The Dark Arts

For my best friend's annual Halloween party, I'm opting for a prop driven costume this year. Normally I dress up, though that's always somewhat of an issue. Because I am Teh Fatz Womanz, I have to make my costumes myself, which can get time consuming or expensive or, if I fail to come up with something inspired, lame.  There is also the issue with trying to eat while your face is covered in layers of goo. When I go to a party, I want to eat and drink. I do not want to be eating stage makeup.

So this year, I'm going as the wife of a zombie head. Actually, one of my friends is joining me in this, so I'll be the sisterwife of a zombie head, which is even more subversive and awesome. This is great because I can dress as myself and am only responsible for making sure a zombie head shows up from somewhere.

Enter Headward. I have a picture of him above. Headward started out life as a Styrofoam head that my best friend's son was using as a base for his creature design projects. Headward had reached the level of screwed up that said friend's son cast him aside in order to work on a manikin with less damage. He was just sitting out in their garage on a shelf. When I asked if she had a spare one, he was given to me for my dark purposes.

Headward was covered in many layers of paint and quite a lot of his surface is damaged. I was overjoyed about both. The paint adds an extra layer of funkiness underneath the layer of white spray paint my roommate gave to him. The various bits that have been removed add to the illusion of zombie rot/damage.

I'm really glad about the second part of that, because it means I have to work with what I have. In some ways, this is challenging because I'm not completely in charge of the design. But at the same time, I love that.  When you purposefully go to screw up some head to make  zombie out of it, there are some pretty logical and predictable ways you would do this. The problem is, that means that a lot of zombie look uniform, which isn't how rot/random damage would allow them to really look.

Headward has been a work in progress for several days now. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.