Thread: Ground Breaker

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Back a few months ago, I won the $10 prop challenge. For that, I was given a grave grabber frame by Spider Hill Prop Works. This frame is fantastic, very well build, great, totally pose-able joints. Anyways, fast forward a few months and I finally got it finished up today (honestly I only did it over the last 2 days). I took one of my foam skulls I had rolling around and used that as the head. I picked up 2 nice skeleton forearms for $4.50 at a local store to use since I hate, hate, hate, hate making hands. I posed it and used the Stiltbeast plastic wrapping corpsing method, then stained and dry brushed, and planted it in the yard.

Very nice! I so badly want to do a ground breaker this year.. Not sure it'll get done however.

Nice, I have a few frames started in the same fashion, foam skull I picked up for less and $1 (I hit Harris Teeter the day after and grabbed like 20 one year) on a pipe frame with cardboard rib cages. I started paper mache on a few I think I will plastic a few now.

Did you use blue to pick out the wrinkles?

awesome job on that!

Are you having any problems with your stain adhering to the plastic? I notice some of mine coming off were I handle them. I guess I need ti be careful!

Awesome. Looks very scary!

Originally Posted by Nepboard

Are you having any problems with your stain adhering to the plastic? I notice some of mine coming off were I handle them. I guess I need ti be careful!

This is my main question about using the Stiltbeast trick. Last year I used a black garbage bag as a drop cloth for spraypaint and didn't throw it out fast enough, so the paint flaked off of it and there are little red bits all over the place. I had to walk around the garage with a dust buster and pick up every little thing and vacuum it off. Ugh. It looks great, but I get the feeling a lot of people are going to be finding chips of stain all over the garage by the end of the season. If you do make one of these, I'd put it in a plastic bag for storage for next year or you'll have paint flakes all over everything else.

Originally Posted by Xane

This is my main question about using the Stiltbeast trick. Last year I used a black garbage bag as a drop cloth for spraypaint and didn't throw it out fast enough, so the paint flaked off of it and there are little red bits all over the place. I had to walk around the garage with a dust buster and pick up every little thing and vacuum it off. Ugh. It looks great, but I get the feeling a lot of people are going to be finding chips of stain all over the garage by the end of the season. If you do make one of these, I'd put it in a plastic bag for storage for next year or you'll have paint flakes all over everything else.

Most paints and stain will not adhere to plastic very well. to solve this issue I use a product called bull dog from my local automotive paint supplier. its made to adhere paint/primers to plastics.

Looks great and for so cheap, No wonder you won.

Howdy there and thanks for the compliments.

I actually used "Dusty Rose" to dry brush and pick out the details, but on the dark stain it ended up looking sort of gray which was all right by me. So far, I've done 3 of these and I've not had any problems with flaking. I've used both gel stain and a water based stain. Surprisingly, the water based stain actually stays on. I think the trick is to keep the heat gun going as you stain. It makes the plastic bond with the stain it seems. Brush the water based stain on cold plastic and it just beads, but have the heat gun on and have the plastic warm, and it covers and stays. I also dust over them with Krylon Fusion spray paint which is designed to actually bond with the plastic. I've carried my guys around quite a bit and there's been no flaking really at all.