickier and gives it a tougher finish.

Just a reminder this where we started:

I have just started the mache here. I am using full sheets at a time. I folder each piece into fourths, and then tear of the corners until they are round. This makes the seams disappear easier. Remember to wear gloves as this gets very messy. Then I dunk the paper into the bucket of paint and wring it out. I set it onto the frame very loose. THe looser it is the more wrinkles you can get. Once it is pushed down on the frame work, I push it around a bit, this brings out the wrinkles. The inverse of this is also true, the tighter you pull the mache across the frame work, the less winkles you get, and minimize the handling until it dries. By mixing these two techniques you can get a all kinds of dried out skin looks. Too many wrinkles and it will look like a sharpe'. Not enough and it will look like a porpise.

I used some great stuff to bulk out his pelvis here, in case you were wondering what that was.

Flexible Corpsing

I developed this technique from the common "Latex and Cheesecloth" corpsing technique. I used soft t-shirt cotton rags I bought at the auto parts store and then soaked them in latex. Like the blue shop towels I folded them into fourths and cut off the edge to break up the hard lines. While still folded, I pinched little bits of cloth between my fingers and snipped them off. This is just like making a snowflake out of paper, only we want it to be irregular, so don't do this too much. Then I unfolded the rag and snipped out a few more holes, and poked in some holes with the scissors. I then soaked it in mold making (thick) latex. I smeared a little latex on the mache and then "glued" on the piece of cloth. You can see here how it covers the moving joint, and thanks to the holes, you can access the nut to re-position the leg.

I also used the cheesecloth and latex technique to add some grosser corpsing.

Here you can see I have smeared Great Stuff randomly around the corpse to pull the whole thing together and add some detail. The bubbles it forms will help blend the cotton rags, the paper mache, and the cheesecloth.

Once all the mache, latex, and great stuff have dried he got a coat of grey primer, which will blend all grays and the whites and yellow (latex) together, and give a strong even base for painting.

Wacky Zombie - Part 2. Fabricating a Body from Scratch

2009-12-02T15:30:00.001-08:00

(as someone pointed out, he's got em by the neck, and I have him by the balls.)

I built this corpse as part of a trade with the infamous Mr. Chicken in 2009. I made this body from scratch since I needed to fit some specs for the Chicken. It needed marionette arms and posable legs. I used arms like I had made for Cauldron Creep, and then I borrowed a great idea from Beelce, one the net's brilliant haunters. More about that in a bit.

The Armature
If you have been haunting or even interested in haunting your yard for a year or so, you probably have heard of or come across the zombietronix skeleton calculator. It is a great free tool and I use it all the time. It tells you what length to cut PVC to represent different bones, and tells you how much pipe and how many fittings you need to make your own pvc skeleton armature.

I started here with the general dimensions of the corpse, I put in a value for an average height of 5'9. I measured out the pieces of the 1/2" PVC and labeled each section so I would remember what they were once it was all cut up. I used a PVC cutter to make quick work of the pipe.

I started forming the spine first. I set the spine segment with the pelvis and shoulders attached so I could grip it in the vise. I used a heatgun to slowly heat up the PVC in broad sections where I wanted the pipe to bend smoothly. You can tell if you overheating a small area as it will quickly discolor to a brownish green and start to bubble. Keep making long slow passes on each side of the pipe and push gently with your other hand, the pipe should start to give slowly. You want to heat it up just enough to bend. Overheating it means you have to wait longer for the pipe to cool and you'll have to stand there holding it in the shape you want even longer until it cools. I have found a way to "quench" the pipe. I used a small towel soaked with cold water and rub it along the pipe gently (so I don't deform the now soft pipe). This works very well and allows you to work more quickly.

Then I assembled the rest of the pieces. Now stop here for a second and go read Beelce's Spawn of Articulation how-to. I forgot to shoot pics of how I made the legs, but I see no reason to show his how-to as my own. I made did it a bit differently than he did, I used the heatgun I had, and the vise to clamp down the ends. Seriously, go read Beelce's how-to and comeback!

The Ribcage

I made a support arch to put the sternum on and hold the ribs in place. I am using newspaper ribs, and I don't want them to get crushed. The support is attached to the PVC with some hot glue, and the sternum piece (with teeth) is hot glued to the support arch. I used some duct tape here and there just for added strength.

Look here and notice that I have taken the PVC of the shoulders and bend it with a heatgun. They looked too broad and unnatural. The measurements you get from the Zombietronix calculator represent the shoulders of the skeleton that include the collar bone, shoulder blade, and the top of the arm bone in an upright and correct posture. The shoulder piece should be cut shorter as it only needs to represent the shoulder blade and collar bone. I found in making 4 more corpses after this one that they should be quit short, to give the right look when making a corpse. The withering of the body collapses the stature of the skeleton, so the arms come in more at the shoulder.

You'll notice I cut teeth into the sternum piece so that newspaper ribs (just newspaper rolled up into a tube and the ends cut off) would slide over them. This step is not needed, just make sure you have the same number of ribs on each side. Another tip here is as you are going, make two of each of these cardboard parts like the sternum, the support, shoulder blades, etc. and save the other one as a pattern, since once you have a full sized corpse, you'll want another and another.

Here you can see I have taped up the ribs as I go. I have hot glued them on and then added tape to hold them in place as the glue cools and to reinforce them. I will attach all of them to the sternum first before I start wrapping them around to the spine and attaching them.

I have bent the ribs around to the back and hot glued them and duct taped them in place. I sized each rib as I went, just eyeballing the distance and shape. I have made two changes to how I do ribs since this projects. I now run a piece of bendable wire thru each rib so that it will hold it's shape. That makes this step easier, and removes the need for the support inside the sternum. I also have a chart I made from measuring a bucky's ribcage, and I drew a chart for which rib is which length. When I roll the newspaper I write the rib number on the rolled paper and cut it to length. Just a quick diversion to show how these better ribs go together.

Roll some newspaper and cut it to length. You can see here the ribs in their component pieces, finished rib, tube of newspaper, and wire with hooked ends.

Run the wire thru the tube of newspaper. Use some needle nose pliers to bend the end of the wire. This keeps the paper from sliding too much but mostly keeps sharp pointy wires from stabbing you or poking thru the rib later in construction.

Bend the wire end again with e paper. This just helps to make the end of the rib studier. You don't want it to tear off after you have glued it.

Then wrap the end in duct tape. This will make it much more durable during the hot gluing it to the sternum.

Repeat these steps on each end of the ribs.

Once all the ribs are on, I added a collar bone of rolled up newspaper. You might think this is a "meta" detail, but it provides a support later for the paper mache so that the top of the chest cavity doesn't look like a big caved in hole.

I made some shoulder blades out of cardboard and hot glue and duct taped them on. These fill out the back areas so there aren't any big empty holes back there either.

The Limbs

I started bulking out the PVC arms with some aluminum foil. This gives you a better looking arm, breaking up the shape of the pipe and allowing for more realism once covered in mache. The foil is just wrapped on, and any loose spots are touched up with a spot of hot glue.

I have bulked out his legs and added a cardboard pelvis.

I made some hands out of hot glue sticks and armature wire. I wanted them to be posable, and they were but I don't like this solution. They were hard to paint and hard to pose. I made a new hand design based on a an idea from BoneDancer.

I cut out a palm from cardboard. I measured out some fingers from cheap ($.007 a foot) poly vinyl tubing using a jig I had made which was modeled off a real hand. I then ran some wire thru them. I bent the end around the tube at the fingertips and then I filled the end of the finger with hotglue to set it. I bent the other end of the wire into little semi-circles and hot glued those to the cardboard palm.

I closed the hand with a matching piece of cardboard and hot glue the whole thing shut. Here you can see the jig.

Then I used rolled up aluminum foil to bulk out the back of the hand. I have even made little tips for the fingers with little foil bits shaped into cones. That looks great when paper mached.

Then to attach the hand I made a loop of wire with one end like a fork, and after covering the fork end with hot glue, I slid it into the little tubes of the corrugated cardboard.

Then I bulked it up with aluminum foil to look like the wrist bones. The loop slides into the PVC arm and is secured with a squirt of GreatStuff expanding foam. For Mr. Chicken's corpse I just attached the hands to the arms with a small loop of string (marionette style, remember?)

The feet are made in a similar manner but are much more simple to construct.

After the Mache I sculpted toes with some epoxy clay.

In the next segment I'll cover the paper mache and corpsing techniques I used on this guy.

Carver Creep - 3 Axis Skull

2009-11-06T15:04:00.001-08:00

Say Hello to Carver Creep. An iteration of last year 's alliterated hero, Cauldron Creep. Yep, these guys work together. Hey, they are even related! Carver stacks em up, and the Cauldron boils em down.

Carver Creep is a an exercise in set building more than anything. He is essentially a Bucky skeleton with a GYS 3 axis Lindberg Skull kit. The mount I made so that the can be hunched over but not talk straight down into the table is the only trick thing going on here.

The Carver Creep set consist of a victim skull whose face has been removed and his tongue cut out and cut up like sashimi, a bowl full of shrunken heads, a stack of skulls under his table, an altar, and a drying rack for skinned faces. He also has a set of custom cutlery made from burning wood, flesh, and steel.

Now I'm not a technical guy in anyway, I can learn the stuff but I usually break it or ruin the first one of whatever my first attempt. At $200 bucks a kit, I decided to get some help. Through old fashioned bartering I entered into a trade with the tack smart and all around good guy Mr. Chicken. I made him a full on zombie to fit a sketch he had for a prop he wanted to build this year, and he assembled and programmed the skull to a soundtrack I made and a confusing tape of me trying to show him how the head should turn and look around as he talks. When I got the head back I installed the LED eyes and monsterguts.com eyeball blanks, closed up the head and filled the seam, except a screw driver sized hole in the back, so I can always pop him open if I need to.

I painted the whole thing with White Primer, then washed it down with Raw Umber and Matte Medium. Over that I used Wildfire White UV paint, which glows insanely bright, and is transparent under white light. I made some teeth from Fimo Translucent clay (the FIMO brand glows under black light).

(look! its seamless, mmm so nice!)

The Victim Skull
I made this guy from one of the casts I made from my new mold I made from a modified Lindberg skull ( I drilled out the tooth pegs to look like real tooth sockets and added texture to the skull's forehead). The eyes are the Hong Kong eyes I got on Ebay with some Magic Sculpt Epoxy Clay for the muscles. The skin is Creative paperclay, since I find that easy to texture subtly. I made the ears out of Sculpey Firm. His teeth are the Sculpey Translucent, which is not UV reactive. His tongue and skinned face are also Sculpey.

Tools of the Trade
I need to shoot these under a black light so you can see the burning ember effect, but this shot shows the metal nicely. These are tree roots I got at Castaic Lake. They are kinda like driftwood, but way more textured. I made the blades from sheet styrene which is the same plastic used on model kits (you can get it at a good hobby shop). I attached them with some plumber's epoxy then covered that with detailed muscle like tissues made from Magic Sculpt. The bone needle is all Magic Sculpt.

Tiny Heads
I made these guys as an experiment with different combinations of Super Sculpy 3, Fimo, and Super Sculpey Firm. I tried to make different characters with each one. These are painted with eh Craft Smart brand of paints from Michael's.

Skull Pile
These are some full and half skulls casting I made form the same mold of the modified Lindberg skull. I made Fimo teeth and painted them with Wildfire white. These are cast in SmoothOn's Foam-It 5 which makes a very durable foam skull that can be handled roughly and dropped with little or no damage.

The Altar
The altar is built around a giant root I brought back from the lake. I covered it with resin fetal skulls I made from a mold in this how-to. I surrounded the Altar with candle made from PVC, Hot glue, and flicker candles from the how-to in the Mitchell's How to Haunt your House Book. (Thanks to everyone in the crew who pitched in and helped make these candle. I think everyone did at least one). I then put in some of th e cool things i have collected over the years. A monkey skull, some hark jaws, a few jawbones, a Samoan tiki, and old metal dish filled with amber stones, and some shrunken heads from the previous years, which as I look at the pictures didn't have any black light paint on them.

The Drying Rack
I made this as kinda of a death mobile. A drying rack for skins and herbs. The two faces are Sculpey I laid over a cardboard skull masks from Michael's. The backs are covered in GreatStuff and painted like dried blood. I hung little bundles of plants that looked like herbs from the bottom rack. I had wanted to make ears for this to on the middle rack, but I just ran out of time. I'll finish it though, just for finishings sake.

The Routine
Here is the routine. For some reason my voice is coming thru the mix more on Youtube, but you'll get the gist. The camera is off axis from the dead zero of the skull, but its the only video that came out in focus on my new camera (need to read that manual.

Sneak Preview #4

2009-10-28T20:18:00.001-07:00

Tools of the Trade.

Sheet Styrene, wood, apoxie sculpt

Sneak Preview #3

2009-10-22T10:36:00.001-07:00

Finished this guy up last night.

Sneak Preview #2

2009-10-21T10:38:00.001-07:00

Sneak Preview #1

2009-10-20T11:39:00.001-07:00

It's coming.

The Faceless - Habitat for Humanity Haunt

2009-10-13T16:11:00.001-07:00

The fourth prop project this year that is NOT FOR MY haunt, and which annoys the hell out of my significant other is this guy. The Faceless was made for HauntForum's Joker, Shane Pitts who is doing a charity haunt in Texas for Habitat for Humanity. He had asked if people could donate things like old scrubs or whatever and when I saw it was for Habitat for Humanity I thought I'd jump in and help (having been a habitat for humanity supporter in the past).

Now I'll say it first. I am bastard for getting things done at the last minute. But this guy should arrive on friday, the first day of the haunt. Please don't f**k it up UPS! This guy is going to get bolted to a headless mannequin body. Man it's hard to try and think about how things should fit together on something you can't see and touch, but I added some extra neck so Shane can saw him to fit. I hope that works out.

This is hands down the goriest prop I have made. It was fun to make even if it's a bit too much for my haunt. I like gross, and I think I have proven that in the past, but I also like the magic of undead creatures, if that makes any sense. The gore of this prop just speaks to the reality of mankind. We can be very savage to each other and theres no magic in that, but that's also the terror of it, it's realness.

Here is the finished product. Gruesome eh?

Here are some shots from the side.

I wanted this to look like the inmates in The Asylum had gotten to one of the doctors (of whoever it will be, maybe the warden?) and had tortured him. Broken and pulled out teeth, the nose cut off, and the tongue cut out, and the face cut off. I didn't want it to look too surgical, so I made a bunch of cuts, to try and make the surgery seems cruel and frantic.

Here are a couple little bits I made to pose with the prop. This just shows the fronts and backs of each piece. I ran out of time but I had wanted to include the torn off face.

Here is a shot of the detail in the mouth. I used my airbrush here to try and give it a tissue like feel. I would have liked to go nuts on the detail, but I was running against the clock and had to ship this guy.

I have a few pictures of his construction but I haven't really made a how-to for this guy, just because he was made so quickly. I'll be doing a how-to on muscle and these broken teeth, so stay tuned for that.

Materials list:

Muscles: magic sculpt epoxy clay

Eyes: Hong Kong eyes from e-bay

Teeth: Sculpey brand translucent

Ears, Tongue, and nose: Super Sculpey III

Skull: Foam copy of customized Lindberg skull

Skin: Creative paper clay

Neck tissue and substructure: Smooth-on Plasti-Paste

First I sculpted half the face in Magic sculpt and referenced pictures of anatomy on the internet.In the most basic sense, I copied the muscle shapes onto the skull and then drew lines into it with a needle like tool. Nothing fancy there.

I then mirror the first side I did onto the other side. Looks almost happy, but we'll fix that soon enough.

Then I put on the Creative paperclay. I used paperclay because it lets me crate much more subtle textures than the epoxy clay. I used a slightly damp hog bristle brush to gently push in some skin texture. I then used a rough wire brush tool to mess up the edges of the skin, and an exacto knife to cut away chunks and make gashes.

I used duct tape and great stuff to fill in the jaw. On top of that I used some more magic sculpt to make the soft palette and the tongue stump.

Here I am bulking out the neck with plastic grocery bags and duct tape, and then covered in layers of foil to give it a grippy surface. The neck support is a piece of 1/2 inch PVC pipe.

In this shot the is still uncured, but I have used Smooth-On's Plasti-Paste to create a hard plastic shell on which to build the paperclay that will go on the neck.The texture was good enough to use as ripped up flesh so if you look at the finish product, I have just painted it read, and there are only two tendons sculpted over that.

Here is a shot of the paperclay build up. You can see the yellow of the Plasti-Paste showing thru.

Here I started roughing in the color. I am going to recommend this color over and over so get used to it. Liquitex liquid acrylics "acra scarlet orange". I know orange you say, but this looks like fresh "cut my hand open again" blood.

The bone is Liquitex "parchment" which looks great and by awesome coincidence, when mixed with the acra scarlet orange makes a perfect skintone which I used on the neck and ears.

To bring out the detail in the muscle I used Alizrian Crimson Hue and Phatlo Green mixed together to give a darker dried blood look to shade the lines in the muscles. I used this as a thin wash and traced the edge of each muscle and then brushed it over the ends of each muscle and let it flow into the grooves. I also used this color as part of the bruising colors on the skin.

The hair I cut off a cheap halloween wig and applied using latex mixed with acrylics to match the skintone. I applied it in rows, starting from the bottom and working up, with each new row covering the last rows ugly edges. At the top of the head I airbrushed some transparent back to blend in the edge, and dry brush some black paint to hide the edge of the hair. I used cleat satin varnish as hair spray on the hair, which helped to keep it uniform, and kinda glued the loose pieces together.

The teeth come out slightly yellow after you bake the translucent sculpey. The more you bake it the yellower,browner, and darker they will get. I washed these with a light wash of raw umber, a yellowish brown, then mixed in some red with the wash and touched up the areas where teeth are broken.

I used Krylon Crystal Clear Gloss to seal the face and inside the mouth to give it that wet look, and then used satin on the skin followed by a dusting of matte.

BUSY BUSY BUSY

2009-09-29T16:19:00.001-07:00

Well its the busiest time of the year for me and so I have no time to blog it seems, but here's a peek at whats going on in the Devil's Workshop (my kitchen table).

A prop for a charity I am working on (but not in). This will be a real gorefest when it's done!

I am building three of these guys. They will be corpse sconces, and have flickering LEDs in their eyes and chest cavities.

This guy is finished except for paint. I will be finishing my props and then painting them all at the same time. Why? Because I know exactly how long it will take me to paint something. That leaves time for things I have never done before to play out.

Dead monkey 2.0 is mid construction. He got put on the back burner while I made sure I finished my Volcano. Yeah I said Volcano.

To check out the weekly status of Haunted Tiki Island's Construction, go over to our Blog.

I hope to post some props and a preview of HTI 2009 so stay tuned.

Making Glow in the Dark Teeth

2009-09-04T10:29:00.001-07:00

I made a quick video on how to make teeth from Polymer clay. I like to do this because it gives you more creative options when making halloween props and makes for more expressive faces. This how-to uses translucent white Sculpey and Premo Glow in the Dark Clay, but the brands aren't important, as most of these brands all have these two colors.

My recommended baking time:
200° for 20-30 minutes (because these are so thin)

Manufacturer's recommended bake times:
Fimo: 230° for 30 minutes
Sculpey: 275° for 15 minutes
Premo: 275° for 30 minutes

Tools needed:
tooth pick or needle tool
knife or wooden knife tool
toothbrush

Other Glow in the Dark colors from Sculpey:
green
blue
orange
yellow

Flouresecent Colors from Premo:
Pink
Red
Green
Yellow

Examples of Polymer Clay teeth in my props:

Wacky Zombie - Part 1. The Noggin

2009-08-25T21:41:00.000-07:00

This is the Wacky Zombie, aka. the "Wheel Barrow Zombie". I built this for a friend who wanted a fun looking corpse who would be getting wheeled back to the grave from whence he came. He wanted to be able to pose the legs and wanted the arms to be marionette style, since he plans on making a little video clip of him to go in the haunt. Oh yeah he needed to be blue.

Building the Head

I had a bunch of foam castings of a bucky skull with the jaw attached from last year that were kinda last minute filler props, so I decided to recycle one. For this project, you can use any skull you might have. If you have a two-peice skull with the separate jaw you gold, if your like me, you have to cut the jaw off.

I have carved out the jaw part after removing it from the skull to give it a more realistic shape.

Word to the wise, some foam can make a huge mess (plus urethans foam is toxic). I carve it over the sink, and then wash the nasty dust down the drain after I pull out the big chunks.

Now is the time to build up the inside of the mouth with clay, before you put the face together. I made a soft pallete, a tongue, and sculpted the outside skin while I was at it. You'll see the teeth from the foam skull are still in this shot, but I took them out later, but you should go ahead and cut out the front 6 teeth or so. We are going replace them later with some hand made sculpey teeth. I sculpted this with Magic Sculpt (very much like Apoxie Sculpt), which is a slow drying epoxy putty that you can sculpt and smooth with water. It smells pleasant and dries hard in about 3 hours. If you want to use Creative Paperclay, that will work nicely too.

The Teeth

The teeth are made from Fimo Polymer Clay colors Translucent White and Yellow, which by the way are UV reactive. Making the teeth is very simple. Mix the White Translucent Fimo with the Yellow fimo to a ratio of about 10:1. Mix it together good or you will have swirly teeth patterns.

Now take a small piece and roll it out like this into a fat worm. To taper the Fimo, just roll out the edges with your fingers.

Then cut the little worm in half. You'll see how that tend to flatten the edge. Press that edge down of your tool didn't flatten it enough as you cut it. Then just make 3 or 4 vertical lines running down one side of the tooth and thats it. Bake these at 200° for 15 minutes. That's less than what the Fimo packaging will say, but these will be so thin it becomes easy to burn them, so we are going to cook them low n slow.

The Eyes

This guy has some custom eyeballs.

You can see then with the lights on, but when they are lit up in the dark they aren't too opaque that they are dark or look uneven. That because these are painted with an airbrush just dark enough to be see in light, but not so dark as to blot out the LEDs, or to create a giant iris as you might get with eyeballs painted with a brush. You can get the same effect using s airbrush, but you need to use translucent paint for the iris and keep your brush strokes very consistent.

I used these eyeballs that you can find in the stores around halloween as a party favor. They are too big for realistically proportioned eyes, but are good for an over the top theatrical look. I have just wet sanded the paint of with 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper. The sanding gives you a good surface to paint on as opposed the eyeballs very shiny finish.

I have drilled a whole straight back into each of the eye sockets, and then a hole straight up from where the spine would connect. I threaded the wire thru and have solders in the two ultra bright white LEDs. You can see I have some plumber's epoxy ( or JB Weld).

You can see there is a wad of plumbers epoxy I have wrapped around the wire. This is going to hold the LEDs in place so that they point straight out of the eye socket to evenly illuminate the eyeball, and will prevent them from slipping backwards into the head.

Heres what it looks like when its done. Nice and neat, properly seated and secure.

Here you can see that his eyes are lit evenly and bright, but you can still see the eye detail.

Sculpting and Corpsing the Face

I have skinned the face with Magic Sculpt, built up some eyebrows, added some rotten patches of skin on the top of the skull, and added some warts and such. Mostly I have tried to make a muscle pattern with lines following the contours of the face. In some place I have added some holes and wrinkles to break it up and look more rotten.

I made the ears with a different material called Super Sculpey Firm. I used the firm sculpey because It is much stiffer and will hold its shape in my warm Southern California apartment. At first I made ears that were symmetrical, but it made my zombie look like a chimp, so I re-did one ear to look shriveled like a dried apricot.

Here I got carried away and forgot to snap a few pictures. I have installed the eyeballs, and make eyelids out of Magic Sculpt to hold them in and seal off any stray light form the LEDs.

I have taken an old stock and pulled it over the head. I pulled it tight and cut off the excess stocking, then went and pinched little bits of fabric and cut them off which made all the little holes.

I painted the stocking white with thick acrylic (you can use latex, or latex paint too) which made it much heavier and sturdy, and also acts like a glue to hold the stocking in place.

After the paint dried, I took a awl like tool and pulled apart some of the fabric to add smaller details to the stocking.

Then I smeared on some Greatstuff with a folded up piece of newspaper (why waste a brush?). This gives it a thinner coating and make smaller and more varied bumps.

Cauldron Creep How-To

2009-08-21T14:53:00.001-07:00

This is my first, and so far only moving prop, the Cauldron Creep. It is very simple as far as the construction goes, it's just the idea that's a bit different. You don't need to use a skeleton, you can make it be anything as long as you remember that what makes it look real is that one arm never moves, and the other arm is totally loose like a marionette.

Check him out in action last year:

Watch this video closely and you should be able to figure out what's going on:

Parts List:

20 ft 1/2" PVC
8 1/2" PVC "T"s
4 1/2" PVC 90°
1 5rpm motor (for head action)
1 Monsterguts Wiper motor
2 ultrabright LEDs
Red and Black electrical wire small gauge
2 monsterguts eyball blanks
1 foam skull
1 large "bag of Bones" from biglots
Creepy Cloth
1 can Greatstuff
1 can Black spray paint
1" drywall screws
5' 2x4
plumbers tape
ATX power supply

The Frame
I made a model of this in Google Sketchup 7. You can download it here if you want to look at it in 3-D. This illustration just shows the construction. It is not to scale, and the measurements used were just guessed, but i shows you what's going on inside.

The frame is flimsy old 1/2" PVC pipe. I chose 1/2" PVC because (1.) I wanted it to be small since I was gluing bones to it, and I didn't want it to show up too much, and (2.) I thought it would have some give and kind of shake my skeleton a bit as the stick turned around. An added bonus is that it creaks, which lends itself to it being a creaky old skeleton.

The Arms
I am using the "Bag of Bones" from Biglots, it has a lot of pieces and is affordable ($20). These are painted styrofoam with wire armatures inside of them. They look good and are very light, but be careful, they are easy to melt when using a glue gun. Set your glue gun to low to make sure you are gluing and not melting.

The Marionette Arm
The free moving arm, that is in the lower position, and is the bottom hand on the stick is a marionette arm. This means the joints are loose and flop around freely. You might think that you could just tie some string between the bones and be done, but this makes for a joint that is too free, and will flop wildly. You can see in the picture below I have two connections made from armature wire. This lets the arm bend in and out as the stick circles in the cauldron, but keeps the arms from flipping over. You'll have to practice making this joint a few times depending on what you use to make the arms.

The hand joint is much simpler, as it has one looped connection the forearm.

The Rigid Arm
The rigid arm is very simple. Save for the wrist, the arm doesn't move at all. This arm supports the most of the weight of the stick, so make sure you set your PVC with screws so that it can't slide out of place. Where the hand connects to the wrist is just a simple connection like the hand for the marionette arm. To prevent mechanical binding, you might even use two loops of plastic coated wire.

The Hands
The hands bring this illusion together. To give them the solid look and to prevent shifting and/or binding, hotglue the hands in place to the stick. Tape the hand on the marionette arm in place first and let the stick turn for a few minutes, you want to make sure the arm doesn't get pulled straight all the way out, this seems to invite binding to occur. Lower or raise the lower hand on the marionette arm so that the overall position of the arm is mostly bent throughout the arc of travel.

The Cauldron
Here is an overview of the cauldron. I started with a metal wash tub (like you fill with sodas and beer for your summer BBQs). I built up the sides with cardboard, which i then covered with muslin attached with spray adhesive and went over with latex paint and Greatstuff.

Here is a sketchup rendering of what the cauldron looks like. The rotating arm is 1/8" aluminum bar stock. I attached a 1" pvc end cap to the end with a 5/16 bolt and nut. I filled the end of the PVC end cap with hot glue until the bolt head of the 5/16 bolt was covered and the bottom of the cap was flat and smooth. The nut should be on the underside of the bar stock, and not inside the PVC end cap. If I hadn't done that, the end of the stick would catch the bolt head and bind as it turned. This way the tip of the stick rotates freely as needed.

View from the bottom: That "H" is where the steel tub is screwed onto the frame. The Monsterguts wiper motor is held down by copper plumbers tape, and then screwed down into the wood from above. The "feet" of the skeleton frame are also attached here. This gives the whole piece much needed structural integrity. If the skeleton was standing separate, the stick would push him away from the cauldron over time, and eventually knock him over.

See that hole in the bottom of the tub? Thats where a plastic "pool" or sump hose goes to pipe fog into the cauldron. I just use a fogger with a timer to puff fog into it, something like 5 seconds on at 15-20 second intervals.

Head Mechanism
The head mechanism in my creep is very sloppy, but easy to understand and implement properly when you build yours.

This is what mine looks like: It is driven by a 5 rpm motor from allelectronics.com. The motor is driven off of the 12v output from an ATX power supply. The leads are hard to get to. You have to open up the case of the motor to solder leads onto the hookups, or carefully cut away the plastic housing with a dremel.

The linkage is two parts. One is a piece of bar stock that is attached to the spindle on the motor. That attaches to another piece of bar stock in a joint connected with a 5/16 bolt, two washers, and a nut. Then the other end of the second piece of bar stock connects the PVC lever coming out of the back of the neck assembly. Here it is again connected with a 5/16 bolt, washers, and a nut.

Mounting the motor so that the linkage aligns with the neck is done by cutting two small pieces of PVC, about 1-2" to make spacers. Then these are placed between the motor and the right hand side "spinal column" and a 4" drywall screw goes thru each of the motor's mounting holes and into the column.

You can see the two pieces of bar stock are very long, but that's because I mounted the motor too far from the head. If you bring the two ends closer together (the motor closer to the head) the axis will shrink. If I hadn't been rushing to finish this guy last year I would have futzed around with it more, and still might change it this year.

The motor has a very weird and specific connection. Don't be frustrated, just grab a 5/16 or 1/4 bolt and either (1.) screw it into the plastic, making your own threads as you go with questionable results like I did. or (2.) use a thread and tap tool to cut the plastic out.

Here is example what it should look like when you get right. This should get you in the ballpark, and then you can adjust as needed:

I based this mechanism off of Woody Carr's oscillating witch neck.. It's kind of a sideways version.

Here is a great site explaining the how this and other useful mechanisms work. I recommend bookmarking it ASAP.

Finishing Touches
To wrap it up I'll got over a few items here I have been asked about.

The Eyes: I used two eyeball blanks from www.monsterguts.com. I placed them in front of the two ultra-bright LEDs I used for the eyes, I mounted them with hot glue. When you shine the LED thru the whole eye is gets very soft creepy glow. If you want more focused eyes, with a bright white pupil/iris, try drilling out a whole in the back of the eyeball blank.

Connecting the eyes: Check out this little info nugget from Scary Terry first. To power the eyes, you are going to run them off the 3.3v output from the ATX power supply. Because this output is so close to the amount of voltage needed to run the LEDs, you wont need a resistor, but because it is just enough voltage to run one LED, you need to wire these in parallel and not in series. Each LED gets its own connection to the power source. So run a red wire from the LED to one of the 3.3v outputs on the ATX. You can connect both LEDs to the output, but they each need their own connection to the output, this is called "parallel" wiring. For the ground wire, your gonna run a wire down to one of the outputs labeled common (aka ground). Just like the powered lead you did with the red wire, you;ll have to run two black wires to the common (ground).

The Skull: The skull I used is a urethane foam casting I made from a Bucky 1st quality skull. Lindberg skulls also look nice but consider the weight. Try using a foam skull if you can to keep it light. A Bucky or Lindberg skull might be too heavy, so be prepared to use a sturdier motor.

The Stick: I just used a stick I found in the woods. I say use a real stick because the one I used is pretty heavy and I think it has a big influence on how the movement turns out. Some other stirring witch tutorials have light weight foam sticks which might work or not.

The Bones: As I mentioned earlier I used the big "Bag of Bones" from BigLots that runs for about $20 dollars. After I assembled the creep and had him working, I spray painted the frame matte black. I used a glue gun set to low heat and glued the foam bones directly onto the frame. Where I didn't have things like ankle bones or knee caps, I made them out of little globs of great stuff and painted them to match.

The Ribcage: Mine is total crap. it's great stuff on hardware cloth. DON'T USE HARDWARE CLOTH! Its too rigid and cuts your hands up. I think a newspaper ribcage (like the picture below) should work out fine. All you need to watch out for is the mechanism catching in your ribcage.

Remember to use creepy cloth to cover up the shortcomings of your skeleton!

If you have any questions, just post them to this thread over on Hauntforum.

Resources:
Monsterguts.com
AllElectronics.com
Mechanisms
Woody Carr's Witch How-to
Scary Terrys Wiper Motor Page
Scary Terry's using and ATX power supply page
Google SketchUp
DC's 3-d file of the Cauldron Creep frame

FrankenPaint Pt.4

2009-08-19T13:29:00.001-07:00

Just one last installment of the FrankenPaint series. In this segment you can see how the pimple like boils in the upper left of the face were done.

2 - Part Silicone Mold How-To

2009-08-14T09:33:00.001-07:00

I made this small fetal skull for a FCG type prop I am making this year for Halloween. I am building an altar that will have three floating skulls cast in amber resin with flickering leds inside. Instead of spending $70 for a replica skull I thought I'd try and improve my sculpting skills by making this myself. This is just super sclupey 3. That weird looking neck is just a pour spout I sculpted onto the bottom. It will be cut off the castings.

We will be building this mold with SmoothOn Dragon Skin brush on silicone. The actual mold will be very thin and will collapse or flop around under it's own weight. To prevent this and to make sure the mold holds it shape, we need to build a rigid support shell which will also be covered in this how to.

Building the Mold

Part One - The Model Support

To start making this two peice mold you need to build a support platform which will hold your original very steady and will create the foundation for the first half of the 2 part mold. You want to use something that is affordable, compatiable, and esy to work with. Plasticine, plastina, or oil based clay works well and is commonly used for this application. Be sure that your use a sulphur free clay, as sulphur inhibits the cure of the silicone we are going to be using.

First you want to set your orginal down in a small wad of clay, and push it firmly so that is sticks. Then you want to start building up around edge to increase the size of the support.

You can see here that I am just pushing clumps of clay around the edges. The clay doesnt have to be solid and void free, it just has hold together (not crumble) and in the end, only the surface needs to be smooth.

Once you build up the support base so that it extends about 2-3 inches its time to start smoothing the top. This margin of 2-3 inches isn;t propportional, so even though this is a small mold, for a full sized skull, you could make yours 3-4 inches, but mauch larger will only make your mold cumbersome and use more material. The edge is there so that you can put bolts into the support shell to hold the mold shut.

Once you get the surface smooth over all, you want to go in and carefully smooth the area where the model meets the clay. This is the seam line, so the cleaner this area is the less you'll see it when you make castings.

After you clean up with tools, you'll want to use 90% alcohol and a small paintbrush and smooth the areas around the seamline until is very smooth.

Next we are going to take a small ribbon tool to remove a line of clay from just around the edge of the model. This prevents from resin leaking out of the mold in case the mold halves aren't always perfectly aligned or pressed together had enough at all times.

Then taking the end of paintbrush push in some holes around the perimeter just outside the resin trap line. These are the pin registers which will help keep the mold halves aligned. I made more than it needs because some will not come out right despite the best attempts to apply the silicone properly.

The heavier outside line you see is going to be the edge of the mold. The silicone will be trimmed to this edge, and the area round it will be for the support shell.

Here you can see I have added 4 large holes in the outer area. These will be pin registers for the support shell. Now spray it down with mold release or use a brush to smooth on a very thin coat of petroleum jelly. Make sure you get it in all the nooks and crannies.

Part Two - Silicone Mold

Now we are going to mix up some Dragon Skin silicone and start making the mold. I have two 1oz portion cups and a 2.5oz portion cup. We are going to use the 1oz cups to measure out the silicone and mix them in the 2.5oz cup. If you are making a bigger mold, just scale up the size of the portion cups. 2.5 oz cups work great for measuring silicone for full size skulls, and just use a small plastic cup to mix it up.

In the 2.5oz cup I put some red SilcPig silicone pigment.

Then measure out equal parts A and B of Dragon Skin.

Scrape all of the A and B into the 2.5oz cup and mix together scraping the sides and making sure the red pigment is mixed in completely.

The first coat is the detail coat. To make sure you capture the detail you want to "stab" on the silicone with a cheap brush and make sure you cover every nook and cranny.

To make the mold keyes we built into the clay work we need to drizzle silicone into the little holes in the lay around the head. Try not to get any bubbles in these. Poke them with a toopick and swirl it around gently to make sure it is filled with silicone. Then brush on the rest of the first batch of silicone with gentle strokes, being careful not to trap any air bubbles.

After the first coat cures or dries to a tacky finish (sticky but doesn't come off on your finger) it time to do the second coat. Now if you took a nap or had to go bail your brother out of jail and it cures completely, don't fret. The next coat will stick stick, but wont be as strong. probably not an issue for casual mold makers, but if agiant production house were your pulling casts all day and fast, it will wear faster.

In the second coat we are going to add some blue SilcPig to the silicone so that we can tell if we have covered the last coat completely. We are also going to add Thivex, a silicone thickener. Just a drop will do. THis will make the silicone very viscous. On this coat and the next we just want to build strength. So we're going to lay the silicone on thick brush or a plastic knife and just kinda trowel it on. Build it up around the eye sockets and nose, all of the highest points.

On this third coat, it's the same as the second, only we switch back to red SilcPig to make sure we cover it all. When it dries, pull off or snip off the stringy little bits of silicone that spilt over the side.

Part Three - The Support Shell

When the third coat of silicone is completely dry/cured we will build it support shell. I am going to use Smooth-On Plasti-Paste but you can also use fiberglass, plaster, or a brushable plastic. The Plasti-Paste is is a 3:1 ratio two part urethane plastic with fibre bits embedded into it. I mixed up 5 ounces, 4oz A and 1oz B.

Just trowel on the Plasti-Paste with a plastic knife. You want it to go all the way to the edges of the clay but not over. Make sure you push some into the holes you made in the clay for keying the support shell to its other half. When this dries, we going to pull off the clay. Don't pull the model out of the mold! Not even to peek.

I have pulled the support of clay off of the table, and then carefully pulled it away from the model and first half of the mold. There will be some clay you have to carefully remove stuck to parts.

I have cleaned off most of the clay. Until I took this picture I thought it was clean, but I still see a few bits by the pourstem and base of the skull. You can also see what happens when your keying holes dont get silicone in them. The third one up from the bottom had an air bubble, and is now useless.

I have also trimmed the mold with scissors to the line I made in the clay. The raised edge it made will form a trough for the silicone on the second half. and the second half will rest inside this edge, again helping to prevent any leaks from becoming messes outside the mold.

With the mold cleaned and the excess silicone trimmed away, this is what you should have. Before you start the next step, you need to really lay on the mold release. I have used spray for the model itself, and of rthe mold and and the support shell I used petroleum jelly, and made sure to really work it into all the crevices. Silicon like to stick to silicone, and the Plasti=Paste is even stickier!

The second half if the same as the first half. 1s coat detail coat. 2nd and 3rd coats are thick build ups for strength.

Once the 2nd half of the support shell has cured you can pry it apart carefully with a flathead screwdriver or aputty knife or evne a butterknife.

To hold the mold haves together we are going to use #20 bolts and wingnuts. To keep them aligned we need to drill them out in a certain way. Pull out the silicone inner mold halves and set them aside. Then take on of the halves and drill it out (liek the one on the right).

Then place the support shells together and use the first set of holes as guides. Drill thru them and then thru the other side. You should now have perfetly matched holes.

You should have a funny looking oyster when your done. Remember to only hand tighten these, and don't crank them down, just till they feel solid. If you go too hard, you'll break the shell.

Use a dremel or a file to clean up the support shell. You'll want to make sure to open up the area around where you'll pour the resin in. Any resin that spills will act like glue and weld your support shells shut. Trim off any of the shell that hangs over the edge ot the other half. This will make it easier to get the shells into alignment.

It always a good idea to keep the inside of the outer shells covered with a release agent.

Some people like to make a plug for thier spout out of oil clay. I don't like to because it messy, waste clay, and I don't know that the clay wont alter the casting material or fall inside. So I made a little plug out of super sculpey 3 with a wire handle. You'll also notice to hold this mold upright I have it embedded in clay. I am going to be rotomolding these skulls, so I haven't given this support shell feet. You can easily add feet to the shell with some plumber epoxy aka JB Weld.

Just a shot of what the plug looks like.

Here is the first casting. I did it in white urethane plastic just to see how it would come out. You can see soem flash around the seamline, but it is so thin it rubs off with your fingers. A few passes with a fine emery board and its gone.

Here is the seam line. Not too bad, it will disappear unde some primer.

Just wash you cast very thouroughly with hot water and soap. Give it a good scrub and let it dry. It will be paint ready.

FrankePaint Pt. 3

2009-07-08T11:38:00.001-07:00

Here is the third installment in the FrankenPaint series. In this one I paint the leathery yellow patch around the left eye, and use some transparent wash techniques not seen before in the series.

FrankenPaint Pt. 2

2009-07-07T00:21:00.000-07:00

Here is part two, where I paint the more lively pink section of the face around the right eye.

FrankenPaint Part. 1

2009-07-06T19:24:00.000-07:00

Here is Part 1 of the painting of A Patchwork of Flesh. It more of a follow along with a play by play narration than a fully fleshed out how-to, but some people have expressed an interest, so here you go.

A Patchwork of Flesh - Sculpture

2009-07-06T12:13:00.000-07:00

While reading Ghoul Friday's blog I saw this blog called "A Patchwork of Flesh" which solicits it readers to submit artwork of Frankstein's monster. It's interesting that there is a call to re-imagine the monster based on the description in Mary Shelley's book, and yet almost all of the submissions are based on the Karloff monster from the movies. Oh Well.
So here are two of my soon to-be submissions.
This is my drawing I did when I just had to make something while in the throes of inspiration:

Then I made this sculpture (only my third ever):

I made him with a 50/50 mix of super sculpey and super sculpey firm. I used a novelty skull for the base/armature/support. I painted him with an airbrush with some washes and brush detailing using acrylics. It might be hard to tell in these pics, but he is only 3 inches tall, I can almost close my hand around him. He took a week to make and three evenings to paint.

My take on this is that to be "The Monster" is to be a jigsaw person, a living jalopy with mismatched parts, always breaking down, and in his case, a gruesome and unending task of repair, whether it be for "new" parts or "salvage". Each patch represents some level of decay or lack of suitable materials on hand at one time. Moldy, dry, leathery, burnt, infected, and some new bits too. I imagine the monster to be forced into a life of horrible acts, to others and to himself just to stay alive, a life in which there is almost no comfort.