Superior Blood Leech

This is one of those shoots that just sort of came out of wanting to make a messed up looking freaking prosthetic - something that ignores human facial anatomy. The design isn't original, I've seen different instances of it even after I sculpted my ages ago.

I just knew I wanted to make it a little more messy and organic looking - the idea of a series of mouths, or rows of teeth, while freaky looking, isn't exactly disturbing looking - at least not to me - because it's so surreal looking. So I tried making it look a little more fleshy and gross and I'm totally happy with the results.

Originally the shoot was to be done with another friend of mine, who likes the weirder/darker stuff, in another province in a really old, amazing looking cemetery - but that didn't happen for a couple reasons. I decided I need to get this shoot done and was looking into contacting some of my regular folks when a friend of the original model contacted me and we arranged it all right away and within a week had the shoot done.

This is actually the fastest makeup/photo shoot I've ever done. The makeup took six minutes to apply. I did make the piece all up beforehand - but I always do - but this one, because it requires next to no blending, was literally just slapped on, a little fiddling with the edges to get them to lay down and a quick blending with the makeup along the edges and six minutes later were were done. I also was doing them makeup out of the back of a car in a church parking lot beside a major roadway. I never took the time to notice if anyone was watching us.

And there you go. I will be selling these, but only on Etsy I think, or at least only when I have one made, I'm not going to offer them them up otherwise. It's a thick piece, so it takes a lot of foam and there's a buttload of the resin teeth that have to be made, so this one will be a little pricier than normal, I'm thinking $70.

"Thing in a Jar", the Complete Collection

With the completion of the 5th and final "thing", an Albino Bilifore Parasite, I'm offering up the "Thing in a Jar" props as a whole collection.

Here's the ugly little sucker before being sealed up in his jar. It's made from 2 layers of silicone, with small beads of Premo embedded between them for eyes. A layer of laxet that's been torn and distressed  finishes it off. The silicone is untinted for a semi-translucent look, the image below was taking during sunrise and gives it a sort of delicate deep fried look, it doesn't normally look like that.

Here he is all snug in his jar of simulated Giant Mountain Troll bile to keep him fresh.

Using silicone to make this and adding on 6 thin tendrils really gives it a creepy realistic look. A lot of other "things" like this I've seen online are usually hard, made of sculpy or latex, tend to be stiff, this method gives a very realistic movement when the jar is moved - wasn't sure if it'd work, but I'm pretty happy with the results. Here's a very quick video showing that off.

And finally, here they all are together. The smaller jars are $20 each, the two larger jars are $25. Normally in total they'd be $110, but I'm offering the whole collection up for only $95. One of the reasons, is because sometimes accidents happen in shipping no matter how well they're packed and the most used method with Canadapost offers $100 coverage - so there's some security in shipping at least. And I would, of course, recommend the faster methods - less handling means less likelihood of damage.

I might at some point create a "Collector's Edition" of this, probably only one or two will be available, but each will come in an antiqued wooden case in which they can be displayed. No idea when this will happen though.

"Things in Jars" again.

I thought I'd do up some images of the actual "Things" as they're not totally clear from the jar pictures, which is kind of the point, but from a selling point of view I think some folks might like to see what the "Things" look like.

Freeze Dried Two-Head Faerie

Haitian Bloodworm

Yeti Fetus

I've only made 8 of each for now, we'll see how well they sell and than they'll only be made in a limited quantity. They sell for $15 each, the jars a re pretty high quality 8oz. jars, all sealed shut and coated with wax. The liquid is just water with the smallest drop of acrylic paint to make it cloudy.

Things in Jars going online for sale tomorrow!

Had a decently productive day - I think because I planned on doing way more than humanly possible getting just a bit done that took most of the day made it seem really productive and busy overall.

My main goal was to get the "Thing in a Jar" props done for sale. It's been a long, long, long time coming and they're finally done. Took awhile to track down just the right jar - mainly because I  needed a reliable and consistent source if I end up selling a lot of them.

So here they are:

This here is a Freeze Dried Two-Headed Faerie, found in the Aran Islands in Ireland. This is the only dry one, the other two jars are liquid filled and I thought I needed something a little different.

The Faerie itself was cast in Flex FoamIt X, I wanted it to have a bit of a dry look. I tried regular FoamIt, but it's small so it was pretty fragile and some parts broke off trying to get it out of the mould.

The Haitian Bloodworm, from the stomach of a zombie. This one was pretty simple, just made from EcoFlex 30 *future ones will be done in 20, just because I have a lot on hand for the moment). To cloud the water I added the smallest drop of yellow acrylic paint. I wanted it to have more of a yellow cast, but literally one more drop made it look like orange juice and was totally clouded up. I'm happy with this though. Hopefully the cloudiness will remain and won't settle out, but shaking it up should recloud it.

And finally the Yeti Fetus from a cave in Northern Tibet. This one was cast in resin, SmoothCast 305. I originally was going with latex filled with FlexFoam it, but the thing was so buoyant it was stuck to the lid of the jar, so I opted for solid resin with a painted on latex skin peeled and ripped up to make it look a little more gnarly.

I'm not totally sure of the prices on these just yet. I'm thinking they'll be under $20 though, maybe $15, and I'm looking into finding wooden boxes for selling all three as a set. I might even make them and put it out there as a limited edition set. We'll see how all that goes.

Until I get them on the website, which is going to be overhauled just slightly tomorrow, you can email me, foxhenderson@themonkeyrodeo.com, if you're interested in purchasing them.

WIP The Morg'Shath Parasite Demon

Finally got around to redoing this bad boy. It was originally done for the book "The Secret Lives of Demons" as a last minute shoot, but the mould was in pretty poor shape was was destroyed after 1 or 2 pulls. After having seen it I also realized I wanted to mess it up a little more, the edges were a little too clean.

So I re-sculpted it and here we go:

This is just a few minutes before I began working on the negative mould, which turned out pretty damned well. I'll be master moulding it in silicone tomorrow and hopefully crank out the first one over the weekend and then another quick photoshoot and it'll be going online for sale.

Here's a shot of the original:

The main differences are just a little more lumpy, the edges are a bit more messy and I added two larger teeth. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same.