Ethan-Eaten: Homemade Demon-Head

I made a demon appear out of thin air. My kids named him. Here's how you can do the same.

Ever since I discovered the amazing work being done at the Hellizondo Haunt in California, I've had this itch to start making more home-made props. So I did some reading, watched a few online tutorials, and started to work on my very own glow-in-the-dark demon head.

Wait, let me backtrack. To those unaware, Halloween is a pretty big deal around my house. Yes, Halloween 2011 has already passed and yes, it's getting close to Christmas; but none of that is capable of knocking the ghosts and goblins out of this noggin. Even though I'm proud of the haunts I've put together over the years, the hand-made quality of the haunts at Hellizondo left me feeling just a little bit inadequate, and placed a rather sizeable creative burr inside my bonnet.

As I mentioned in my second post about Hellizondo, I recently started work on a home-made prop to be used for Halloween 2012, hopefully the first of many. It's meant to be used in a blacklight room, so I wanted to use fluorescent materials in it's construction, but I wanted it to look good in regular light as well. The end result is Alex. (I let my 5 year old come up with the name, and he doesn't quite yet have the old man's flare for the demonic... yet)

Let's be clear about the following: I am by no means an expert at any of the skills I'm employing below, and most of the 'expertise' comes from other tutorials I saw online. I'll give credit to those tutorials whenever I can. This is just MY step-by step, just in case it's somehow useful to anybody else.

I started off with one of these foam heads you see all over the place. I got mine from Value Village where they had a whole bunch for $2.50 each. I picked up a half dozen and was off to the races.

I used a hot-wire foam cutting kit to butcher the head, carving out a jaw and some sockets for the nose and eyes. Originally I was going to wire the eyes with LED lights, so I carved the eye sockets quite deep, connecting them within the head so the wires could meet. However, when I realized that finding the lights themselves was going to be a bit of a hassle, and that I was going to have to halt the whole sculpture until I found them, I skipped it for this particular prop.

I then got a large block of foam from the art store, split it in half using the hot wire, and drew a curved pattern on one of the two pieces. After the first cut I traced it on to the second half of the block, and repeated. It's a little complicated to describe what I did to give each horn a (mostly) symmetrical lifelike curve, but if anybody is interested in more info, please let me know.

Two more holes were cut in the head and the horns were jammed it extremely snug. It's amazing how strong polystyrene really is. Even without the clay added the structure was really strong, and the horns felt like they'd be really hard to break with bare hands.

I then used bunched up wads of tin foil, secured on with masking tape, to build up the features of the armature. (cheekbones, eyebrow ridges, ridges around the horns, etc. I also lengthened the jaw by rolling up newspaper and wrapping it in tape, making two little jawline extensions. These and the foam bit of jaw were secured to some modelling wire that ran around the edge of the jaw and punctured the head on either side. Maybe 2-3 inches of wire was fed into the foam head left and right, making the jaw quite secure. (again, this foam is strong)

I then made and baked off my glow in the dark teeth, thanks to this great tutorial by Devil's Chariot. After they were done they were removed and set aside until the end of modelling. Unfortunately I don't have pictures of me doing so, but I also sculpted a tongue out of Das air-dry clay, and ears out of Sculpey III. (which had to be baked) Not that I'm recommending these materials per se. I hadn't done sculpture since college, so I just kind of picked up a smorgasbord of materials and tried them all.

Since I wasn't going to do the LED eyes, I found glow-in-the-dark ping-pong balls at Walmart that fit the bill perfectly. I then started sculpting around the armature and eyes, using more techniques from the Hellizondo dude. In this application I used Apoxie Sculpt, which turned out to be my favourite material. It's super easy to mold and create fine detail with, gives you a healthy work-time, doesn't take long to dry, and hardens very strong. Tutorial I found helpful on it's use is here.

When the Apoxie is starting to set up is the perfect time to draw in all these deep crevices in the face. I took the advice of Devil's Chariot and used a rubber tipped brush to add the lines. I then gave the 'wrinkles' more texture by rolling out super thin snakes of clay to layer on top, creating high points to contrast the lows.

After the majority of the face was done I mixed up some Claycrete pulp-paper mache for the horns and back of head.

This is different stuff than the kind of mache you dip newspaper into. The paper pulp is already ground up into the mixture. All you do is add water and start coating. I tried mache here because I wanted to reduce overall weight, especially on the horns, and I thought the mealy texture of the Claycrete might look like bone. (especially after a light sanding) I also used it on the back of the head because it won't be seen often, and using the Claycrete is lighter and cheaper. This guy's tutorial helped me understand how to use it.

Claycrete takes forever to dry, even when given some help by a blow dryer. After a day or two (it really takes that long) I sanded down the horns to make them reasonably smooth, while still leaving some nooks and crannies. Since I'll be using a darker primer I want these crevices to hold on to the darker shade while I dry brushed the white on the smooth areas above. I then went back over the seams between Claycrete and Apoxie with more Apoxie, both to cover the seams (Apoxie can be feathered down to a fine edge, making it great for blending into already dried clay) and to build up the fleshy ridge around the horn.

I then primed the whole thing with a dark grey acrylic spray paint. (sorry, no picture) I could have brushed on gesso but I didn't want the paint to fill in any of the fine details I had worked so hard to sculpt. The spray paint goes right into all the small wrinkles without filling them in. Oh yeah, of course I masked off my ping-pong eyeballs with tape before doing so.

Once dry, it was time for the fun stuff. I already have a huge collection of artist's acrylics, so that's what I used, but if you're not already a painter I'm sure craft level acrylics would be fine. I started by mixing my base flesh tone. I can't remember the exact combination of colours I used to achieve that deep blue, but I know I didn't want to make yet another red demon. I think it was blue, some raw umber, and a touch of a very bright green. Once the skin was all painted I mixed a darker shade for the recessed areas of the face. (eye sockets, under the cheekbones, etc.)

Now here's where it got tricky. Because I wanted the prop to look good in both blacklight AND normal lighting situations, I had to use a neon paint that was at least close to the normal paint on the face. I of course used neon blue, working under a blacklight to experiment with how much and how little I could get away with. You'll have to do the same. The neon paint can be used sparingly, but will leave your sculpture looking almost comically colourful under full light if you're not careful. Atop all this I did a very watered down wash of raw sienna to make it all look dirty.

As for the horns, I kept spongeing and dry brushing gesso and light greys, taking care to let the darker primer show through from the deepest crevices. I then varnished the tar out of them, I'm talking maybe 8 coats, to make the whites and greys look like deep colouration, and to give it a 'bone' look. On one of those varnish coats I mixed in a healthy amount of one of the most flourescent materials you could possibly use under a blacklight. What is that, you ask?

Seriously. Many detergents contain 'bluing agents' which flouresce like crazy under blacklights, but have no colour under white light. For my purposes (and since the professional transparent flourescent paint is $400 a gallon) it worked perfectly.

The varnish is really what makes this look work.

For the mouth I used a few layers of different combinations of reds and flesh tones, and on the tongue more pure reds and browns. I then added just the finest dry-brush application of neon red for the blacklight, and then copious layers of varnish. (giving it that wet look) Then holes were drilled in the clay for the teeth, they were glued in, and then discoloured with a wash of raw sienna.

That was basically it! Here's some pictures, followed by a look at it under blacklights.

And here's an attempt at showing the blacklight effect. I'm sure there's some good way to photograph under these conditions, but it eludes me. The best method I found was to shoot a video.