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.
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
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.
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:
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.
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