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 #8

Day Two on shooting has come and gone quite successfully. We ran a little longer than planned, but that always seems to happen even on the simplest of shoots like today was. The scenes today were pretty complicated to set up. We only shot two, the first one required so many angles to cover what was going on, the second one actually ran pretty fast, thankfully.

There was an odd bit of luck that ran through today that happened long before we started shooting. Some Islanders may (or may not, I guess) recognize Tim Gormley here, who went above and beyond the call of duty for this. 

 Tim was very almost not involved at this time around. He was originally slated to play a totally different, demonic character in the full version of the story - but had to drop out due to a busy schedule. That was a huge upset actually, but I found a replacement and soon after (I don't fully recall the sequence of events anymore) I lost someone else or something happened that I had to cull back the script twice, the second time actually removing the need for that demonic character completely.

Upon doing that, and actually moving the original actor from his character to another role (who also) dropped out eventually anyway, Tim expressed interest again after seeing we were shortening the project and this look is what he came up with and since today was his only day out for us, I had to give him the "Line of the Day", and here it is:
So, onto the rest of it. We did a before cast shot:

John and Mary as Bo and Roxxy.

And some rednecks, Tim Gormley, Tim Wartman and Mark Wells as Luke, Roscoe and Cletus.

We needed a zombie for the shoot and there were some minor issues with our originally scheduled actor so we found a replacement, however since he was used before in a scene that takes place nearly opposite this one I decided to use an old silicone mask on him. It's not perfect by any means, but I like the weird clunkiness of it.

And he's gone.

And bloody.

And as I said, far from perfect, however it was easy to get him ready and clean him up.

Yeah, that my girlfriend.

There's something pretty messed up looking with the hollow, slightly bloodied head just lying there.

I had to remake the "axe in the arm" prop for Tim W., this one worked a little better anyway. I also remade the fake sledgehammer and gave it to Mark this time around.

But it's the same arm as last year. I tried to clean it up a bit.

And finally the bimbos, Jobeth and Ginger played by Ancelene MacKinnon and Julia MacDougall.

Tim usually has to play with all the props at some point.

The Bimbos meet Roxxy. This played out so differently over many version of the script. Roxxy would escape, meet up with the Bimbos, get caught again. She was knocked out at one point. There were different numbers of Bimbos as well in various versions. Finally were came up with this and I won't say too much about where it goes from here.

End of the day cast.

After the girls were free to take off we had a couple quick shots with the Rednecks to finish off the day.

And that was it. Overall a good day, we shot all we planned to. As I said it ran a little longer than planned, but we did get off to a late start as well. The footage looks good, pretty happy with it. And now onto the next shoot.

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.

Making a fake rock

Without a doubt the most boring prop I’ve ever made I think – at as far as descriptions go. There’s a short sequence in Moonshine of the Damned requiring some violence and a rock, so for safety’s sake we’re going fake

It was a pretty simple prop to make as well, finding the perfect rock was just as simple. It was in a pile by the car during a shoot last summer – so it wasn’t like I even had to hunt for one.

First thing I did was give it a bit of a cleaning. Most all of our rocks here are sandstone, not the easiest to clean – luckily this bad boy was granite – at least I think it’s granite, I’m not a geologist. Once it was all cleaned up I made a two part silicone mould – you’ll have to imagine that part, I didn’t take pictures because I didn’t think it’d be that interesting…and it might not be.

Once the mould was done I actually abandoned the prop once the web series was cancelled and only began thinking about it just recently. I had been making some other simple props and thought it was time to crank this out. It also helped that I finally had a handle on painting it.

It was easy enough to cast, but one thing to note about using Flex FoamIt, that I only found out last summer - I don't know how widespread this information is, but I didn't know this - the material, once cured, can sort of shrivel into itself, this can easily be fixed by crushing the piece, squeezing out supposed gases that cause the shriveling effect. So far it's worked well for me nearly 100% of the time.

So, here’s some pictures:

The mould, made of silicone with a support shell.

I bolted it together, seemed the simplest thing to do.

The original rock (left) and the unpainted soft foam rock (right).

The fake rock - the detailing is what helps it, even this doesn't look too bad.

 The original and the final fake rock. Didn't come out too bad.

And here it is, in all it's artifical geological glory. The Fake Rock.

So there you go, a fake rock. It's only needed in a very short sequence, but it's one of those thing that you might write in a script and not really think about how you'll accomplish it, let alone accomplish it safely. This is something I couldn't have done a couple years ago and now it's a completely simple process to create a tiny bit of movie magic.

Chances are when you see the scene it's in, you won't really think "How'd they do that?" Most people will just assume it was a trick camera angle, or some folks who don't really understand FX might even think it's CG - nope, it's a chunk of soft foam. It can be throw right at a person's head if needed and it'll be relatively safe - at least moreso than lobbing a real rock.

Technical Info: The whole thing was done using Smooth-On products. The mould was Rebound 25 with a Plasti-Paste II shell. The rock itself is made from Flex FoamIt V and painted using Monster Makers Latex Paint Base tinted with acrylic paints.

This isn't something I'll ever put on the website for sale, but if you've stumbled upon this and think it'd be a whole lot easier (since the mould is already made) to just buy one instead of making one yourself, feel free to send me an email. I reckon I'd sell it for about $25 - it's a bugger to paint decently and does take awhile. Email: foxhenderson@themonkeyrodeo.com.

Note about cost: Just an FYI concerning the cost of making one of these. It's not too bad, but even using the minimum quantities available of the products, you're looking at over $100.

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.

St. Patrick's Day Leprechaun Toe Special

Since it seems appropriate, for tomorrow only, from 12:00 AM to 11:59 PM on March 17th, I'm selling the Leprechaun Toe props for 25% off, so a single toe that's normally $10 is only $7.50 and the earrings, normally $25 are $18.75. Shipping (hopefully) worldwide is a flat rate of $5. Place your order here.

If you order today, it's the normal price, if you order at 12:00 AM, March 18th, it's normal price. Only orders between the hours listed above will be offered the discount.

Leprechaun Toe Earrings

I originally made the Leprechaun Toes as keychains, but I was worried about the durability of the silicone part of it holding up against the wear and tear of being in a purse or pocket and rubbing against the sharp edges of some keys, so I eventually went with this idea - Leprechaun Toe Earrings. Although I am still selling them as keychains, just with a warning.

Sure, they're odd, but that's the point. I felt some folks might like to show them off a little more than just having one on a keychain, what better way than dangling from your ears?

They're really lightweight, the silicone weighs next to nothing as does the resin center to which the hardware is attached. Since they're made of mostly silicone they're also quite soft and disturbingly squishy - much like you might imagine a real severed Leprechaun toe to be.

They're made to order, a single pair can take about 2 days - although I do usually make more than one pair at a time so you might luck out.

Shipping is decently cheap, I can ship them as a letter, for right now I'm assuming that I can ship worldwide for a flat rate of $5. You can order by emailing me at foxhenderson@themonkeyrodeo.com or you can head over to the website and see what else might interest you.

Lucky Leprechaun Toe

Need a little extra luck? How about a wee little Leprechaun Toe for only $10?

A little known fact about Leprechauns, there are many magical creatures whose magic comes from certain body parts, in the case of Leprechauns their power is contained with in one, sometimes both, of their big toes. And when a Leprechaun passes away, their bodies decompose into a bed of clover, their magically imbued toe becomes a 4 leaf clover - hence why they're so rare and considered lucky.

So you can imagine, it's not too easy to collect these, you have to wait to find a dead Leprechaun and hope you get to it before it begins to decompose and the digit loses its power.

Actually, it's a silicone sleeve over a resin nub into which the hardware is embedded and the silicone is bonded to. I was originally selling them as keychains, however I have doubts about the longevity of the silicone to stand up to the wear and tear of being rubbed against keys - however they can be used for whatever you want really, even a pendant. Earring versions will be coming soon!

They're pretty small and should be able to sent as a letter just fine, so shipping on these bad boys should be pretty cheap. If you're interested, you can contact me at foxhenderson@themonkeyrodeo.com.

"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.