Thread: My very first "home made" groundbreaker

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Greetings all,

After reading up on this forum and from other sites, I decided to try my very first attempt at making my own "ground breaker". I was definitely inspired by: VooDoo Von Shrunkenhead cool creations, and those of Pumpkin Rot, and Spooky Blue.

Also, this is my first time I have EVER worked with paper mache, and lucky for my (and my 6 year old) it was a lot easier to do than I expected. That said, there is no "wrong" way to make a ground breaker with the wrinkled skin the way it should be. I wanted my first one to be fairly simple without any hands or outstreteched arms. Those specifics will be used in my "next" attempt.

Anyway, here are some crummy photos taken with my camera phone after the initital paint job. I will be adding eyes, and some grey hair, and acrylic paint some highlights and the teeth, maybe some moss on it here and there. The base will be hidden by leaves and dirt on Halloween.






Part list:

- Bucky Skull (left over from a full skeleton that I replaced the skull with a better one ... I hate the cranium seam, so covering it with mache was a good coverup)
- Old Garden hose for ribs.
- 3 short sticks of PVC pipe
- Left over masonite for the base
- Pipe bracket clamps to attach the pvc to the base
- Old packing paper
- 1 roll of .99 paper towels
- Hot glue
- 1 coat hanger
- Duct Tape
- Elmers Glue
- Left over Spray Paint

This whole thing cost about $12 to make which is pretty sweet.

When I get it all finalize and under proper lighting, I will post some better photos because these crummy cell phone photos do not do it justice. Looking forward to having about 10 of these in my front yard this year for Halloween.

The funny thing is a friend of mine, who is a special makeup fx guy here in Hollywood, came by my house while I was making it. He sneared at it because he said it was not "anatomically correct" + plus it was still all white from the paper towels. I proceeded to introduce him to my front door, face first!

Looks great! I love it and you can't beat that price! Would love to see a tutorial on how you did it.

The 2 tutorials online I found most helpfull were:

Spooky Blue - Halloween Projects - Ground breaker corpses

and

Halloween How-To Projects | Season of Shadows

Plus inspirational photos from PumpkinRot and VooDoo Von Shrunkenhead here on this forum.

Awesome! How long did it take?

Once I had all the parts,2 hours to assemble another 2 hours to mache ... then a couple (maybe 3) days to completely dry.

Great work. I like it, I like it a lot! Thanks, now I'm going to have to make some.

Very cool.

Wow! Nice one.

I disagree with your friend. I think his body structure is perfect for that groundbreaker. Zombies are supposed to be a bit 'off. They've been buried in the ground after all

AWESOME, looks great Hirez !! I love the neck, the way the neck skin stretches & the detail. I Agree with Terra, looks perfect for a ground breaker. He may be a Hollywood FX make up person, but has he seen a REAL ground breaking zombie,.............
looks as messed up as a zombie should look crawling out of the ground. Looks like it's as anatomically correct as a zombie should & would look to me. Keep up the dark army of dirt poppers !!

Originally Posted by hirez00

Greetings all,

After reading up on this forum and from other sites, I decided to try my very first attempt at making my own "ground breaker". I was definitely inspired by: VooDoo Von Shrunkenhead cool creations, and those of Pumpkin Rot, and Spooky Blue.

Also, this is my first time I have EVER worked with paper mache, and lucky for my (and my 6 year old) it was a lot easier to do than I expected. That said, there is no "wrong" way to make a ground breaker with the wrinkled skin the way it should be. I wanted my first one to be fairly simple without any hands or outstreteched arms. Those specifics will be used in my "next" attempt.

Anyway, here are some crummy photos taken with my camera phone after the initital paint job. I will be adding eyes, and some grey hair, and acrylic paint some highlights and the teeth, maybe some moss on it here and there. The base will be hidden by leaves and dirt on Halloween.






Part list:

- Bucky Skull (left over from a full skeleton that I replaced the skull with a better one ... I hate the cranium seam, so covering it with mache was a good coverup)
- Old Garden hose for ribs.
- 3 short sticks of PVC pipe
- Left over masonite for the base
- Pipe bracket clamps to attach the pvc to the base
- Old packing paper
- 1 roll of .99 paper towels
- Hot glue
- 1 coat hanger
- Duct Tape
- Elmers Glue
- Left over Spray Paint

This whole thing cost about $12 to make which is pretty sweet.

When I get it all finalize and under proper lighting, I will post some better photos because these crummy cell phone photos do not do it justice. Looking forward to having about 10 of these in my front yard this year for Halloween.

The funny thing is a friend of mine, who is a special makeup fx guy here in Hollywood, came by my house while I was making it. He sneared at it because he said it was not "anatomically correct" + plus it was still all white from the paper towels. I proceeded to introduce him to my front door, face first!

It is very hard to make a ground breaker out of pvc pipe, newspaper and such and make it anatomically correct. None of mine are. I love the neck. Besides it is a halloween prop and most people arent going to dissect it that much. i really dig the neck.