Demon Ash Vs Evil Dead

I've done a few cosplay style Demon shoots, turning recognizable fictional characters into Demons, and with the new Ash Vs Evil Dead show coming out on Halloween I figured it was the best time to do a Demon Ash.

The hardest part of this shoot wasn't the makeup, but the props. I originally had thought about using a real chainsaw and shotgun, I just happen to have had both lying around. But upon ripping apart the chainsaw, or trying to, I realized it just wasn't going to work as easily as I'd hoped. So I opted for a worbla chainsaw instead. I had a huge sheet of the stuff for another shoot that never happened this year, so I figured I might as well try. Then, since the chainsaw was worbla, I decided to do a fake shotgun as well.

It was a massive amount of work, both pieces, but I've really been wanting to properly tackle something with worbla, turn out a really awesome looking prop. So I spent a lot of time designing each piece and how it would all go together and whatnot.

This is the beginnings of the chainsaw body sculpted from pieces of styrofoam, glued together, seam filled with expanding Gorilla Glue. The side handle here was tossed out because it didn't look right.

The shotgun just before priming.

The worbla chainsaw before painting and adding any extra, non-worbla bits. 

And the finished piece. Weighs less than a single kilogram, fairly comfortable to wear too.

Overall I was really happy with how the pieces came out, it was a lot of work but well worth it. Not only was it used for this shoot, but another friend is going to a convention with me on Halloween weekend and she'll be doing a female Ash there.

As for the Deadites, very early on when I thought of this I decided I wouldn't use makeup on the Deadites, originally I wanted more, so I chose to with a mask instead - figuring I'd just clean up the edges in photo shop anyway.

I really wanted the crazy buggy eyes so I made a couple resin half-spheres and used them - taking into account where the wearer might be able to see and how easy it might be to hide the eye holes. Worked pretty well. While the mask seemed pretty campy and silly while sculpting and ever after painting them...

They're actually a little creepy when worn and put into context. I think even I might lose some sleep if I saw these things looking in my window at night, even during the day if I wanted expecting it.

So that was it. A decent way to spend an afternoon. And now I'll leave you with this:

One more push for the Moonshine of the Damned Fundraiser.

We're well underway with filming on the movie now, most of the FX are taken care of - however, there's still room and time for more, the more money we have the more FX get put in the movie, and that's where you come in. Instead of donations, we're selling some of the props, and related items, being made specifically for the project. What kind of stuff? Here's some pictures, because reading about this stuff is only so much fun.

 Fake Chicken Foot.

Zombie Finger Puppet.

Partially Eaten Brain Keychain.

Severed Zombie Heads.

A Latex Zombie Mask.

Think if it more as a simple retail transaction rather than a donation. Since I'm making all this stuff, it's easy to sell it for close to what I would at a retail price. Everything is limited edition as well, some are available in fewer quantities than others and prices range from $10 to $40, depending on what you want.

And what do you get in return? Well, the item or items you bought, a thanks in the final credits and a chance to win some of the larger props being made for the movie. Right now I'm still making stuff so I'm unsure of what exactly those pieces will be. I'm aiming for 3 prizes, one of which is this:

The Spiked Zombie Head Mace. This one here pictured is the one that will be featured in the movie, and I'm planning on selling only 10 of them afterwards at $150 each. They're extremely time consuming to make because it's 10 separate pieces which all have to be cleaned up, assembled and finally painted.

For more information, you can email: brains @ themonkeyrodeo.com or visit the funding website for a more accurate price list, www.themonkeyrodeo.com/BZK3

Moonshine of the Damned, Production Journal #4

Lots of pictures this time around.

Things are progressing well on Moonshine of the Damned, we start shooting in a month, June 1st is the first shooting day - well, evening actually. There's been yet another massive round of changes, I think even from the last update. I've settled on a final incarnation of the script, one that had to incorporate certain difficult scheduling issues. All those issues have pretty much been resolved and now I've got a finished script, 37 pages down from 71.

Scheduling will start this week - that'll be fun. I've already got a rough schedule worked out, now it's just time to see what else goes wrong and if another rewrite or recasting session has to happen. It's been a troublesome project already, but I always feel like if pre-production is difficult than the shoot usually goes well. Something always has to go wrong and I'd rather it happen now when it's fixable than when it's too late and we're halfway through shooting.

Location scouting, while partially done, will start soon as well. I'm trying to simplify our locations so we're not running all over the Island. Luckily we don't need anything too crazy, we're just shooting in wooded locales and those a pretty plentiful around here.

So the biggest thing left to tackle are the special effects. While the fundraiser is still going for another couple weeks, I've managed to really narrow down the FX needs of the project without sacrificing my overall goal for them. Some single use pieces have been altered and for convenience (and safety) some will be CG - I wanted to stay away from CG as much as possible, but time and money was a concerned. A $100+ prop for a single shot use didn't seem reasonable.

The first big round of supplies cam in this morning from Sculpture Supply. Some various stuff from Smooth-On and Monster Makers - they pretty much make everything I use on a regular basis, I highly recommend their stuff, I've been using it for years now with very few problems or issues.

The Zombie Gator. I've been looking forward to this prop for so long now. It's the biggest thing I've every sculpted and attempted for something like this. It won't be ultra-realistic looking by any means, but that's not what I'm going for. I like my movies with a healthy side order of cheese, coated with melted cheese on a plate made of cheese...I think you get the point.

This here is the upside-down mould, secured together while the latex skin cures in the sun. Normally you'd use latex in an UltraCal 30 mould, however my intention was to originally do this as a urethane skinned prop - I've since made a lot of discoveries through experimenting and found latex was a much more reasonable solution. It's a little more work, but that's not an issue for me.

The latex should be pretty much cured by now, I'm writing this while it's sitting outside right now. I spent yesterday painting several layers on each mould part, assembled the mould and painted another layer of latex along the seams to make sure it's all one decently solid skin before I dump in the expanding foam. I'm really hoping I can get to this today.

A hand. Pretty simple. This was made from an alginate mould from my girlfriend Kim's hand. It'll be used as a stunt hand in the opening sequence, but I've since written a shot or two requiring some random body parts. If time and money permits, I may do couple more body parts.

Foam weapons. Same stuff as last year, I've just updated the method by which I'm finishing them. I have to make a new axe set since I sent the others off to another actor for him to do his shots. There'll be another sledgehammer made for a specific gory FX shot I'm looking forward to.

Here's a closeup of the sledgehammer head. I'm really happy with how it turned out. Last years sledgehammer was given a silver coating, I realized that was just a poor move as I wanted it to look old and used, this will just be given a quick fake rust treatment and it'll be all good to go for whacking zombies.

Finally, I thought I'd show off a couple more shots of this bad boy. I've still got a long way to go in understanding silicone masks. This one here had some really thin spots I tried to patch up as best as possible, but unfortunately this type of silicone, Eco-Flex 20, doesn't adhere to itself very well so patching and seaming was near impossible. Not that it really matters, it's just being used as a background zombie now and does make a decent prop to just have sitting around the workshop. Overall it was a good learning experience in sculpting, moulding and painting.

Up next on the FX list is to start the moulds for the few body parts I have planned and to get into sculpting the new round of zombie prosthetics I'll be making. There'll be a lot more unique, single use makeups this year, I don't want the zombies to look lazy and sloppy, that's not the point of why I'm doing this. I'm doing this to really showcase some of my FX abilities so nothing will be half-assed. The schedule has taken all this into account so I won't feel rushed to get zombie groups done in order to get things done quicker.

That's it for now, it's already been a busy morning getting things worked out and settled and now I need to take a quick break before getting back at it again.