It’s Coming!

Killer Grasshopper?

So Twisted Nightmares just had a prop contest in which you had to come up with your idea of a “Twisted Nightmare”.

Anyone that knows me, KNOWS I hate bugs, roaches and grasshoppers in particular.  So, I came up with the most twisted nightmare I could possibly conceive, without having to make a roach.  (EWWwWWW!  Roaches!!)

The Killer Grasshopper:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Papier mache and clay on a coat hanger armature.

Knife and axe blade – cardboard and tin foil with bamboo skewer handles.

Chainsaw – 1/2” foam carved to shape, popsicle stick base w/tin foil.

Lots of ways to KILL, and lots of nightmares to come. 

Scare Bear

Straight from the misty regions of my recurring twisted nightmare, I present to you MangleHeart Bear!

MangleHeart is an evil and loathsome bear who knows lots about helping others share their feelings of terror.
By plunging his claws deep into peoples hearts, MangleHeart Bear helps spread terror throughout the land.
He wears the perfect symbol for his job on his tummy—a lacerated heart.

Scaring Mission: Show people how to FEAR.
Symbol: His heart symbol represents his famous evil care.
Personality: Evil and vindictive.
Motto: Nobody cares like a scare bear!

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Death of Jack?

Ok, just a short video of me trying to figure out how to store Jack. Ultimately, I had to tear him apart.

But I’m actually excited because now I can rebuild him even better than last year!

Smilin' Jack Pt. 2

I'm back! Sorry to be gone for so long. Had a serious eye infection which made it next to impossible to look at the computer screen. Now, where was I? Oh, yes...a head with no body!

Well, since my newly created pumpkin couldn't really stand on his own too well, I decided to create a Monster Mud creature using Jack. I soon realized that to make Jack proportionate to his head, he was going to be quite large. Mwuahhhhaaaa! Excellent!

                                           

Off to Home Depot to gather the materials. It just so happens that the gentleman working the plumbing supply this night is a Scout Master with experience in making paper mache masks! Once I told him what I was planning to do, he came alive! Boy, I've never had so much fun in the plumbing section in my life! We literally spent two hours brainstorming on how to build the body, gathering materials, changing our minds, putting everything back, gathering different materials, deciding we were genius' for improving the original agreed on design, and solving world peace. I congratulated the gentleman on such a successful collaborative effort and told him I would save a seat for him in Geneva, Switzerland when we accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. At this moment I took my materials and headed for the lone open checkout lane.

I then changed my mind and put everything back.

Did my wife mention I'm kind of a fly by the seat of my pants kind of guy? Yeah, it drives her nuts.

Seriously. She's going insane.

Ok, this is what I got:

• 2   8ft metal T-Post fence posts (The kind used to build barbed wire fences)
• 2   10ft length 2" Schedule 40 PVC pipes
• 3   2" PVC T-connectors
• 2   2" 45 degree PVC elbows
• 2   2” 90 degree PVC elbows
• 2   2" to 1/2" PVC adapters
• 1   8ft length 1/2" PVC pipe
• 1  Can of PVC plumbing cement (Looks like purple goo)
• 4   Rolls of 3ft x 24ft Burlap (It's in the lawn and garden section)
• 3   Rolls of 3ft x 25ft Poultry Fence (chicken wire)
• 1   Roll of Duct Tape (Greatest invention ever!)
• 1   5 Gallon bucket of Joint Compound
• 1   Gallon of oops paint (this is actually mis-tinted paint I got from Wal-Mart)
• 1   Gallon of Thompson Water Seal Multi Surface Clear

Time for assembly! There really isn’t a hardcore way to do this part. In the pictures below you can get an idea of how I proportioned everything. Do NOT go nuts with the pipe cement on this thing. Just dry fit everything until you are ready for final assembly. Actually, you may not want to use the pipe cement at all. The cement will make everything permanent. No going back. If you look closely on the build of the frame, you will see I drilled woodscrews into all of the joints to lock them in place. This was probably all I really needed. I figured this part out a little too late. On a side note, the frame was extremely solid.

The hands were made from 1/2” PVC pipe, coat hangers, duct tape, and paper mache.  I admit the hands could have looked a lot better, but I was a little rushed at this point. Besides, after painting and in the dark…no one ever notices. The fingers are very thin and long, so they tend to crack and break a little. So, it looks like I might have to do a little repair work next season.

 

I now had the hands and forearms for Jack. These I did not cement into the PVC frame. They fit into the ends of the 2” inch to 1/2” adapters I used to cap the ends of the arms. This allowed me to reposition the hands whenever I wanted. I placed the 8ft T-Posts inside of the two PVC pipes that came down from the shoulders. It’s not rocket science. You can get the idea just by looking at the pictures below:

I played with the 90 degree and 45 degree elbows to get the arms positioned just like I wanted and then cemented everything in place. Once the cement had cured, I carried the fence posts and frame to the yard along with my ladder and drove the fence posts into the ground with a carpenter hammer.

Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. My forearms were on fire! The neighbors thought I had lost it at this point. Which might have had something to do with the constant “PING! PING! @$!#? PING! PING! SONOFAB****” that was coming from my yard and my mouth! Next time I’m getting a Fence Post Driver like this:

Finally got the !@#$% fence posts in the ground and slapped Jack’s head on the top. The frame is complete! The neighbors are calling the police. The children have learned new exciting words. We are no longer anonymous in the neighborhood. Life is sweet!

At this point I am having a hard time getting any work done because EVERYONE is stopping to ask me questions! No one in my neighborhood does anything remotely like this, so I caused a little bit of a stir in the neighborhood. We are now known as “THOSE PEOPLE”, since no one actually knew our names after three years.

Chicken and Mud

This is where I got act like a three year old in the mud. Of course, the neighbors think I’m the eccentric guy next door all covered in suspicious brown “stuff”.

That up above ladies and gentleman is Monster Mud. It is nothing more than Joint Compound and exterior latex paint mixed together. It is a most wonderful, magical, and useful thing. Oh, and it’s very messy!

I covered the frame in chicken wire. I had to make a wire hood to cover Jack’s head, and then two wire tubes to go around his arms. I wired all of these together after I covered the main torso in wire. I then covered the thing with burlap the same way. I had to wire the burlap to the frame in places to keep it from shifting and blowing away in the wind.

Now all of the hard work is done and I can sling brown goo like a monkey and his poo!

 

I originally planned on painting Jack solid black or dark grey and then come back and dry brush him with white paint. But I noticed he showed up much better at night under our blue spot lights just like he was. Plus, he’s freakin’ HUGE! Do you know how long it would take to dry brush THAT?!?! I simply did not have the time.

It took him about a day to completely dry and harden. On the next day, I applied the Thompson Water Seal. Which was such a good idea, because we had a torrential down pour three days after I built Jack. He came through without hardly a scratch on him.

So below is the finished product posing with my boys during the day:

And here are two action shots taken at night. One with flash, and the other with a spooky blue spotlight.

 

 

Jack ended up being a HUGE success! My house is on the corner of a major road and everyone in town couldn’t help but notice Jack. I had several High School kids wanting to know how I did it. One guy showed up two nights before Halloween to show his Dad. I ended up talking with them in my front yard for a couple hours. All joking aside, this has been the best way to meet my neighbors!

The one downside to Jack? He was just too large. I had to destroy him after Halloween. I kept the frame and the head, so I can always rebuild him again.

I’ve seriously got the Halloween bug now! Can’t wait until 2009!! Bigger, better, scarier!!

Smilin' Jack Pt. 1

Hello all! Jayson here. I'm going to talk about our 10'ft tall Monster Mud / Paper Mache creature named Smilin' Jack.

Jack was heavily influenced by Pumpkinrot, Stolloween, and Ghostess Deanna.

He was the result of a happy accident while I was making a paper mache pumpkin. I originally wanted a pumpkin with a thin, wide, and evil grin like the ones done by Pumpkinrot and Ghostess Deanna. I was following Stolloween's technique to build the pumpkin out of layers of paper mache, which is later followed by building up the details with paper mache clay. Well, I got a little impatient and started applying the clay before I had enough layers of paper to support the clay. The clay soaked through the paper and completely crushed the lower jaw of the pumpkin. I was very upset at the time, as this was my second failed attempt at working with paper mache. If it wasn't for my loving wife giving me encouragement, I would have scrapped the whole thing and gone back to just building fence panels and other less "artistic" endeavours.

I decided to rip the bottom jaw off of the pumpking and try something new.

I started by building a frame out of coat hangers to create a new jaw. The frame was basically a tripod that was hot glued to the inside of the pumpkin. I then took cardboard from a 12-pack of Pepsi and used it to form a skin around the frame.

Yes, that's Duct Tape. Greatest invention ever made!

Once I had the basic shape I was looking for, I started adding several layers of paper mache paper. No rush job this time. I applied about 5 layers and let them dry overnight. (Lots of shop and box fans help) Once the layers were dry, I started adding the paper mache clay. Once this dried, the pumpkin was very strong and no longer needed the wire frame. I cut the center wire and pulled this piece out, but left the two side pieces since they were now encased in clay. I then applied more clay to the inside to make it look like one continuous piece.

Once everything was dry, I painted the entire pumpkin solid black. I then went back and drybrushed with white paint. No pictures for this part, but it looks just like Penelope. Now, you grab your favorite shade of "pumpkin" paint,(We mixed a little orange, yellow, red, and brown to get the shade we wanted) and start dry brushing the pumpkin again with this new color. You end up with a very nice textured paint job at the end. Practice makes perfect on this part, but it's really not that hard to get the hang of.

Ok, now I have a pumpkin, but what do I do with it? It is shaped wrong to sit up on it's own like the other pumpkins. It can only lay on it's side like a lazy good for nothing as seen in one of the pictures above. (The other pumpkin up there is Clarence by the way. You might see him pop up in a few places here and there. He's the dimwitted brother of Jack that was my very first attempt at building a pumpkin)

What to do with the pumpkin? How about build a body for him and allow him to stand guard over the rest of the haunt? I'll show how I did that on my next post.

Frank: The Finale

Paper Mache:  This was my first attempt at paper mache… I had spent countless hours studying the work of Stolloween and was ready to go.  You can read about his techniques in paper mache here, which also includes recipes for the paste and clay.

I covered Frank in about 4 or 5 layers of newspaper and paper mache paste, letting it dry overnight with box fans in between each layer.  During the down time waiting on the torso to dry, I started working on his head.

Head:  I picked the cheesiest skull we had… Made a huge batch of clay, and just started adding flesh.  I covered the entire thing, deciding to make it look decayed with paper towel mache and paint, but you could easily to that with the clay step – only covering portions, etc.  Glued the eye balls into the sockets and molded clay around them.  I will admit, the ears gave me troubles, but I made it passable.  I also carved out some chipped teeth, and painted the resulting white styrofoam “chips” with black acrylic paint.

 

 

Hair:  I used brown twine – separate the strands and then pull on each individual strand until it looks like hair.  Put a piece of duct tape on the table and place the strands of hair on the tape – keeping as straight as possible (if you want a straight hair line, that is)…. once you get a “card” filled, you will be able to hot glue the duct tape with hair directly onto the head.  (Just trim as much excess duct tape off as you can, and it won’t be seen under the hair line.) 

I spray painted the twine with black spray paint, lightly… almost streaky….it looked natural to me, with the black and light brown both showing through, like natural variation in hair… you could also add some silver or gray.

Back to torso:  Once the paper mache was dry, I covered him in clay, shaping muscles and such… I’m not going to be putting clothes on mine, if you are, this phase will be considerably shorter.

After the clay had dried, I used blue shop towels (like paper towels, only alot thicker) dipped in paper mache paste to make rotted skin.  This technique is awesome, it dries hard, keeps ridges and wrinkles perfectly.  I did this technique on both the body and the skull.

Glue the head to the body once all is dry and ready for paint.

Paint:   I first painted him solid black – a good coverage, using craft brushes to get inside all the cracks and crevices.  The next day, I dry brushed gray and white here and there, for depth.  Do this lightly, you want the black to stay untouched in the crevices.  (And there are A LOT of crevices after you do the shop towel mache!)

 Glue his hair on, curse your husband for dripping black paint on his face, and you are ready to seal!

Sealer – I used Thompsons water sealer, and it stood up well throughout the October rains…  and its a lot cheaper than polyurethane… but use your choice of sealer.

Conclusion:  For all that I worried about his back, no one noticed… he was in front of a grave, with subtle lighting, and he scared quite a few ToTs…. I just have to remember that on Halloween night, in the dark… nothing has to be perfect.  (Although looking back at the pictures now, I really should have tried harder to get Jayson to let me dig up some of the yard to appear Frank just “broke out of”… he looks a little weird sitting on perfect grass.  There’s always next year!)

Frank: Part II

I just realized I left the hot glue gun and glue sticks off of the Materials list… you will need it for his fingernails, as well as gluing his hair on (if you so choose to have hair!)

His hands came next, and I got the idea for this from Spooky Blue.  I followed the instructions there for both the hands and the hot glue fingernails… (I just painted Franks nails a nice marsh colored green)

According to Spooky Blue’s instructions, here’s what I did:  Take a piece of corrugated cardboard and place it over the palm of your hand so that the corrugated lines are running vertically (up and down).  Trace a rough shape of your own hand.  (I used my hubby’s hands as mine were too small for the mean Frank!)

Snip coat hanger wires about 3 inches longer than your own (or your models) finger.  That 3 inches will be sticking in the cardboard for stability.  If you want long icky fingers, cut to desired length, leaving some to fit inside the cardboard.  Once you have all of the fingers cut to size, carefully place them in the “slots” of the corrugated hand piece.  The thumb is the only one that gave me a bit of trouble, placing it at an angle.  If you go through the cardboard, its ok, you are about to cover it anyway.

 

Once fingers are in, take a piece of duct tape and place it flat across the hand where the fingers meet the cardboard.  Press the wire into the tape for a good seal, then wrap the ends around.  I then cut between the bottoms of the fingers and wrapped around the bottom of the finger, for a good hold and to hide the excess tape.  Once all fingers are secure, take the cardboard piece and gently fold it inwards, as if it were grasping an object.  This should make the tape on the underside of the hand form a “cave” of sorts… stuff that with a bit of paper towel or newspaper. 

Begin to flesh it out – wrap with paper towels and tape again, or glue on some cotton ball knuckles, just play around with it til it looks like you want it to.

Once I had them shaped, I slipped the hand onto the arm, which at that place was the paper towel tube shaped with tape into a cone at the end.  I stuffed the cone into the paper towel stuffing that I used to fill the “cave” in the underside of the hand.  Glued with hot glue when I had found a good spot, and they were very stable.

Neck:  I started with a normal neck, (a Solo plastic cup and clay) and it just looked bad… Jayson suggested making a really long neck… but the clay had already dried on my plastic cup, so I tried adding to it with clay.  It just kept getting worse, haha.  I think this method would have been fine (the cup) had I not had such a BOX shape for my torso.  Just play with it, you’ll get it right!  I ended the top of the neck with a little cone shape, which my skull sat on.  It fit well, and when glued down would be really stable.  Not ready for glue now though, Frank remains headless ;)

Last installment, coming up!

Frank: An Exercise in Newbie Monster Making

This is Part I of III….  Sorry there are no pictures, I had an SD Card flake out on me, and the shots I took at the beginning of this process are just gone… *poof*

This is my interpretation of a Ground breaker with Blue Eyes… thus he is known as Frank.  (Frank Sinatra = Ol’ Blue Eyes, for the youngsters out there!)

This picture will have to do for now, it’s several steps ahead, but at least you can picture what I’m doing here in the beginning… (Ignore the pumpkin in the bucket… different project!)

Click for larger view

Materials I used:

Medium sized box for torso (I used a large double pack cereal box, like from Sams)	A store bought skull – the cheaper the better
Paper towels & Plastic grocery sacks for stuffing	Twine for hair, Coat hanger for hands
Soda cans and Cardboard tubes from Paper towel roll for arms	Eye balls (ping pong balls)
A Lot of masking tape & Duct tape, and newspaper	Paper Mache paste, paper mache clay, paint and sealer

Shaping Frank:  Turned out to be the most important part of the process, and the part where I totally failed.  Mine turned out to look just like a cereal box with a head stuck on it.  (As you can see in the photo above)  Learn from my mistakes!  :)

Next time, I will definitely cut off some of the box at the top corners of the box, rather than just continuing to cover it in with stuffing to “soften the edges”… my way just made him end up looking like a hunchback.

Torso: Cover the box with paper towels, grocery sacks, or whatever you have around the house to give him some meat on his box… err, bones.  Tape the pieces of stuffing to the box to hold firmly in place.  If you cut the corners to round them out, cover with duct tape to fill the holes.

For the arms, I started with 1 soda can for each side, and taped them directly under the shoulder, since his arms would be low to the ground.  I tried hot glue at first but that was just a waste of 5 minutes, and ended up making a sling of sorts with the duct tape… running it under the can, and back up to his shoulders, then taping from the top.  They held – really well.

Did I mention that I use Gorilla Tape, from the makers of Gorilla Glue, and if my husband ever leaves me, I’m marrying this stuff – its the BEST.

Taped paper towel tubes to the ends of the coke cans, tapering at the ends (wrists) with tape to make something of a cone shape.   Fleshed it out with more paper towels.

To be continued…