Thread: "Trick or Treat in the Black Curtain"

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As some of you are aware, one of my 'other' hobbies happens to be playing games. While this has mostly drifted off to the side, one thing I have always enjoyed was enterring the Guild Wars Halloween art contest.

The last time I enterred was two years ago: Year of the Charr

While it was declared a 'winner' it was short of the grand prize. My entry last year fell prey to the weather that destroyed most my stuff and spurred the whole thematic change last year.

Well, the pushed up the normal deadline by several weeks, and my intended entry simply cannot be up that long, and is too much work to put up, take down, put back up. The Bridge of Death. (inspired by TK421)

So...that left me looking for something I could put together "easily", will work with the yard, and has a shot at the contest.

I had snapped a couple shots of something off to the side while scouting more concept pics for the bridge, and headed back to get some more.









Well, that's a scene I can work with.


So, me and the boys went out yesterday to begin collecting bits and pieces...



Need to get some more branches, and need to make at least one more corpse...

So, got started yesterday.



Using rigid wrap to make the branches where and how I want them. The front little spike is to help support the skull later.




I've been having trouble finding REAL sinew, had to take apart an OLD costume accessory...anyone know where to get some? The fake stuff just doesn't cut it.



Crossbeam trick, making a little shelf of rigid wrap to help support.




Begun the leather patches for the sticks. These got coated with latex, and will get stained.



Also started the corpsing of one of those walgreens skellies for the project using a paper towel/latex combo. I like the Skull N Bone method, but have become partial to this as it uses a lot less latex, and I can wrinkles to the skin. Not that they can be seen with everything still wet...



Will hopefully finish the towel/latex tonight/tomorrow and be staining this weekend.

OMG that is going to look great!!!
Love the idea!

Stained and attached my 'leather' today. looks more like SOMETHING and less like a bunch of sticks today.

Unfortunately my support stick broke on the other one, so only one skull attached. today.



The skull....

Might need to take some black and dry brush it onto that rope?

The Skull fluoresces, btw...I'm hoping that by using blacklight in addition to the normal lighting, the skulls will stand out as a result.

Been a busy few days.

Did a life-casting of my son to make him a custom mask, buried a cat, harvested an acre of corn...

Nearly finished Corpse 1 for the contest, started on corpse 2:

Corpse 1. Thinking of dry brushing some paint on top of this...Pics courtesy of my son.







Corpse 2.

Not sure I like the pose on the left. I know it's close to the ones in game, but I'm just not feeling it...




The one on the right, however...



It feels much more organic a position.

[/spoil]

FINALLY a break in weather, 2 hour set up and photo shoot.

I've got 100 pics to go through, shot in RAW, so here's just the first one off the camera run through default conversion.

Looks great!

For real sinew, you could ask over at leatherworker.net
I tried searching but was unable to find anything.

I did find three recommendations on bladeforums.com
http://www.hideandfur.com/
http://www.matoska.com/
http://www.crazycrow.com/

and found this one
http://www.nativewayonline.com/glues.htm

Wow that is cool!

-Shadow