Slowly But Surely...

Just a little preview of something that's been in the works for a while.  No rush on this one.

Thank You, Star Costumes!

You may have seen ads for the Star Costumes Horror Scholarship over the past few months.  If you're wondering who it went to, well, here I am!

I'm very excited and quite flattered.  Thank you, Star Costumes!

Pumpkin Sculpting

There's a pumpkin carving contest this week, and the pumpkins are free, so I figured I'd give pumpkin sculpting a whirl. This is the result of about 3 hours with an exacto knife and a medium sized loop tool.  

For a first attempt, I'm pleased.  I may add some wire stitches to the forehead laceration if I can acquire them by Thursday morning.

Subtractive sculpting is hard, especially when you're used to pushing clay and you're working on a round object with only about two inches of workable material before it becomes a dark, seeded void, but it's still quite fun.

EDIT:

added stitches

Dream Sequence

A short Halloweeny video I recently completed for an assignment.  Decaying flesh, skeletons, and some recycled 2009 haunt footage-- it fits right in with the blog here.


It was completed in two days, so I'm not totally satisfied with it, but I figured y'all might get a kick out of it.

Hit the Youtube logo for the HD option.

Werewolf Movie FX

I'm doing Special Makeup Effects and assisting with Production Design on a student werewolf film.

Devils Chariot was kind enough to provide one of his excellent coyote skull castings, which I painted up yesterday with watered down Raw Umber craft paint.  This is just for set dressing, but I'm pretty excited about it.

Then I molded and cast the actor's teeth who's playing the werewolf.

I was able to use this "Amazing Mold Putty" from Michaels to make the negative of the actor's teeth, then pour in plaster.  It doen't admit to it on the box, but the putty is definitely a 2-part silicone.  The dentures themselves are also be of rather unorthodox materials.

I sculpted the dentures over the actor's tooth casting using flexible ("Bake & Bend") Sculpey for the gums and translucent Sculpey for the teeth.  The flex clay keeps the gums from breaking, as regular Sculpey is somewhat fragile, especially when it's this thin.  They don't look like much here, but once you pop 'em in the mouth and back away a few feet, they're pretty cool.

I also did some hand-laid hair on the wolfman's forehead.  Crepe hair and spirit gum.  The director didn't want a full transformation, so we kept it at forehead hair and teeth.  I'm not totally satisfied with the result, but it's better than my previous attempts.



I color-corrected this shot to see what it would look like in the final film when they do the day for night conversion.  It seems to have gotten darker when I uploaded it.  These shots are without teeth.

Lastly, there was a bullet wound.  I didn't get a picture of the one I did on set, but here's the test application I did on my arm:

For the shoot, of course, there was lots of blood dribbling out of it, but you get the idea.  It's just Mehron 3D Gel with some black cheapo makeup in the center for depth.

None of this is anything spectcular, but it certainly was a good experience.

Practice Sculpting, Episode 2

A little refining. I'm starting to like this guy.  I might try to mold it after texturing and before moving on to the muscles.

Taking photos makes it easier to see where it still needs work, for some reason.

Practice Sculpting, Episode 1

I've started a small sculpt that I will add to a little at a time.  It's not going to be used for anything other than practice.  The plan is to start with the skull and build out from there.  Right now I'm blocking out the forms.  This is about an hour or two in.

The whole thing's about 4 inches tall, Chavant NSP Soft clay

Spiders for a Frog

Have you heard about the Davis Graveyard Spiderfest 2010?

Of course you have.  But I'll summarize just in case...
Chris Davis (the Frog Queen) of the Davis Graveyard (yes, the Davis Graveyard) wants YOU to make a spider to hang in their tree for this year's haunt.  So head on over and learn all about it.


I'm basically done with my contribution as of today.

What the heck? Where are his legs?!

Well, going on the assumption that the Davises are handy with a glue gun, I'm shipping it with detached appendages so he fits in a smaller box.  Here's what it will be like with them:

Okay?  Everybody happy now?  Good.  Progress pics below.

When I got to covering the armature, I ended up building up a ribcage type thing to give the rear end more structure.

There's a little Tim Burton and a little Stolloween in there... subconscious inspiration?

Painted Skins

Ready to haunt other graveyards and laboratories across the globe...

Texas

Virginia

Australia

I like the subtle differences between each paint job.

Ready for Paint

Just you average, run of the mill pile of zombie skins.

Scourge's Skull Shoppe

I just received my first Skull Shoppe skull in the mail. Even though I bought a "graveyard" casting with minor imperfections, this skull (the HSMM) is absolutely incredible. If you think Bucky and Lindberg skulls are cool, prepare to have your mind blown. You have no idea what you're missing until you get one of these in your hands.

To top it off, Scourge has fantastic customer service.  I'm sure I'll be buying more soon.

Now like I said, this was an imperfect test casting of the skull which Scourge had already colored.  I bought an uncolored jaw to go with it and got to do a wash with watered down acrylic craft paints to match the pieces.  It's not an exact match, but it's pretty darn close.  I'm pleased.

The Bloodshed Brothers

Zach and Jeromy, The Bloodshed Brothers, have been doing awesome video logs on their Youtube channel and... oh, heck, I'm just going to quote them:


The Blood Vlogs follow The Bloodshed Brothers through a year of being a home haunter.  Letting Halloween consume their everyday life, they invite you along for the ride.


So, since they bought one of my groundbreakers, yesterday's vlog (below) was a shout out to me, so I'm going to shout right back out at them and say you should be subscribed to their channel so you can watch these videos as they come out.


Seriously, go do it.





Why are you still here?  Go subscribe!

Fan Mail

...sort of

Our neighbors left a note for us before they moved yesterday, and one of their youngest drew on the back of the paper.  And what do you know?  It's the yard haunt!

That's one of the singing skeletons from 2008 and Frankie singing into microphones in the 2009 lab scene.  I wish I could draw skeletons that well when I was in kindergarten... I think we may have a new haunter in the making :)

For Sale: Frankenstein and Zombie Skins for 3-Axis Skulls!

I will be offering a limited number of Frankenstein and Zombie skins for 3-Axis Skulls for the 2010 Halloween season.

If you haven't been following the blog, here's what they do:




The skins are made of foam latex, painted with rubber cement paints, and are designed to fit a Lindberg skull (though they should fit fine on Buckies or similarly sized skulls).  All you do is stretch it over the skull and apply a little rubber cement or latex to hold it in place.

Email me at ChickenHaunt [at] gmail.com for details.  Orders must be placed by the end of July for this Halloween season.

Toying with an Idea

I've been building a new prop in my head, and I thought I'd share the first concrete evidence of it.

What is it?  Well, I think the basic design might be reminiscent of something familiar, but the final product will be decidedly... different

And that's all I'm saying now.  But feel free to ask questions so I can give mysterious responses...

Joker in Plaster

As my plastic surgeon always said, if you gotta go, go with a smile!

I made the mold of the Joker prosthetic over the past couple of days.  Above you can see the mold walls built up with water-based clay (easier to shape).

Did I mention there's also a nose tip appliance? Oh, well, there's a nose tip appliance.  I don't know whether I'll use it, but I know there will be extra foam when I mix it up for the mouth, so I figured I'd take a shot at it.

Here I'm a couple of layers in on the Ultracal-30 mold.

The finished outer mold:

And the core mold, which will either work or cause catastrophic failure due to its sloppiness:

At any rate, I'm gonna hang the core mold on my wall when this is done because I think it looks kinda cool.

Sculpt Complete: Joker Makeup

What are you laughin' at? 

Texturing is more or less complete at this point.  It looks a little over the top, but I figure the whole thing's going to be painted bleachy white, with only a little grey shadowing, so the more the better.  I plan to mold this sucker tomorrow.

Something New

You ever dance with the Devil by the pale moon light?

Having made a few foam latex creature skins for last year's haunt, I'm trying my hand at foam latex prosthetics.  Above (and below) is the start of a Jack Nicholson Joker (from Burton's Batman) sculpted over a cast of my lower face.

At this point, I'm still roughing in the forms.  Once the sculpt is done, I'll mold it, cast it, paint it, and apply it.

Not only is this my first venture into prosthetic makeup, but it's also my first time using Chavant NSP clay.  It's very nice stuff.

CalHaunts Norcal #1

I spent my Saturday learning how to make some awesome Special Effects Teeth at my first CalHaunts Norcal meeting.  Cory and his minions from Nightmare Playgrounds did a superb job organizing and teaching the mysteries of acrylic teeth.  Everyone walked away with molds and castings of their real teeth, as well as a set of monster chompers, and the know-how to do it again and again.  Jealous?  You should be.

The Big Haunt Video

Click the Youtube logo to see it on their site with the option of HD.

Storage...ugh.

I took advantage of the 3-day weekend to finally put everything (and everybody--get it? every body?  bodies? corpses? ha ha ha....yeah, okay) where it belongs for the rest of the off season.  We put everything in the driveway and put it properly away one by one.

If you recall, this is what my backyard looked like on November 1, and that's pretty much how it stayed for the next couple of months while other things took priority.  Now...



My Dad built these 3 cabinets in the garage that house almost everything

All the lights, fixtures, extension cords, foggers, and miscellaneous small props on the right.

All my full size characters in the middle

And all Three Laboratory animatronics (plus some extra foam and my bucky) on the far left.

But what about the Giant Rusty Gear of Doom?

It was just too cool to put away for the rest of the year  ;)

An Experiment

If you read this, please leave a comment.

"read it" will do just fine.
You don't need any kind of account to comment-- you can even be anonymous.

I can see how many visits this blog gets, but I've often wondered how many people actually read the posts, enlarge the pictures, and watch the videos.  So, if you've looked at anything here (heck, even if this is the first post here you've seen), leave a comment on this post.  I think it will be interesting to see how many actual people there are.

-Mr. Chicken

EDIT: Thank you to all who have suggested various tracking programs.  I have been using Google Analytics to track the site, but statistics only mean so much, you know?

EDIT 2: At the request of Devils Chariot and Phil Merrill, a picture:

2009 Video #3

Monster Mash, anyone?

2009 Video #2

Again, it's in HD if you click to see it on Youtube.

2009 Video #1 (better late than never)

The first of my 2009 videos is ready.
Watch it on Youtube's site (click the logo) to see it in HD...ooo...ahhh...