Two years ago, I picked up a cheap Grave Breaker prop from Halloween City and transformed it into a ghastly, twisting corpse powered by a reindeer motor. You can check out the corpsing portion of the project here, and the animation portion here. It was a fun little build that added some much-needed movement to the front of my display.
Fast forward to today and I have now added a second version to my Cemetery. A few weeks back I was in my local Michael's checking out their Halloween wares, and I came across another Grave Breaker static prop and threw it in the cart. Cheap to begin with, but makes for a great starting point on another animated ghoul that I needed to add to my display...
I followed the same corpsing technique as the first prop, giving it a grotesque, dead flesh look. I ended up adding whisps of hair from an old wig to give it just a bit more creepiness (I simply snipped sections of hair from the wig and applied it randomly using contact cement.)
After the corpsing portion was done, I turned to animating it. The first prop turns side-to-side, so I decided that this version would rock front-to-back. I ended up throwing a linkage arm together with leftover pieces from the first build, powered by a vertically-mounted reindeer motor that I had left over. I mounted the arm to a single piece of PVC, pivoting on a single bolt and washer axle. (Take a look at the original supply list here.)
I'm really happy with the results of this one. It's a huge upgrade to the out-of-the-box piece, and it all went together quickly and fairly easily. I love the subtlety of the movement, as its slow, creepy lunge is just enough to catch your eyes and will look great among the tombstones at the front of my display.
3 comments:
What a great transformation. Looking really awesome. Agree with you on the slow rocking movements. Just enough to catch your eye, but not be sure what is lurking.
Transforming and tweaking existing props makes for an interesting and one of a kind haunt. While we love to see so many homes get into the Halloween spirit as of late, we have to admit that the 12 feet tall skeleton (and recent variants) craze has turned into a rather "homogenized recipe" for Halloween yard haunting. It's like everyone goes out and buys "Spishack's Yard-Haunt-In-A-Box" these days.
Eve, I agree with you 100%. Creativity does not equate to simply buying the biggest pieces off the shelf (for the biggest money!) and throwing it on the lawn. While I appreciate the act of decorating, I can't help but notice that no real effort was put into it... does this make us haunt snobs?? :)
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