This week on Sketchy Details @Home, I play along with the dark alien performer challenge on SyFy's Face Off. The results of the challenge were really cool (but totally not what the judges wanted, which is always a riot) and I knew the only way I could step up to the plate was to use radically different materials. You know how I really haunt? With recycled materials. Whether it be new paint on last year's props, renovations to yard sale cast offs, or straight up garbage (cardboard boxes and yard trimmings are my favorite curbside finds), I'd say at least half of my haunts are made with recycled materials. It's why I love papier mache. Newspaper plus homemade glue (flour, water, liquid starch) equals durable building medium. As always, watch the video, then click through for all the behind the scenes shenanigans.
- This could have been a total disaster. I've had this technique backfire so many ways. You can burn a hole through the bottle. You can crack the bottle in half. You can accidentally grab the heat gun and put it in storage for a year. Ahem.
- Those were a giant juice bottle and two Coke bottles. Coke bottles make good claws. It's the bevel in the middle.
- I so rarely use the Gallery Glass now that I often have to break the bottle to use them. Needles only go so far in reopening the tiny spouts. Great product, terrible packaging.
- I swear the bottles glow. It's SO faint that I'm going to really have to cheat in editing on the haunt walkthrough video to show it off. It looks so eerie. It's like pulsating green flesh.
- I often dress my Halloween characters in my clothes. My wardrobe is 60% black, 20% red, 10% orange, and the rest miscellaneous. That's not a joke. I organize my clothes by color and black is over half my wardrobe. I play in too many pits and do too much backstage work not to live in black.
- This is not the last you'll see of the apparating TARDIS shirt this week. I have two more videos to shoot tonight so I can spend tomorrow rushing through all my cosplay props for NYCC. And I do mean all of them. Nothing is done. Stupid sinus infection knocking me out for 4.5 days last week.
For more great video content, subscribe to Sketchy Details @YouTube. It's going to be convention/Halloween central for the forseeable future. It's awesome.