I thought I'd make a few more of my Norse Cthulhu Effigy piece, but a new variations. A faux bronze version. It's the same mould as the original, just cast in black resin and given a faux bronze finish with acrylic paint and a sealer.

I'll only be making 5 of them, maybe a year and occasionally for conventions, this these 5 are all you'll be seeing online for sale this year. $30 each, plus shipping. And if you're in the US, take advantage of our crappy Canadian dollar because that's $30 CAD.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/265644184/faux-bronze-norse-cthulhu-effigy 

The Monkey Rodeo Box

I'm looking for as much feedback as possible, I know it'll be hard to get this information out to a wide enough audience to get a good gauge on this idea, so I'm asking people to repost, share, tweet, or whatever social media format you feel will get the word out and respond in whatever manner works best. I'll try to describe this with as much detail as possible.

The idea is this, a Monkey Rodeo Box, much like Loot Crate, Nerd Block or the countless other "crates" "boxes" "blocks" or what have you, that are out there. While those are often boast a large subscription rate, featuring a wide variety of mass produced products every single month, I can't do those kind of numbers, so I'll be offering up a very limited number of boxes containing Monkey Rodeo exclusive products. I will not be buying and repackaging products from any other manufacturers. If I can't make it, it won't be in the box. I may choose to make an exception down the road, but I don't see any need to right now.

So here's my plan as simply as I can put into one sentence - "to offer a bi-monthly box, alternating between two themes". Because my business is really broken into two sections, prosthetics and props, the themes will be The Demon Disguise Box (makeup, other wearable latex products, and/or whatever might pertain to prosthetics/makeup) and The Demonic Antiquities Box (props and shit). The logic being that I have two customer bases and they not be interested in both sides of what I do, so there's something for each customer base.

The Demon Disguise Box will include a full face prosthetic - probably a Limited Run piece, so it won't be just something I normally stock. A pair of ears or horns (random with each box). A 1/2 or 1/4 latex mask, or horns. And a 8.5"x11" print from one of my shoots (or whatever size fits into the box without being folded, bent or crushed).

The Demonic Antiquities Box will include a new prop (available in the box exclusively or months before being release for regular sale online), a DVD of one of my terrible movies, Two other small random props (either an item no longer available for sale or made custom for the box). I'm hoping to boast at least one of these things will be a Cthulhu item as well.  I'm still working out the details of what I want to do with this box, so this could change.

Now since this is all my own work, made by hand and all that, the prices won't be cheap. I'm estimating $40 per box (CAD) with a normal retail value of around $70-$100 (possibly even more with the props box, so it's a good deal), plus shipping to Canada and the US only for right now. The reason I'm limiting my shipping locations is to get a flat rate on the boxes and make ordering faster. Instead of having to through the normal process of emailing me, you'll be able to do the checkout on your own right away, either through my site via Paypal or through Etsy - but you can still email me directly about it if you really need to.

You can order just one, or a full subscription to one (which is really only 3 boxes a year) or even to both (which would be 6 boxes a year).. The schedule would work basically like this:

Jan 1st - Demon Disguise Box goes on sale until Feb 15th. Ships Feb 25th.
Mar 1st - Demonic Antiquities Box goes on sale until April 15th. Ships April 25th.
May 1st - Demon Disguise Box, (all new items), sale ends June 15th, ships June 25th.
July 1st - Demonic Antiquities box (all new items), sale ends Aug 15th, ships Aug 25th.
Sept 1st - Demon Disguise Box, (all new items), sale ends Oct 15th, ships Oct 25th.
Nov 1st - Demonic Antiquities box (all new items), sale ends Dec 15th, ships Dec 25th.

It won't specifically start in January though, it could be June, July or  October of this year, or maybe even January of next year, that's all up in the air, but the days of month and the length of time the boxes are available are what I'll be sticking to hopefully, if the logistics work out. It'll be on sale roughly 45 days, ships 10 days later.

As for the number of boxes, as I mentioned earlier, I can't compare to the volume since all this is handmade, so I'm limiting it to a very, very small number, 20 boxes per sale. So 60 Demon Disguise boxes in a year, 60 Demonic Antiquities Boxes per year. 120 boxes in total a year. That might seem low, but again, these ARE NOT mass produced, pre-made items, remember that - as far as I know (and I could be totally wrong, so feel free to correct me and give me an example) no one else is making boxes like these with all handmade on demand items. Even the DVDs I'll be selling I'm printing myself.

Unfortunately I won't be doing cool custom printed boxes, it's a matter of volume and cost,  and my volume's too low making my cost too high or out of the minimum range of a lot of printers out there. I'm not interesting in paying $8 or more for a box, it defeats the whole purpose if I'm spending so much on what amounts to nothing more than a neat disposable container. Now that's my response to what I've found in a couple hours of online research into custom box printing and even printing on stock boxes - if someone out there knows someone or is aware of a business that can do low volume colour printing for in the vicinity of $2 per box, that would be awesome - but as far as I know, not happening. So regular old mailers it will be, probably with some custom stickers to identify it though.

That's about it I think.If this is something you think you'd be interested in, awesome, please let me know and if there was something you'd like to see included in either box, suggest away - but be reasonable please.


The easiest place to contact me is on Facebook on The Monkey Rodeo page itself: https://www.facebook.com/TheMonkeyRodeo

Limited Run Buddha Cthulhu

I finally have a few of these ready for sale as a Limited Run, they're for sale on Etsy for the moment. $35 each, limited run of only 30 for online sale. I have 3 ready to go, as well as a reject - you can view all this on Etsy.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/234557008/buddha-cthulhu

Mini Mounted Cthulhu Head

I've been into make little mounted beast heads lately, one of those prop ideas I came up with years ago and threw on the backburner since I wasn't really sure how I could pull it off. I just finished my third one, a mini Cthulhu head. I've been keeping them small-ish to keep the price down since they do take a lot of time and money to make a single one.

I did a Pygmy Blood Troll and an Albino Cyclops Faerie, so Cthulhu seemed the next logical step.

I had recently purchased a small jar of Glow Worm, from Smooth-On, it's a really strong glow-in-the-dark powder that gave me the idea to give him glow in the dark eyes just for fun. I wasn't going for an ultra-realistic final piece, but something slightly cartoony and stylized - it kind of has an unintentional Mike Mignola feel to it I think, which I'm pretty happy about.

I wanted to keep the paint job bright and simple as well, I didn't want it muddied down with excessive details and colour schemes, just a nice bright, clean green with a little red and yellow accenting - again, keeping it cartoonish.

The eyes just pop into place, I don't bother gluing them or anything - since I didn't want to risk getting glue everything pressing the eyeballs into the sockets, but they didn't need it anyway, they slip in really easily while the latex is still fresh-ish, it tends to stiffen up a bit after a couple days from the mould, which should hold the eyes in as well as anything - but I'm sure if you go looking to jab them out, you probably can, like anything if you want to destroy it, it's pretty easy.

The glow-in-the-dark effect is pretty awesome, the Glow Worm is really bright and even obvious in broad daylight if you're in shadows. Overall I'm really happy with how it turned out, it's a totally different take on Cthulhu than I usually do and I think it's one of my better pieces.

I'm selling them in a limited run of 10 right now, $85 each. I'll be selling a small handful at the few Cons I attend each year as well. The plaque is almost 7" and the head itself is around 6", made from latex skinned polyfoam. Comes with the hanging hardware already attached, so it's ready to hang right out of the box.

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.

Norse Cthulhu Effigy

I realized I really liked simple, old, worn, kind of cruddy looking artifacts. Slightly broken, chipped and just generally used looking. Not only because it lends itself to my sometimes lazy and impatient sculpting skills, but because it tends to have an air of reality about the final pieces. That's not to say I don't care for or appreciate the hard work that goes into creating something finely detailed and pristine looking, it just all depends on the look you're going for I guess - but old and cruddy tends to be more authentic feeling.

I had already done a somewhat realistic piece of Cthulhu and even a crude Mayan Totem, and I liked the idea that perhaps other cultures had encountered Cthulhu and created their own concepts of him. It's been done before, so I don't make any claims to be it being an original idea, but it's a cool concept regardless.

I knew I wanted to make a small, more affordable item - although I'll admit it's been awhile since I've had to listen to people bitching about cost when they had no interest in buying anything in the first place - and a smaller piece as well. So what I ended up with was a Norse inspired Cthulhu effigy, I spent several days searching for examples of Norse art and found most of it was pretty simple and crude - and the rest was all modern versions and way too elaborate.

The back story of the effigy is that Vikings going on long sea journeys fearing an encounter with Cthulhu would carve these effigy that were kept on the ship as a sign of respect and would supposedly allow them to sail without fear of being destroyed by Cthulhu. I wanted it to look like it was carved in bone as well.

It's about 2" wide and 3" tall, made of resin, and while this isn't a solid plan yet, once it goes online I'm looking at $20 with a limited run of 30. Not sure exactly when it'll be on the website since I'm in the midst of updating it, but anyone interested can email me at foxhenderson @ themonkeyrodeo . com.

Moonshine of the Damned, Production Journal #13

So this scene, in the script as 4A - where the character Freebird (Heather Panton) encounters some zombies and first comes up with the idea of the Spiked Zombie Head Mace. In the original script these elements were much more drawn out and it was just a bow and arrow she created, in the 2nd major revision it was the mace. In this version, there are about 3-4, possible more sequences all mashed down into one sequence.

It got postponed from June 30th, we were going to shoot it on my birthday, but had to cancel due to illness. No worries, because we got to do it today and it turned out awesome. I already edited it and I was a little worried at first I might've missed a few things and whatnot, but it all went together really well and I'm pretty damned happy with how it turned out.

The scene is significant in a couple ways, it represents the first really FX scene. Not overly huge on FX, but it did take while to do it all - and you have to consider, I'm doing all this myself with no help. It's a lot of work to break all this down and try to get it done on time and done well at that.

It involved one of our hero zombies, referred to as Angry Zombie - played awesomely by Angela Corrigan. Angela is fairly tall and thin and athletic, so not only was she the right size for a zombie, but could probably handle the physicality of it as well. First thing was to outfit her with some Out of Mouth Dentures, it was a little problematic since I don't have a vehicle and neither does she so we had to do this whenever there was even the slimmest of opportunities, and eventually it worked out.

Here's the finished dentures. Now, I've not even done enough work with this stuff to even be called an amateur. These were my 2nd attempt at them and they worked pretty well for what was needed. I ended up making a mould for the teeth themselves rather than trying to sculpt them by hand. That turned out to be a good idea.

It took a couple fittings, but we got them working well enough for the shoot.


And I had to create all these. It doesn't look like a whole lot of work when you see them just sitting there. But each head had to be cast in latex, cured and filled with polyfoam. The latex can take awhile to cure and with one mould, it can take a while to do this many. Once cured I had to damage each one, seal that up and once cured added some gory bits and wait for it to cure again and finally painted them all.

Then came the task of finding the right size and shape sticks to mount them on, which required a lengthy hike into sweltering hot, mosquito infested territory, the stick had to be cleaned up, all the little branches and crap removed and finally sharpened on both ends and head the heads jammed on. It was a lot of work, it took a long, long time and they're only onscreen for maybe 20 second in this one scene, but longer in another.

If you're thinking, "Wow, that's a lot of work, what a waste of time since you only see it for a couple seconds" then quite frankly, fuck you, you're probably an idiot and please stop reading, go away and find something better to do with your life, like help lepers or something. The whole point of this project was to go this distance, to create more work than you'll really notice onscreen. Why? Because I wanted to, that's it. This crap is what I do and I love the shit out of it, so if I can find an excuse to make a bunch of messed up severed zombie heads and jam them on sticks, than I'm going to do it.

Next is the Single Spiked Zombie Head Mace. The idea here is that Freebird grabs one to defend herself, realized it's a decent weapon and jams more spikes into it later on. So I had to make a 2nd mace with just one spike. The full spiked head will now be painted up to reflect the mess made on this one.

The staff from the original full spiked head was taken and put onto this head, since originally I didn't have the time to make a new staff. Since then I've made a new one and fixed the wobbly staff problem, so the Spiked Zombie Head Mace you'll see in the rest of the movie will look much better now.

And now, on with some pictures from the shoot. Here's Angel and Heather before we started.

The blind eye look was sort of a last minute idea. I had the contacts and since I knew Angela was fine with them, I figured we give it a try and hope it didn't mess up her depth perception to much. Luckily, even though it did, she was still cool with going for this look. It really added an extra little bit to the character and I think this will end up being some of the best zombie makeup in the movie.

Here I'm trying to get a locked down shot that will be combined with footage being shot in Scotland. We'll have this one shot with our footage and theirs combined, otherwise Freebird will just be watching the zombies in the other footage wander about.

I was just testing the camera and got this shot. No reason to post it other than it was a really decent picture of Heather.

I made this goofy looking little rig to mount my camera in, it kind of allowed me to steer it a bit more comfortably than just holding it. It could even be weighted and made into a sort of steadicam.

Some heads.

And another.

Kim took this random picture of herself while we were shooting I guess.

Finally, some zombie fighting action.

If I didn't know this was Angela lying there in makeup, I would swear this was just a prop.

Freebird after her first major zombie fight.

Angela and Heather in a couple extra "after" cast photos.

In the end Heather got bloody, Angela couldn't wait to get out of makeup, my camera survived a near whomping from the mace and we finished right on schedule. As I mentioned, I already edited the footage and it looks pretty awesome.

So a huge thanks to Heather and Angela for coming out to do this today. And to Kim for getting some awesome pictures. And now for the Line of the Day:

Not sure when we're shooting next. I've got a tentative date set on the 28th, but that all hinges on a lot of things coming together perfectly. We'll see what happens.

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 #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.