Halloween Groundbreaker Update 4
October 6th, 2009 by John WolfeTook some footage of the results of this past week’s prop work. The first two coats of paint have been applied and I’ve also started a new corpse for the haunt.
Though I haven’t missed a day of blogging in the last three months, there’s still a lot of haunt prep ahead of me. So, in the next three weeks, there may be some days when I won’t have a chance to get an entry up.
Hopefully, I can keep my absence to a minimum of only seven or eight non-consecutive days. But I promise, immediately following Halloween and the cleanup, I’ll be back to doing daily entries again.
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October 6th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Yea, I gotta agree. You have too many irons in the fire with Halloween so close. Take a break from the website, we’ll be here when you’re caught up.
October 6th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Oh my gosh! I’m soooo impressed! What amazing work. And you know your radius and ulna? Impressive too! I like the idea of the rolled up paper and duck tape. What a great idea. There’s a giant troll sculpture I saw a woman make online that I desperately want to imitate in my own yard, but it’s like 10′ tall and giant. You can sit inside his bent legs. It’s got a base of wood pounded together and then a crap load of paper maiche. I can’t imagine how long that took but when I look at your skeleton and the detail work… I know that had to take even more time! I’m thrilled to know there’s another person out there that really gets into this stuff with a passion. I’d love to spend my time making scary themed cakes like “Charm City” and then spend my spare time writing horror, making horror-related art, and going to scary places. I can’t get enough of it. In fact, if I could, I’d get into role playing and costumes. When I give talks at SciFi conventions, I always envy the geeks running around in robes! I’m such a dork!
October 6th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
I really appreciate you taking the time to do these updates John because the webcam does not pick up on any of this detail, nor was it meant to. The color gray for the straight up corpse is perfect. As mentioned, I think my favorite corpse so far, as if I could pick one, is the one your currently working on because it’s going to look like he is breaking the ground to come up. The arm looks just incredible and I could tell last night just how much patience goes into putting the pieces right where they belong. I’m thoroughly enjoying the process along the way dear friend. Keep up the great work!
October 7th, 2009 at 11:38 am
John;
Just wanted to say-thanks for the idea! I have the day off and was determined to finish my post-apocalyptic mannequin guy “Modi” and I had his camo cargoes to stuff for his legs, but I wanted the legs to look like he could stand on them and not lumpy-bumpy like newspaper filled ones. So, I took some old towels and rolled them up and duct taped them and they made fantastic legs and rolled up washcloths balled up and taped made great kneecaps. Thanks for inspiring other haunting decorators!
October 7th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Love the progress your making on these guys. amazing detail. You’ve inspired me to start my own first ground breaker. I got pics of him on my Blog. Keep up the great work.
October 7th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Atrueoriginall,
Thanks for your support. I appreciate it.
autumnforest,
Glad you like the new guy! Thanks a lot.
I can’t take credit for the duct tape and newspaper method. There have been plenty of haunters before me using those two items for corpse building. The troll sculpture sounds incredible!
Building newspaper/mache props and doing it with an eye for specific detail is extremely time consuming, but very rewarding as it all comes together. I love every minute of it, so the time is no issue.
I didn’t know you did talks at Sci-Fi conventions… very cool! There’s nothing better than being a dork. Being “normal” or “ordinary” and fitting in is far too boring.
That’s a great idea for filling out a prop’s pant legs. And I love the idea of using washcloths for kneecaps! I remember back in the day when I used to stuff masks full of newspaper and tape off the bottom. Then, I’d hang the “heads” on our porch — we’ve come a long way since then… LOL.
Goldie,
Thank you so much.
During the next few months, I want to try and come up with a lot of poses and positions that are similar, as if the corpse is leveraging itself against the ground to get out.
While I’m staying present and enjoying every minute of this Halloween prep, I’m also looking so forward to next year as well. 2010 will be my first year solely devoted to Season of Shadows and developing the haunt to a larger scale!
Matt,
It’s great to hear from you! Thanks for your kind words. Glad to hear you’re working on a groundbreaker. I’ll swing by and check it out.