A Mini Make-and-Take

Being as our local NJ/PA Make & Take group could not meet this month because of a series of misfortunes that occurred late in the month, NoahFentz and I got together again to hold our own little make and take session, working on props that might not have gotten done for awhile otherwise.

Noah has been steadily adding to his creepy family that inhabits appropriately enough his award-winning basement walk-thru haunt called "The Creepy House Next Door," alternatively known as Katzper's Haunt. I can't even come up with one name for my haunt and his has two! Guess that's why he wins awards.

His latest addition is Billie, which you can see if you check out his wighead tutorial in The Workshop section of his website. You'll actually see the entire creepy family there and don't forget to hit the link at the bottom for the family photo shoot (sans Billie). The one up above is perhaps one of my favorite groups shots of the family.

Like Pumpkinrot and some of the other great haunters and artists out there, NoahFentz's genius doesn't lay in the really cool props he builds (though you can't argue with the artistry of what they create), but rather it comes down to the photography of those props. Pumpkinrot's corpses are cool indeed, but photographing them at an abandoned factory or placing (and leaving!) one in a swamp just takes the concept of prop building to a whole other level.

I'd say NoahFentz's haunt has won awards not only because of the very cool basement haunt he has created (and is able to leave up all year 'round), but because his videos of the haunt are shot so well.

But Billie doesn't have a body yet, so Noah's goal was to start creating the PVC form to do that.

My goal was to hijack Noah's time and focus on learning how to do a latex skull mold (disregarding the fact that The Workshop has a complete step-by-step tutorial on doing this). I'm a hands-on kind of person and if I can see the process up close and personal I can usually internalize the whole thing and replicate it myself later on.

With the 2011 Home Haunter DVD Collection playing in the background (I am so getting me a set this week!), I monopolized Noah's time to showing me how to first prepare the base skull for the latex processing then applying the latex itself. It was actually very quick, so we probably spent more time again talking about haunters and Halloween than working, but that's a great time anyway.

This morning though I applied the first layer of gauze over the two layers of latex I applied yesterday and it's only just starting to look like the molds Noah has at his house. So after a combination of another 7-8 layers of latex and gauze I should be able to start casting my own plaster of paris skulls and using them for my haunt.