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Hey guys, I wanted to share my first prop build here on Halloween forum. It was for a contest from Haunt Nation Magazine called “Hack a Christmas Prop”. I had read about people hacking Christmas props for Halloween props and was intrigued since I knew nothing about motors or animatronics at the time I started this project.
I had been researching a lot of prop building tutorials and lurking Halloween forum to work up the nerve to try something like this and decided to bite the bullet when I saw the contest announcement.
I picked up the Reindeer at St. Vinney's for $6.50 and discovered it had a lot of defects that needed to be fixed. Once it was stable and fixed I built and sculpted the body from pink foam. I sealed and paper mached it with Drylok and then painted it using a brown base coat of exterior latex paint which I lightened and darkened with white & black exterior latex paint. The LED eyes were recycled from an old costume which had fading, glowing red eyes and it has an internal, battery powered speaker and mini MP3 player for the snarling sound effects (which needs to be replaced with a more powerful speaker). The teeth and claws are made from Sculpty modeling clay and the fur was from Jo-Ann Fabrics. The tail and fingers were made from those green yard stakes people use with garden/deer netting and PVC pipe.
This project has gotten me excited about trying some more larger prop builds for this Halloween and I have been working out some ideas and sketches of other things I want to build for my Cemetery this year.
I had been researching a lot of prop building tutorials and lurking Halloween forum to work up the nerve to try something like this and decided to bite the bullet when I saw the contest announcement.
I picked up the Reindeer at St. Vinney's for $6.50 and discovered it had a lot of defects that needed to be fixed. Once it was stable and fixed I built and sculpted the body from pink foam. I sealed and paper mached it with Drylok and then painted it using a brown base coat of exterior latex paint which I lightened and darkened with white & black exterior latex paint. The LED eyes were recycled from an old costume which had fading, glowing red eyes and it has an internal, battery powered speaker and mini MP3 player for the snarling sound effects (which needs to be replaced with a more powerful speaker). The teeth and claws are made from Sculpty modeling clay and the fur was from Jo-Ann Fabrics. The tail and fingers were made from those green yard stakes people use with garden/deer netting and PVC pipe.
This project has gotten me excited about trying some more larger prop builds for this Halloween and I have been working out some ideas and sketches of other things I want to build for my Cemetery this year.
