Shrunken Head - The finishing touches.

Here's, sooner than expected, the video detailing the painting, hairing and finishing of the shrunken head. That thing looks great in a bell jar on my dresser! Now I'm bored. I need to find something else to make! More pictures after the break.

Tsantsa sculpture timelapse

Hey there peeps!

I just finished the sculpture to make a new batch of shrunken heads. I decided to try making a timelapse video of the process, in hopes that you'll find it interesting. It's anotated with a few tips here and there. It's sped up around 1600%, so the whole process, which took a bit over 3h, is now down to 12 minutes.

Soon enough, I'll post one of the molding process.

Making your own scratch built corpse

From Christian Hanson, a talented sculptor and FX artist comes a DVD filled with the holy grail of halloween decoration and propmaking; Detailed instructions on how to build a gruesome, realistic, full-size corpse from scratch. I haven't seen the DVD yet so I can't give a full review, but I've seen the corpse heads made by some of his customers and I'm in awe. They look awesome, they are cheap to make, and they don't require expensive plastic skeletons or liquid latex to create.

I just ordered my copy from the Monster Closet and I can't wait to try it out!

Gotta love corpses.

Molding Skulls

I just found a great tutorial for molding a plastic skull and casting plaster copies. There's lots of pictures and detailed instructions. The most expensive part is the liquid latex (if, of course, you already have a nice skull at home), but the 20-30$ it'll cost you in materials is well worth the massive amount of skulls you'll be able to make!

from The Creepy House Next Door, which also contains many more interesting tutorial revolving around creepy halloween yard decoration.

For painting the skull, I strongly suggest this step-by-step demonstration, by Dave the Dead from The Shadow Farm. He uses an urethane skull, but there's no reason why it wouldn't work on plaster. I'd suggest applying a coat of sealer to the plaster first, however, so it doesn't soak up all the paint.

Tsantsa; from clay to shrunken head

I love shrunken heads. I really do. These little guys are creepy, look great, and have that mysterious tribal vibe to them. And let's face it, they are damn cute. And after reading my 1925 copy of Up de Graff's Head Hunters of the Amazon, I decided I just HAD to have one.

Of course, buying a real shrunken head is out of my price range, but I wanted my own little tsantsa, and there is no better way to get something than to make it yourself.

Using sulfur-free oil based clay, I had a blast sculpting this little guy over a few hours. I won't go into details with the sculpting process; with a little bit of artistic talent, it's quite easy to do. The sculpture done, a mold must be made. It shalt be made out of plaster, said I!



I made a dividing wall with thin aluminum pieces (the bottom of a pie plate), and covered the head with plaster and strips of burlap. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of this process, so you'll have to imagine. I then sloshed some liquid latex inside the mold, following by the lengthy process of letting it cure, then removed and powdered the latex cast with baby powder.

I gave back a little color and tackiness to the skin using brown and orange grease makeup (applied thinly so that the wrinkles and pores aren't filled out), and following the information I had about the methods used to make shrunken heads, I blackened the head with charcoal.

I then applied a good layer of fixative. I personally like to use ultra-strong TRESemmé hairpsray. Following this, I sewed the lips and the back of the head shut with thin cotton rope, which I dyed a yellowish brown with coffee earlier.



I still have to decorate it a bit more and find a way to put hair on it (punching hair into slip latex is quite difficult; I'll have to find another solution)

However, I'm quite happy with how it looks like right now! It was quite a simple process, with plenty of info that can be found online, but if you want to try something similar and need any help, advice is just a comment or an email away!

Here is a great website about shrunken heads

and on here you'll find a friendly community willing to answer most of your questions about molding and casting latex props