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Spinwitch's 2018 $50 prop

8K views 28 replies 15 participants last post by  Dreadmakr 
#1 · (Edited)
This met my goal of having no cash outlay at all. It was made entirely out of stuff I had hanging around (wire mesh from a defunct animal cage, a skull salvaged from an old broken prop). But for those without such a stash, here would be the price list:
1 roll of half-inch hardware cloth $7.00
1 styrofoam skull $5.00
I package of cheesecloth $1.15
A bunch of random stuff, worth maybe 10 to 50 cents each, say total of $2.00
Handful of zip ties
Few feet of fencing wire
Some masking tape
A couple of sheets of aluminum foil (for padding)
6 inches of pool noodle
Some drinking straws

Several buckets of clay from a roadside ditch Free
Total: $15.15

The armature was made from pieces of hardware cloth, formed and then put together with zip ties. The styrofoam skull was glued to a pool noodle and wired into place. The hands were made by wrapping wire around a jig, putting it together with masking tape. The shape of the hands was enhanced by using aluminum foil for padding and knuckles and drinking straws for tendons, covered with more masking tape.





Then came the fun part. We drove to a place where there's a cut in the dirt road that exposes some natural clay. We scraped it out of a ditch and then had to remove all the leaves, twigs, and other detritus by plopping it into a colander and hitting it with a blast from the hose. The resulting clay/water mix was then set aside to settle, the water poured off, and the clay scooped out to dry.


Finally, it was spread over the armature in several layers, with a day or two in between to let it dry. This was pretty low-quality clay, so the covering is pretty rough. I did spend quite some time on the face to get a smooth surface. The tunic and dreadlocks were made by soaking cheesecloth in a clay slurry and draping into place.

(pictures of the actual prop will be in a following message)
 
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#2 ·
THE WATCHER

Mysterious human (or human like creatures) are sometimes seen in the woods and swamps of North Florida. These being seem curious--lurking at the edge of the woods to look at houses or people, but vanishing as soon as spotted. Some think that this is how the myth of the Two Egg Stump Jumper came to be. Cultural anthropologists think it more likely that these beings are descendants of the Apalachee Indians, who, along with the Spanish from the Mission San Luis, were driven out of the area in 1703 by the invading British. The brief glimpses caught of them seem to show that they smear their skin and hair with the local clay--possible to ward off the numerous biting insects in their swampy habitats. Fortunately, there are enough areas deemed "uninhabitable" by modern developers (and the protected Apalachicola National Forest) they they can continue to live undisturbed, if curious.


 
#8 ·
Holy crap, that is stunning! He looks like something you'd find in an archaeological dig.

Give him an umbrella so he doesn't "melt" when it rains, though.....:jol:
 
#17 ·
He looks fantastic. I'd love to see a more in depth how to.
As you wish.

The body was a tube of hardware cloth--I made some vertical cuts around the waist and bent it in a little to give a bit of shape. The arms and legs were tube of the mesh--slightly overlapped at one end so they were slightly tapered. Then all the bits were put together as tightly as possible with zip ties. I cut and bent the mesh where necessary and sometimes had to splice in another piece. I spend a lot of time kneeling beside him to get the angles of the arms and legs right. He's stuck in the ground with a garden stake--I'm encouraging the vines to grow around that a bit so it doesn't look like he has a stick up his backside :)

Stickier clay would have been nice--but this is Florida and I was lucky to find a clay cut at all (we're near Georgia, which has more clay soil). I tried mixing in some pine shavings (pet bedding) to make cobb (what they use for making clay bricks) but with limited success. So I just had to sort of push handfuls of clay onto the form and build it up in layers.

I covered the skull in the clay, mushing as best I could. I really didn't mess much with it. The nose was a triangle of clay pressed on (I was amazed it didn't fall off when it dried. I filled in the upper part of the eye sockets a bit and put in a suggestion of eyebrows. I cut open the mouth just a little and covered the raw edges with clay.

I wanted a suggestion of clothing; the Spanish bishops wrote about the natives draping themselves in Spanish moss. So I dipped cheesecloth in a wet clay, draped it on, and then spread a bit more clay over it. The hair was made with long strips of cheesecloth, clay dipped and then squeezed into dreadlocks.

And that's about it.
 
#23 ·
You've made a really imaginative prop. I lived in south Florida for 17 years and clay is almost nonexistent. Now I've lived in mid-Georgia for 21 years and believe me I've slipped and fallen in clay all too many times. You are welcome to "harvest" as much as you want from around here!
 
#24 ·
We're close enough to Georgia that we get some clay streaks. But the poor Watcher has been living under plastic for most of the summer--we've been raining EVERY DAY!! (Yep--for six weeks. Kinda getting over it). I've sprayed sealer on him but don't trust it that much.
 
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