Friday, October 30, 2009

Meh

No halloween party for David.

Gah, and my neo-victorian vampire costume is so fucking PERFECT!
Instead of being covered in dirt and alcohol, it'll be gathering dust until I need it for a photoshoot with my friends.

What a sad life for a costume.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Fairy corpse tutorial


The always interesting Cobwebs at Shadowmanor recently posted a great, fun tutorial on how to create a mummified fairy corpse using a twist on basic corpsing techniques (techniques that I shall soon cover in depth for your instruction and enjoyement).

The results, as you can see, are great, the tutorial is easy to follow, and it'll look terribly good in your wunderkammer!

go take a look HERE!

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Val Jalbert

Look at these pictures. It's a ghost town called Val Jalbert (Jalbert's Hollow) lost in the woods of Lac-St-Jean, about an hour from my town.






This village was deserted about 85 years ago. Many of the most important buildings and of the hundreds of houses are still standing, although there are many ruins here and there. Beautiful, but you'll admit that it looks quite eerie.

Now imagine the same setting in fall, when the trees are without any leaves and stand naked and dark against the buildings and the desert road.

Imagine this village at night, lit only by the moon and a couple of lamp posts, the woods dark and ominous, and the buildings standing out bluish and ghastly from the shadows.

That's downright creepy, huh?

Well, that's great, because that's where I'll be spending my halloween night, getting drunk and partying for hours with my friends and a bunch of people I still don't know yet. Hell yeah!

Got my DVD!

I finally received and watched Christian Hanson's DVD "Make your own Scratch Built Corpse"!

I have to say that I can't wait to get started on my own corpse head.

His methods are simple, inexpensive, and terribly detailed. Everything is clear and precise, you don't need much artistic talent to pull it off, and the materials are very easy to find.

I'm especially impressed by the way he makes teeth for his corpses. Terribly simple, but so realistic! I think the DVD is worth it's price just for this simple trick.

I'm not fond of the not-so-subtle acting and comedy skits between the different chapters, but it's nonetheless a very usefull and high quality product.

Great for movie makers on a budget and home haunters!

Oh, and Hanson sure is handsome with his rockin' friendly mutton chops.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Steampunk skull - Deuxième partie

Hey there, lovely little bilge rats!

I thought I'd show you the progress on my skull.

Nothing very complicated, I just played a bit with its finish, and removed the crappy ol' single piece teeth and installed brand new, shiny, strong, acrylic choppers.

Here's the teeth before I started:


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As you can see, they are the same color and same texture as the skull, they're short, they're cheap, they're made in one piece and our friend mr. skull has a nasty underbite.

This shall be fixed!

To start, I simply dremeled out the original teeth. I used a sanding disk attachement, but some kind of router bit would probably do a great job too.


As you can see, it now looks quite geriatric. I honestly like this; I'll probably by a plastic skull some day and make it look edentate like that.

Once clean and sanded, I was ready to attach the new teeth.

Acrylic teeth, the kind used to make dentures, come in little plastic trays, separating the top, bottom, front and back teeth. Very pratical; you don't have to guess which tooth goes where (although mouth anatomy is fairly simple).

I bought mine on ebay; it cost about 20$ including shipping from china, and I have 6 complete sets of teeth.



I started out with the lower incisors, and gradually covered the whole lower and top mandible by gluing the teeth one by one from behind with drops of hot glue. It's not the strongest bond, but it's quick and easy to use. We'll strenghten the teeth later.



As you can see, it doesn,t look good from behind; In my case, though, it's not a problem, since the skull won't be manipulated much.


Upper teeth done

All glued!

As you can see, I corrected my buddy's underbite. I even gave him a slight overbite, for more realism!


Once this was done, I added 5 minute epoxy between and behind the teeth to hold them strongly in place. Although not necessary, this will add some durability to the skull.

Of course, I couldn't let these teeth all clean and shiny and white looking freshly flossed, when the rest of the skull looked freshly dug up! So I brought out the walnut stain again, mixed it with a bit of yellow ochre paint to tone down the red tones, and got this mix in every nook and cranny of the teeth. I wiped the front clean so they still had a bit of shine, and did a little trick that also gave a smooth, old and dusty look to the skull.

I rolled the whole thing in ashes while still tacky. I then dusted the excess off, and fixed it with matte spray varnish. This step really brings the whole thing together, and can save a poorly done stain job.

Voilà, mes amis! beau comme un sou neuf.


Link to part 1

Monday, October 5, 2009

A few words of apology

Sorry to my almost non-existent readers if I've been a bit lazy posting lately, I'm working crazy hours, I have a couple of side projects, and I broke up with my girlfriend of 2 years so I've been a bit overwhelmed by everything that was happening around me.

I'm already working on some new stuff to post; just today I installed newer, better acrylic teeth on my plastic skull, it already looks a lot better. I'll keep you updated as soon as I'm done.