Hi! This is an older thread that goes into basic details concerning my wife and I's build of the Pumpkinrot inspired sentinels seen below. This was not meant to be a tutorial but rather a documented thread on how we fumbled through it. If you have any questions feel free to message me.I hope you enjoy it.
So the wife and I have been wanting to build a scarecrow for sometime now. We've never really done much other than piles of pumpkins on straw bales coupled with a few strings of orange and purple lighting for Halloween. This year we decided to bite the bullet and try our shot at something more extravagant.
Whilst searching the world wide interwebs for scarecrow ideas, I came across this freak show:
Before continuing, the Missus and I need to elaborate on what a genius this Pumpkinrot fellow is. Good grief! His work is absolutely incredible! His attention to detail is off the charts, and his photography makes us melt. He's an inspiration, and in fact, inspired us to try and at least get close to something found in those scenes. We are attempting to create sentinels like the ones seen in LINK1, and put them on either side of our drive way. We'll add A LOT of corn through out the entire front yard and front of our house as seen in LINK2, along with a multitude of Orange lights to illuminate everything.
Anyhoo......... We did some research through the early weeks of July and then got started. We gathered knowledge from all of the staples around the Web, including Stalloween, Twisted Visions, these very forums, etc. and then got started.
We began with paper mache pumpkin after pumpkin. And failed. More than once.
We couldn't find a way to make a convincing pumpkin shape in the beginning, but finally started getting close
The wife figured out that using string works really well. Cinch it down on a trash bag (stalloween style) that is stuffed tight with paper and I mean cinch that damn thing down good!
Finally after a lot of trial and error, we came up with this shape, which we went with.
Now, Pumpkinrot doesn't exactly give you a detailed layout of how to create his wonderful works of art (nor should he!) so I've had to do some guessing along the way. For the structure of the bodies, I decided to use four inch and three inch black ABS piping. It seemed like the lightest and strongest way to go about getting these things up in the air, plus it's easy to work with. But, how in the hell do you securely attach the heads without screwing up somewhat thin paper mache? Well, I went with that GREAT STUFF expanding foam. I found the position I wanted the head to be in, temporarily duct taped it in, and then filled in the gap. It's very lightweight (I have a hell of a lot of structure suspended out over the base so I've been watching my material weights closely) and strong as can be. I was rather shocked by how well that worked.
That lead us to the image below. Pay no mind to the wire ribs taped to the pipe. That was my first "brilliant idea" for a torso, and the first of many FAILS.
Next came the faces, which really made me nervous. The face makes or breaks the whole thing IMO. Screwing this up is not an option. I dig that giant cheshire cat grin seen on 'Rots pumpkins, so I used those as a kind of template. Then came the dastardly task of cardboarding in all of those friggin' teeth, the eyes, and the nose. That took a while.
Card board is finished here:
All while the first one was being built, the second one (affectionately called "Number Two" for the time being) was taking shape just behind.
It wasn't long until we could hear the two brothers quietly whispering evil secrets back and forth to one another.
Now, these pumpkin heads don't look like Pumpkinrot's Sentinels heads. Why? Well, because we're not freakin' artistic geniuses like he is, of course! We tried and tried to figure out how he was getting that perfect pumpkin shape, and perfect pumpkin skin, but I couldn't achieve it. So we tossed out a "what the hell", shrugged our shoulders and moved on. I suggested the idea of trying out that monster mud stuff, so we applied several coats of that. We painted our laundry room and pantry orange this last spring and happened to have a gallon left over so we used that for the mixture. It turned out ok. I tried to sand it smooth, but that was just a mess and a pain in the neck so we're simply going with this. After final paint and ample charring effects, I think it'll look fine. They'll be about eight feet in the air after all.
This brings us to the @#$%*&! TORSOS. We almost had to call divorce lawyers during this process. Good grief! It was quite the hang up. We even procrastinated about two weeks because we couldn't figure out the best way to do it. Getting the overall pose correct, along with making sure that the proportions made sense was driving me batshet crazy. Couple that with the wife (being a long time study in the medical field) wanting the bone structure to at least make some sort of sense....... Man. We battled. We drank a lot, too. Which is great. But battling sucks.
Finally we decided to force ourselves back to the garage and get something done. We made a couple more temporary (removable) attempts each, and then went with what you'll see below.
I wanted the bodies to have a look of being impaled on an old bunch of sticks or tree trunk, so we had to have the back bone arched which helped give reason to his hanging out so far from the base. To satisfy that need, the wife grabbed a pool noodle and we shaped it like so:
That worked well. We then, as seen in the photo above's background, cut the bottom out of a trash bag and slipped it over a head and filled it with paper. After shaping by hand, using a crap load of a masking tap, and a lot of cussing, we ended up with what looked like a turkey on a stick, with pumpkin heads!! Literally... they looked like frozen Butterballs from the store.
But!! We felt like this would work. We were extremely relieved to reach this point. I felt like the size and shape had potential, and she was glad she got her way.
Next we drew out some ideas, and then gutted the turkeys.
We got a little frustrated, so we took a break and began adding the sticks I mentioned above.
The following step made us rather nervous again. Simply rolling up paper for ribs wasn't good enough. How is an arm supposed to attach? You can't just stick an arm into the shoulder "area" and call it good. It blows the illusion. So we went back to the drawing board and the wife came up with the clavicle/scapula idea, and I think it worked out great. We used doubled up 16 gauge wire wrapped in paper, and some really cool looking drift wood pieces.
That brings us to where we presently stand. We have this one now with it's first coat of paper covering the ribs, clav, arm, etc.
I applaud your dedication, fortitude and inventiveness ... they are awesome looking thus far and you have a lot to be proud of ... stick to it and be nice to the wife ... sounds like she is creative with a lot of patience ... Best of luck finishing and displaying these fabulous props!
Love these! I have long been an admirer and wistful of pumpkin rots work, especially what you have modeled this on. I am astonished at how much work you have put into them and thouroughly enjoyed your narrative. Can't wait to see more. It is so great you are fighting this battle together to bring them to life. My favorite is that one seems to be turning to the other just slightly, as you said, almost as if they are whispering devious things to each other. Fantastic!! Happy Haunting!
By the way...Rot has mentioned on his blog that he just buys the fake pumpkins such as what you can get at Michael's for his sentinels.
So yours now do have a unique twist! I've been trying to figure out how to get a mache pumpkin for my own scarecrow, and it never occurred to me to use the bag stuffed with newspaper. Great idea.
I think your sentinels look great. I also admire your time an effort and love the fact you're working as a team. It's always more fun when Sally gets involved with a project. We may disagree and sometimes fight but when it comes together it's worth all the pain and suffering.
These are looking fantastic!! LMAO while reading your narrative! Haha, stop being so hard on yourself, they look great. And cheers to you and your spousal unit for doing this together. Keep us posted.
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