The Rib Bone's Connected to... Some Other Bone

I wanted to put a full corpse in the cemetery this year; but time was just not on my side.  I will put together a corpse torso and have it "peeking" out from behind a tombstone.  I followed the steps outlined on Christian Hanson's video "Make You Own Scratch Built Corpse" and made a ribcage this week.  In his video, Christian uses a plastic 5 gallon bucket to make his ribcage.  I am super cheap, so I just used cardboard.  I think it will do for my purposes.

Here is Emma Sue The Littlest Zombie modeling the completed ribcage.  I will add a PVC pipe spine and arms and corpse it out this weekend.  More pictures to follow.

I Decided to Give My Minion a Hand... and an Arm

My minion is busy building his first styrofoam tombstones.  He is very excited to put them in the cemetery.  One of his tombstones' epitaphs describes the fate of a man who was buried alive.  He wanted to have an arm reaching up from the grave in front of this tombstone.  I slapped together a quick newspaper hand and arm for him to use.

I found a thread on the Halloween Forum by FearingtonHouse that talks about a super cheap and fast corpsing method using only outdoor latex paint and paper towels.  I am going to give it a try tomorrow and post some pictures of the results.

Quick and Cheap Coffin Creep

I made a coffin from scrap wood for the cemetery a couple of years ago.  I have since turned it into a hiding place for my fog machine and fog chiller.  I have always thought that it was a waste not to have some kind of corpse or something inside it; but the fog machine and fog chiller occupy all of the available space.  This year, as a quickie, afterthought kind of thing I made a couple of forearms and hands.  I stuck them inside the coffin so that they were lifting the lid just enough to stick a foam skull inside the coffin resting on top of the fog chiller. 

This prop is quite cheesy; but I wanted the coffin to be more like a prop than just a housing for the fog machine and fog chiller.

Set Up Almost Complete for The Yard of the Living Dead 2011

Well, tonight was the perfect night for cemetery fog.  The air was slightly warm and there was no wind.  I was able to make some really creepy fog without any ice in the chiller.  I have just a couple more projects and finishing touches that I want to complete before our first "lights on" night on Sunday.

Man, I love creepy cemetery fog!  I only hope that the weather stays like this for the next two weekends and the big night.

Teaser Reveal

Well, the minion and I spent a few hours working in the garage today and were able to put the PVC spirals and the random wire hanger bits together to make...

...some curved brackets and hangers for our Halloween lanterns.

The curved brackets are attached toward the top of the fence columns.  There are two curved brackets on each fence column.  I also made some toppers for the fence columns today.  I think it gives the fence columns a more finished look.

Here are a couple of pictures of the lanterns as it started to get darker.  I was able to play around with my webcaster gun today too. 

Another Teaser!

Spent a few hours with my minion watching Battle: LA and Priest while we straightened out a ton of wire hangers.  We bent some and rolled some.

Hmmm.  What the heck could they be for?



Teaser Alert!

Spent a few quality hours out in the garage melting some PVC and killing some brain cells.

More to come...



Cemetery Fence 2.0 Is a Go.

The first day of October was warm and sunny.  I spent a few hours with my minion finishing the assembly and painting of the last four or five cemetery fence sections.  We got the fence set up and in place.  Next Saturday we will tackle the fence finials, lantern hangers, and maybe the fence column toppers.  My minion wants to try his hand at tombstone carving and I have a corpse or two to make.  The last few Saturdays before Halloween are going to be busy.  I hope we continue to have weather like we did today.

Here are a few shots of the cemetery fence as it stands right now.  The first is looking East to West.  The second is looking West to East.  The third is a straight-on shot at a full fence section.  The construction is scrap PVC lengths for the vertical bars, scrap 1 X 4's for the top two horizontal bars, and scrap 2 X 4's for the bottom horizontal bars.  Everything for this fence (including the columns) was free scrap except for the brackets bolted to the columns and the paint.  Hopefully the extra time that it took to "over-engineer" this cemetery fence will translate to a long life for it.

Here are a couple of shots with Emma Sue the littlest zombie added for scale.  The fence looks to be strong enough to keep even the most determined of the living dead safely confined.