Tree Monster Costume Project Idea

 

This Morlock 2001 comic book I had in my collection had always planted into the back of my mind how cool it would be to actually make that plant monster as a costume.

For the precious few who follow my blog I'll give the heads up that I plan on doing just that this coming winter. We are only just getting into our spring now and after completing the Alien Mummy and Sarcophagus I'm already thinking ahead for another cool winter project. Ah hell, I figure it beats sitting in front of a video game all winter, so what the heck. Just like the Alien Sarcophagus it's something I've wanted to do ever since I was a kid.

So I've already started to think about what I want to make it out of, it can't be paper mache like the Alien Mummy and Sarcophagus as it's going to need to have some flexibility being a costume one can wear. So far my thought is along the lines of foam rubber and silicone, lot's and lots of silicone as I know I can get a pretty cool looking tree / bark texture with that.

The chest area looks like quite a mess of almost 'root-like' structures so I can probably use a combination of foam pipe insulation and round weather stripping or seal as that stuff comes in a few different thicknesses which will be perfect for making anything 'root-like.' Most of the main body shape I should be able to fabricate out of sheet foam rubber say one inch thick to give it some good rigidity but still have some flexibility even when coated with silicone spread all over and made to look tree-bark like. I'll probably be using a large toothed plastic comb to spread the silicone onto the foam rubber form and use it to blend in the roots.

So far I'm not sure how I want to do the hands, like if I want to make them much larger than human hands like the illustrations suggest, and if I'm going to go that rout I'll most likely need to make some sort of mechanical hand that can be made to open and close using wires and then fit that into the foam rubber hand like a glove. That will involve some metal work, most likely aluminum which I'm quite capable of doing and best of all it's cheap enough to buy what I need from places like Canadian Tire or Home Depot.

Also not sure yet how to approach the extra tendril-like appendages that look like they come from his sides. Might end up making them move as the arms move, again probably with some sort of cable through a light weight structure that can be manipulated a little, thinking of the way they did the Face Hugger tail in the ALIEN movies as I figure it would work quite well. 

In any event I have the whole summer to gather supplies and think about the details. So keep posted if you are interested on if I actually do it.... we'll see ;)

Alien Artifacts

 

You have to love winter in Manitoba, nothing like our extreme  cold temperatures to keep one indoors. I usually do just that in the winter, practically hibernate and work on stuff indoors and try to stay out of the cold. Well this winter I decided to finally work on something I had been wanting to do for a great many years now and that was an Alien Sarcophagus. Anyone who has known me for a long time may recall me saying from time to time that it was something I had always wanted to do, well I'm not getting any younger I fathomed so it's high time I get cracking on that project.

After the Winnipeg Comic-Con I was feeling pretty inspired to work on some physical art as opposed to work on the computer which I had been somewhat limited too for many years not really having the space to work on anything.... um, dare I say... 'substantial,' it was nice to finally have some room to stretch out and do some good old fashioned hands on traditional art which was something I was missing having been so 'confined' for a good many years. Don't get me wrong, I love working on the computer doing digital art but I do miss getting my hands dirty from time to time. Working on K.I.T.T. for the last ten plus years was nice but it's a very different sort of creativity.

So this winter I REALLY wanted to hunker down and do this long desired project. After creating a simple cheesy looking mummy and six pumpkins for perhaps the next time we take K.I.T.T. to Comic-Con just to decorate our space a little more Halloween - like I right away got into making a dead alien mummy. The work was progressing along nicely and the more I worked on it the more I thought that this would be the perfect time to finally make that Alien Sarcophagus I had always wanted to make. I waited until the mummy was done and then began work on the Sarcophagus beginning of December.

I did a simple test video using the Alien Mummy for my YouTube channel titled 'How to fake a Dead Alien' based off of a video I had seen years ago about a doctor who had shot an alien whilst out walking his dog.

I think the dead Alien Mummy took about half the month to create. The Alien Sarcophagus on the other hand was a good three months to complete. Working on it I ended up having a lot of corrections and frag-ups to fix given my construction materials, working on a budget don't you know ;)

The more I worked on the Sarcophagus the more I kept thinking our dead Alien Mummy needed something, but what? and then it hit me, crashed flying saucer wreckage thrown in just for fun, that's what. so I ended up deciding I'd make 6 pieces of alien wreckage to have bundled up inside of our Sarcophagus entombed along with our dead Alien Mummy... seemed to make sense. My thought being that they might have decided to burry bits of his crashed spaceship along with him, especially if the bits seemed strange to them... it's funny how on projects like this they kind of take on a life of their own and create their own story as you are going along.

Later on as work on both the Alien Sarcophagus and strange UFO debris progressed the more and more I started thinking about doing some sort of recovered UFO video made to look like it was shot on old super 8mm film and had been around for a great many years.

 
  I wanted to shoot the video kind of like one of those reality T.V. shows you see like Paranormal Activity or the Blair Witch Project where upon seeing it you are not sure if it's real or fake. So I worked on the video and made it like a MDK Graphics Presents kind of thing.

In the end after three months of work over our long cold winter it's amazing what you can make with paper Mache and glue, lots and lots of glue and a whole lot of patience ;)

 

  

Alien Mummy (How to fake an alien body)