Thread: Random witch and headless pumpkin creature garage shots

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This is my first year of really "going for it" with paper mache and while I've got a long way to go to get a sniff of stolloween or 'rot build quality I'm still pleased with most of the results.

I think next year I may try the pirate theme for my wife and kids who are big POTC fans, not that I'm thinking about those charators or anything...just my version of pirates. Time will tell.

Any criticisms, suggestions, techniques or ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Yeah, I got a criticism. No close-ups shots of the witch face! C'mon - she looks amazing! It all looks awesome and very eerie- looks like you're already developing your own style.

I've always hated doing paper mache - results like this make me want to give it another go though.

Thanks! Much appreciated Gobby!
I'll take some closer pics today before I start baggin things up.

Can I just saw I wandered over the border and looked through your galleries and wow...it looks like I can learn a few things about presentation and lighting from up north! Love, love, love the classic universal monsters! I made little frames and hung pics of chaney, karloff, lugosi and the original Nosferatu in our "witches house" as if it was some gallery of heroes. Some of the parents seemed to dig them but I think the kids were more impressed with the moving stuff and the fire.

As for the mache, It was just your basic glue and water with some flour and salt thrown in recipe, the sculpting was done using mache clay. I found that sketchbook paper worked the best for me for that, but the strip mache parts were a combo of newsprint, brown grocery store bags and tissue and cheap paper towel. The witches body is just wrapped chickenwire and I fully intend to make her a more fully realized one during the downtime as well as a couple sisters. I feel like I learned alot this year techniquewise and I should be able to take it a step or two for next year. With your obvious skills I suspect you could make stuff far better than mine. I look forward to seeing what else Canada has to offer besides some pretty good beers, picturesque landscapes and Sid Crosby. Thank you again, very much!

Little bit closer one

Steady misting and sporadic downpours put quite a damper on things and taking the only pics I have with my droid x2 probably wasn't brilliant. Need better lighting, better thought out arrangement. Next year will be better.

Love it all!!!

I love the genre you chose, too. You pulled it off WONDERFULLY. The third pic down in your first post? Jeez.... ol'Pumpkinrot himself would mistake that for something of his own. Awesome work.

This style so often attempted, but so seldom is it actually successful. You nailed it.

THUD! Whew....let me pick myself up after the last couple posts! Wow...




...sorry...speechless there for a couple moments. The sad truth is that third one down is an actual pumpkinrot pose...it was not intended to be...I used this work as a bonding opp between myself and my brooding, horror film loving teenage son, to which end it was off the charts. I think he realizes I'm a bit more fun than he may have believed...anyway, that particular prop was his head, hands...my body, unfortunately the hands ended up being wayyyyy too heavy for the intended pose, so the lake erie driftwood and the hands up pose were incorporated to make it usable. All in all I thought they turned out well, I learned alot doing them, what works, what doesn't and what I'm good at. I wish I had more pics of the groundbreakers which incorporated many of the heads in some of the other pics. At this point everything is bagged, tagged and stored so that Jolly Saint Nick and all of the better half's Christmas stuff have a clear path to Griswald euphoria. But overall, we made a couple decent props...and learned alot, in spite of the rain the people seemed to enjoy it all and we had alot of fun so I consider it a success.

Gobby, Halloween71, Ghostie...thank you all so, so much for your comments, they are much, much appreciated and encouraging. I suspect there is a good chance I will be doing this again next year.

AWESOME!!! The witch TOTALLY freaks me out! GREAT job and thanks for sharing !