New Halloween Corpse
September 13th, 2008 by John Wolfe
I started on a new prop this week. I’m still adding texture to my previous zombie, but had a few styrofoam skulls lying around from last Halloween and got the urge to make use of one. Since I’m working with an extremely lightweight skull, I decided to use the newspaper method for building the bones, rather than my heavy duty ground breaker design. My heavy duty design works really well for larger, heavier props with bucky skeleton parts, but it doesn’t always allow for a gnarled, twisted look, unless you’re willing to heat the pvc. I wanted this guy’s neck and ribs to be angled to the side, so I felt newspaper was my best option.
I had to cut the jaw bone off of the one-piece skull, since I enjoy making corpses with open mouths. Later, I’ll go back and mache over the chewing surface of the teeth and paint some texture, just as I did with the scarecrow from last Halloween. The back still needs shoulder blades and arms added and I may throw in one more set of ribs. The corpse’s right side will be buried deep in leaves and its left side will have an outstretched arm reaching for passersby.
I’m filming a portion of the construction and will be including it as a time lapse segment in my next Halloween Haunter’s Reality video. The newspaper method, used on this prop, is credited to Spooky Blue. I found his site a couple of years ago after learning about Pumpkinrot. Not only does Spooky have a great site, but some excellent how-to’s as well.
Related Posts
Corpse Update
Halloween Projects – 2008
Halloween Haunter’s Reality
September 14th, 2008 at 3:09 am
This guy is going to look scary as hell when your done, I just know it!! Oh I think the time lapse video taking is an AWESOME idea John!! That should be fun to put together and then even for you to view the video and see your own work in a manner in which you probably never have before. I’m thoroughly enjoying the Haunter’s Reality series. Truly interesting to watch and now you leave me with NO choice but to buy a video camera of my own and film, “things.”
I do deeply appreciate all of the work your doing in maintaining both of your websites, creating your props for Halloween, taking us along in video form and still manage to find time for deeply profound spiritual writing for windofthesoul. I don’t know how you do it John but it’s getting close to crunch time 
Keep up the great work dear friend.
Many Blessings, Goldie~~~
September 15th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Thanks, Goldie. Hopefully, it will come out pretty dang creepy. Between this new one and my previous corpse, I’ll probably be devoting the rest of my zombie prep time to them.
Glad you’ve been inspired to purchase a camera…I love my Canon. It’s not only a digital camera but also doubles as a digital video recorder as well. I can’t remember what life was like without it.
Crunch time it is! This is the time of year I always refer to as in-season. Thanks for all your support. Hopefully the new Haunter’s Reality video will be finished by Wednesday…maybe Thursday at the latest.