Pile o' Zombie Heads

I have a long, long way to go for pre-production on Moonshine of the Damned, but it's kind of fun so far and a great learning experience. A lot of the props will be very efficiently  made - I won't say cheap, but efficient in terms of cost vs quantity vs needs. I'm find the latex skin polyfoam style props to be a really great way to crank out some very simple props.

My first major delving into this method was making the Shrunken Demon Head props while I was really happy with and I never gave it much thought as a method to do more - but that's all changed. There's going to be way more body parts than originally planned as using this method yields some decent and quick results. The moulding process is much cheaper than using silicone, the casting materials are also really affordable and go a long way - plus I'm get a lot more used to painting latex and experimenting with "adjusting" the final pieces.

I'm pretty sure I could almost do the same thing with other materials, such as silicone or urethane, but there's pretty expensive to just play around with. And to produce as many pieces as I'd like would be incredibly expensive, so latex and polyfoam it is. I don't know about the long term durability of these products, but I do have one of the Shrunken Demon Heads hanging in our front door getting assaulted by direct sunlight, so far it's just fine.

So here's what's become of the final Zombie Head props. They were once all normal and intact looking, the one in the upper right corner was the original, the other three have all had "battle damage" done to them to add a little variety and character to them.

Broken Jaw Zombie Head.

Axe Fight Zombie Head.

Original Zombie Head.

Shotgun Wound Zombie Head.

The Original Zombie also has a different paintjob, since then I've gone with a greener look, as it lends to the campier feel I'm going for with the web series. And if you saw some of the early images of the Shotgun Wound Zombie Head, it looks much "juicier" in the beginning, that has dulled a little with age - and could be the picture - but I will get getting some material that will add a permanent gloss to the bloodier spots on the heads. It might not be realistic since the heads would be dried out by the time they're found in the course of the series, but it does look good onscreen if they're a little shiny.

Now, if you've read through all this and you came here wondering about what I meant by "customization" when I refer to selling the limited quantity for the web series, this is all what I mean. Customization does have limits, basically anything I can remove from a single solid original head, holes for wounds, shotguns blasts, axes or what have you, can all be done really simply with a little re-sculpting with latex and cotton.

These pictures should give you a good idea of what I mean by customizing, but feel free to ask any questions should you want one. The main colour scheme can be altered as well, but if it doesn't turn out as awesome as you'd hoped when you ask for a blue zombie head, that's not my problem - so be careful what you ask for.

For more info on purchasing the heads (for the web series fund raiser) you can check out the website: www.themonkeyrodeo.com/BZK3.

Quasi-disturbing silicone imagery.

I was planning on keeping things simple and cheap as I'm getting deeper into the special effects for Moonshine of the Damned.There's a quick sequence where I thought having a fake hand would help things, so using material onhand (as usual) I was hoping I could manufacture a decent silicone hand for the scene.

Well, it looked alright, but I was using a really stretchy silicone and it came out like a jello hand. Too bad, bit of a waste of silicone, but  you never know what I could end up using this for. I've already re-used the alginate mould and made a clay version which I'll be making an Ultracal 30 mould of and making a latex hand instead.

The shot it's needed for is so quick and darkly lit that a latex hand will more than suffice, which is good since I've no intention of wasting time, money and material trying this again. And the Ultracal mould will yield several hands - so I can even make several and reuse them elsewhere in the series.

And here's the quasi-disturbing silicone imagery. I made up way too much silicone when I did the hand above and didn't want it to just go to waste curing in the container, so I grabbed the nearest mould and used it. What I used was the Mayan Cthulhu Totem and now I have what can only be described as possibly an ancient Mayan Cthulhu sex toy.

It actually just looks like it was made from Sculpey, but it's stretchy and wobbly and in person just kind of looks wrong.

Day 5 over and done with.

Day 5 on Bimbo Zombie Killers! Undead in the Water is over with, without too much fuss. It was a bit of a pain to schedule since one actress couldn't make it, but in a way it all worked, because there was no way we'd have gotten it all done and we got done the worst of it. So next time, much easier.

Here's all our crap, you can't see most of it actually, but it's all there. I realized once we got the location I'd forgotten the sledgehammer prop, so thankfully, Julia ran back to Hazel Grove and got it. That was pretty damned awesome of her.

A friend of Tim Wartman's came along as our zombie for the day - it wasn't until I was soaking him in blood that I realized what his shirt said. And even he didn't get the significance right away - but we got a good shot of it, so hopefully it read well under the blood onscreen.

The fake axe in the arm gag worked perfectly, pretty damned happy with how it turned out.

I think John is loving that shotgun, he does look pretty bad ass with it.

Okay, not so bad ass here.

and Tim Gormley showing off one of the props of the day.

Cast shot, from left to right: Mark Wells, Tim Gormley, Tim Wartman, Julia MacDougall, Julie Laforest, Mary Gaudet, John MacDonald and Bill Pineau.

To was the first time I was doing two shoots in one day, luckily the second was too big a deal, but I realized pretty quick how terribly unprepared I was for it. Hopefully it'll all turn out.

And finally, the best line of the day:

And don't forget, we've got 18 days left on the fundraising campaign, we need all the help we can get. There's a link on the right sidebar.

Severed/Mangled Hand Prop

Day 5 of shooting got postponed due to rain. It was pretty annoying since it wasn't raining where I was and I made an attempt to salvage the day and it went back and forth a few times until finally I just gave up.

So one of the actors needed to have a copy of her hand made for a severed/mangled hand prop (we actually needed it and a 2nd prop today but I chose to shoot them sort of 2nd Unit, but now I might not have to) and since she'd planned on filming today, she just came by to get this done.

I kinda screwed up with the alginate, I was too rushed and it came out pretty bubbly - but for the very limited screen time this prop has, it came out better than expected.

Julia with her hand in alginate.

I cast the silicone right in the alginate mould since I really only planned on this being a one off - but I'm actually running a 2nd one right now. I let the silicone form a skin on the edges where I knew it wouldn't be solid so I could slop in some thickened silicone (Eco-Flex 30 from Smooth-On) to simulate meaty bits inside the hand. I chose not to go with bone sticking out, just because I don't really care how ultra-realistic it looks, anatomically or otherwise.

Here it is fresh from the mould, still a little shiny and in need of painting.

It wasn't perfect, not by any means, but for our purposes in the web series, it's freakin' awesome. I'm planning on testing some silicone adhesive to glue fake nails to the hand as well.

And if you're seeing this blog for the first time and wondering just what in hell is going on, we're doing a web series - and we're raising money. Follow the Indiegogo link on the right, and feel free to spread the word or even donate something.