Such was my daughter’s question when seeing this on the table.
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| From Guild wars Halloween contest 2011 |
All skeletons are Bob, since we built, well, Bob.
I was rather impressed she knew I was making it a Fred, however.
“That’s the Bob I hold hands with.”
“We need to make more Bobs.”
As my mother is often fond of saying, Life is plan B…
Well…I’ve been hit with a whole rash of ‘plan B’ all year long.
When the year began, I knew it would take me several years to switch over to my planned new theme involving Spider Woman. Heck, it took a good 3 years before I was happy with the whole Witch Doctor thing we had going.
I identified VERY early in the year that the plans for the front yard were a little too ambitious to be able to complete this year, and they were shuffled off to the back burner. Other plans were put in their stead that I was pleased with.
The Stele were started, but needing to finish up some improvements on the Laboratory, they were set aside till that was done…Then the Demons were created, and set aside as well in favor of the Laboratory work.
The last 2 weeks have seen fit to remove the Demons and Stele from the equation for the year in 2 storms. I was prepared for the rain in both instances. I was not prepared for the wind. The first, winds out of the north broke our gazebo and toppled the Demons into the rain. Worried most about the Gazebo, I secured it back upright with ropes, hoping to be able to repair the legs in time for Halloween. (the Gazebo is used as well) Storm 2 saw winds out of the south, collapsed the gazebo the OTHER direction. Securing that in the middle of the night, I failed to see that the Stele had been blown out from under it as well…They will be salvaged, but not this year.
So…here we are, the majority of the work to date ruined…
What does one do?
Well, we take stock of what’s available and move on. Plan B.
The Olde BYOB project is getting a makeover.
His legs amputated, as they really just got in the way for his purpose (but I needed to build them for the tutorial), and he’s been given the guts of one of those Christmas Reindeer to make him wave. He’ll get some fluorescent paint, and the wire to make the arm move painted black to hide it, then lit with a black light.
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| From 2010 Buildup |
And, all is not bad. A very kind soul heard my plea for a knife, and sent some along…
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| From 2010 Buildup |
It’s been a busy couple weeks.
My son’s birthday, a party in boiling temperatures, and various plans falling through have all led to me not having time to work on anything.
So, finally having made my way back to the bowels of the shed, I pulled out failure 2 from the laboratory.
Next to the Jacob’s ladder, my second biggest annoyance was my…well, let’s call it the tank assembly.
It was a last minute addition. Modelled on a mixture of some very real science experiment videos that are a tad disturbing, with elements of The Brain that Wouldn’t Die thrown in just for fun. (YES, that’s a 3 star movie that has served as a major influence on my laboratory setup. Only the best.)
Well, half of the thing had to be scuttled as the silicone I had plugging some holes in the plumbing to pump the serum from the tanks to Bob on the table did not dry fully and blew a leak. Then, various other things went wrong, and it was generally bland, IMO.
So, we’ve begun the fixing of that.
Some cosmetic bells and whistles to the doors.
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| From Lab |
All these will eventually light up.
First is an old post office box door.
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| From Lab |
We’ll do the same trickery on it’s window I did for the control panel:
And, some tubes obtained from my brother.
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| From Lab |
We’ll have them lighting up as well from behind.
I want to get some dials nobs and guages installed as well, but have yet to locate any I really like.
Next up on the Lab projects include fixing the lighting, scrapping/redoing the generator, and a few modifications to Bob.
And, in case you’ve missed out…Here’s The Brain that Wouldn’t Die in it’s entirety. I’m sure you can see how it’s influenced my own lab design.
However, while I’m out there working on this thing. Some girl I do not immediately recognize rides up on her bicycle. “What are you doing?”
I look around. “What?”
“What are you doing there?”
“Oh, this is just my little experiment.”
“What is it?”
“I’m trying to bring the dead back to life.” Said completely straight faced and serious.
“Who”
“The dead. You know..” pointing to Bob back in the garage.
“It’s never going to work!” now looking at me very nervously.
“Oh, give me a few months to work on it, then we’ll see.”
So, we had talked of making THEM a little while back.
Well, since then, I made 2 copies of the body form out of paper mache, and it was time to test out and see if my idea for these things was going to have any merit at all.
See. When you are going about making the yard into a tribute to Spider Woman, you must have to assume the SPIDER portion is going to be making some bit of statement.
From the Steve mummies going to be draped in webs, I wanted something more sinister. Some VICTIMS. More recent victims.
Now, there’s lots of ways to make spider victims out there. And, they involve hanging webbed up corpses in various positions an occasionally animating them.
That would be fine for yards with roofs, or trees to hang things from. NOT for a yard that is one big flat patch o nothin. No, we needed something else.
Back to that olde source of inspiration for me, Guild Wars, for inspiration….and perhaps a new entry to the annual contest…
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| From 2010 Buildup |
The plan was simple. Mutilate some Christmas animated deer. And make little Trick or Treaters to be my victims all done up.
So, Monday night, I went and made a quick test to see how this motor setup is going to work. And, after fiddling with the counterweight a bit, I indeed got it moving just fine. However, before I could grab a video camera, the weight fell off. (what did I really expect from a rock and some quick duct tape?)
And, since I REALLY was not interested in making it look good monday night, just testing the motor, I was frankly ashamed to take a photo of the crappy lookin thing.
But, with rain coming in, it was time to clean it up tonight. And, I snapped a quick one before I did. Yes, it looks like crap. Those are the stretchy webs I have no skill in the least at. The real things, I have a web gun and a web spinner we’ll be using in conjunction to actually make look decent.
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| From 2010 Buildup |
Yes…it looks terrible. And unlike ANYTHING, really.
However.
I come in from cleaning up to find something interesting.
“You break baby cousin Bob!”
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| From 2010 Buildup |
(EVERY skeleton is Bob…since we made…Bob.)
Steve has absolutely FLOWN together. Basing a lot of construction on Bob, but with the added advantage that since Steve is getting some heavy corpsification, I dont need real detailed bone structures. So, we put this up in a matter of 2 short nights.
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| From 2010 Buildup |
I have the mache on a skull and base of this drying now, still need to make some hands, with any luck in some drying times we’ll begin the corpsing this weekend.
Now I have some decisions to make on just how to finish the poor guy. While these are meant to go into the blacklit area, do I want them lit by pin spots and finished in a traditional manner, or shall we pull more from these wonderful Wilfire paints and finish them for blacklit viewing?
