Witch's Jawbone

This is one of those props I wanted to make as soon as I heard about it. I recall hearing about it a long time ago, before I made props and it just never resurfaced as an prop idea before until recently.

What makes this piece a little more creepy or weird than say a random Cthulhu statue, is that this is a real thing. It's something you could actually find - perhaps it wouldn't look exactly like this though.

The story behind it is that back when people used to hunt witches and do all manner of ridiculous, superstitious things, when a witch was killed - presumably when there was still a corpse, so probably through drowning - in order to prevent her (or I suppose him) from returning from the dead, spikes were driven through the body. There have been actual skeletons found with iron spikes driven into the bones. I thought this was just too bizarre to ignore, so I set upon creating a Witch's Jawbone.

I elaborated on the real version by supposing that if the iron spikes were to prevent the witch from returning from the dead, that they somehow locked her (or, still could be his) powers away inside their bones unable to escape or be used after death. So these Witch's Jawbones became a black market kind of item, used by either apprentice witches, wizards, warlocks and anyone dabbling in dark magic in their practices as a source of magic to enhance their own or as a magic catalyst in alchemy or supernatural devices.

I just happened to have a jawbone from a medical skeleton, so I cleaned up the seams as best I could, moulded that and cast it in clay so I could, rather than sculpt it from nothing, sculpt the damage and whatnot from the spikes and speed up the process a little bit. I was attempting to have this done last minute for a local Horror Festival, but I wasn't able to.

The sculpt turned out great. I was originally supposed to get a small supply of old blacksmithed nails, the squared off kind, but that never happened although I did get my hands on one. So I moulded and cast those in clay, altering each of the seven nails I'd use accordingly. I moulded and cast them in resin - which wasn't the best idea as they came out somewhat fragile, making this not a great idea for a limited run. I'd like the piece to be sturdy, not something you can't even handle without fear of breaking it.

But I kept going, and with very little time and even less supplies, I attempted to mould the jawbone. I did a miserable job of it and ran out of silicone halfway through so the mould itself was pitiful and probably wouldn't hold up to more than one casting. It didn't.

I managed to cast it and get it cleaned up, got the nails into the more or less right spots on the jawbone and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but I'll definitely be using real nails I think if I try this for a limited run. How limited will depend on how many nails I can get my hands on, I don't want to order online as it'll just jack the price up on the final piece big time, so I'm on the hunt locally for a batch of nails all produced together, I don't want random sizes, it just makes fitting them too much effort in the end and again would drive the cost up.

But I have a copy for myself for now and it sits on the shelf with all the other random stuff I've made over the years. This is definitely a display piece though that I'd really like to attempt a small, limited run of, boxed up just like this as well so it's something that has a little more of a completely finished display piece for wherever or even as set decoration for a movie or tv show.

UPDATE: if you made it this far and actually read everything - first off, congratulations - and secondly, I've sourced some real antique nails, possibly even iron, so I will within the next month be doing a very limited run of only 5 of these, case included as well. No idea of the pricing at this point though.

Moonshine of the Damned, Production Journal #6

First day of shooting was postponed. Not off to a great start, but I'm no so much worried about shooting this year, I think it'll be fine if we're all a little patient. There's only 10 days needed. If we can't find 10 days over the course of the summer, than something is horribly wrong.

Lots of pictures this time around, so let's get to it.

First up, the sculpt of the leg bone prop. I was thinking, since I have a medical skeleton leg bone, that I would just do a quick alginate mould and fill it with clay to get this, but that was just a lot of wasted time and material. As well, a real femur has too much of a curve to it to accommodate the support rod, so I quickly whipped this bad boy up.

I've said before how much I really don't like doing 2 part moulds, creating that dividing wall is just so tedious and normally difficult to get just right. Have made so many of them lately though, I realized while I was doing this one that I really felt like I was finally getting the hang of it. Turned out great.

Started sculpting a couple of the custom "hero zombie" pieces needed for the movie. I wanted to make sure this time around that the FX were was detailed as I could make them. And that meant creating a single unique piece for each of the "hero zombies". This here is for the "Half Zombie" and while you can't tell here, this is our homage to the "Bicycle Girl" from The Walking Dead. It was a really quick sculpt, about half an hour.

"Piss Zombie". One of the few things to survive from the original draft, but this time he's getting a little special treatment to mess him up a little more. The actor has a beard so I wanted to make sure since I only had so much room to do a piece, that it would be very dramatic. I like it.

All the zombie pieces I'm making for the movie are just short run moulds, and since I'll only be needed one good piece from them, I will be creating as many as possible until the moulds give out and added them as a limited run for sale on the website. I'll be adding as them as they're used in the movie to have a good applied shot of them.

Return of the Zombie Frog. While I was more or less happy with how the original turned out, he was made of silicone which I find difficult to paint dramatically. Since he's only onscreen for a couple seconds I really wanted to make sure it was obvious and really stood out, so I remade him, exaggerated the silhouette a little more and he'll be made of latex. He looks very chocolatey here, I'm thinking maybe Chocolate Zombie Frogs in the future?

The finished leg bone. Latex skinned and polyfoam filled with a support rod - as usual. It turned out awesome. Really happy with this piece and how simple yet how great of a prop it is. I've been meaning to make on for over a year now and give how simple it was I'm not sure what I was waiting for.

For those interested. This will be added for sale to the website very soon, once I get this one painted and get some good pictures. They'll be $30. Feel free to get in touch now if you want to pre-order one.

Note: it's not medically accurate, if you'll recall the bit I was mentioning on the sculpt version of this piece up above. It does look pretty decent though.

The Spiked Zombie Head Mace - still really happy with this prop, can't wait to see it on screen.

A quick detail shot of the staff. The head is so distracting you don't really notice just how much work I put into the staff and how well the paint job came out.

So that's it for pictures. I've got a few more things on the go this week to prep for the coming shoots this weekend - if the weather and schedules hold out for us. It'll be nice to get back into it finally.