Dummies

I had two dummy-ish figures for Halloween, but both were somewhat thrown together hastily and not really up to the quality or realistic-ness that I had in mind. The Frankenstein I made was stuffed with newspapers, and I had to tie him into the cardboard coffin with fishing line to get him to pose properly. The Creepy Guy was simply hung on a hanger, and while he was an inexpensive figure to create, he didn't live up to his potential in my opinion. I really wanted poseable, life-size, realistic looking dummies, something that I could put out in the yard amongst the tombstones and other ghouls.

The Grim Reaper I bought for Halloween is based on a PVC pipe frame. You can move the arms, legs, hands, elbows, shoulders, etc, at the joints, which allows for flexibility and poseability. This is exactly what I wanted for my Monster Dummies. I had also noticed a few other folks about the web that had used PVC pipe for the frames for various monsters and dummies, so it became clear to me that using the PVC to create a poseable frame was the best way to proceed. PVC pipe is relatively inexpensive, easy to find, it is light weight, and easy to cut and shape. So PVC it was.

Originally, I intended to just re-create the Frankenstein and Creepy Guy. But then I discovered a very cool, realistic looking Mummy mask, based on the original Mummy movie, and I managed to acquire it cheap on ebay. Once I had the mask, which is rather large, I had to plan on creating the dummy to go along with it. Then when I decided on creating the Guillotine, I also decided to create an Executioner, which had to be a dummy as well. At this point the dummy total was four. However, my wife discovered a great Vampire mask at the Halloween USA store, which strongly resembled Dracula from the "Bram Stroker's Dracula" movie. After much discussion, the dummy total was upped to five to include the Vampire. Suddenly I had a whole lotta work to do!

Since four of the five dummies had to be rather large, I decided to base those four directly on the frame for the Grim Reaper. The Mummy and Vampire would be the tallest, at around the 7 foot height of the Reaper, and the Frankenstein and Executioner dummies would come in right around the 6 foot height. A simple scale down for those two would do fine for those. The Creepy Guy would have it's own dimensions for which I had to come up with on my own. I wanted the Creepy Guy to be a right around 5 foot tall, a smaller butler-type figure, with a kind of lurking, hunch-back look.

Finally, as a side note, I had originally intended to make at least one of the Monster Dummies move somehow. Either the head, or arms. Something to scare folks even more as they took a closer look at the display. I looked into both electrical motors and small servos like those used in remote control racing cars. I was leaning toward the servos, and did a bit of research into the field. I found that you can get circuit boards which program the servos to repeat specific motions, and was considering this as an option. Either that, or a remote control sender/receiver kit that would allow me to move the arms or heads by remote. In the end, I was not sure that the servos would be strong enough to move the body pieces and put that idea on hold. In addition, the prices on the equipment are rather high, far more than what I wanted to put into the project. However, this past Christmas I noticed these light up reindeer that move their necks up and down, back and forth. These movements are controlled by small electric motors, and I am considering motors like these. The downside to this type of motor is that it simply repeats the same motion back and forth, with no control. We shall see what I can make from them!

So, now on to the details. The construction of the Monster Dummies can be broken down into two separate areas: Constructing the Frame, and Fleshing out the Bodies. I have separated these two steps in the following pages in order to make the information a bit more manageable. Also, I have created a page for each of the Monster Dummies, for a look at the finished product. I hope these instructions help you in creating your own Monster Dummies, or if you are just looking, enjoy the show!

The Dr. Frankenstein Phase:

Part 1: Constructing the Frame

The Grim Reaper stands about 7 feet tall, which is about the height I needed for the biggest of my Monster Dummies. I based the frames for the two tallest dummies directly on the measurements from the Grim Reaper, and simply scaled back a bit for the two 6 footers. I followed the same basic structure of the pipes and joint pieces the Reaper had, as I was basically looking for the same poseability the Reaper gave me. The reaper is not made of the same PVC pipes you can find at the hardware store, the makers manufactured their own plastic pipes and joints. But all the joints and connectors are basically the same PVC pipe joints and connectors that can be found at the hardware store. These pieces include the pipe, 45° elbows, 90° elbows, straight connector pieces, and a 'T' connector. I also used a 4-way connector for the Creepy Guy construction.

Starting from the ground up: The frame has two straight leg pieces of 40 inches in length. These are attached at the waist to two 'T' connectors which also attach to a cross piece of 13 inches in length. Going up, the torso pieces attach to the other side of the waist 'T' connectors, these are 20 inches in length. The torso pieces attach to another 'T' connector at the top. A 5 inch shoulder piece attach to these connectors on the inside body side. These two shoulder pieces attach to another 'T' connector at the neck area, which has a 6 inch neck piece to hold the head. On the outside of the shoulder pieces, there is a short 1.5 inch connector piece which attaches to a 90° elbow. Attached to these elbows are 12 inch upper arm pieces, which join to a 45° elbow at the elbow area, and another 12 inch forearm piece to finish off the arm. Kinda complicated, but the linked diagram gives a visual of how it all goes together. For the Frankenstein and Executioner dummies, I simply scaled back the lengths of the upper and lower arm pieces by 1 inch, the shoulder pieces by 1/2 inch each, the torso by 6 inches, and the legs by 6 inches.

Once I had the frames posed the way I wanted them, I screwed all the connectors and joints to the pipe pieces with 1/2 inch drywall screws. The pipes on slide in so far in the joints and connector pieces, so the screws had to go in close to the ends of these pieces. WARNING! Be careful while doing this, as the screws tend to slide off the smooth surface of the joint and connector pieces. If you aren't paying attention, you could get a drywall screw stuck in your hand. I posed my dummies with straight legs, but I'm sure a bent kneed dummy could be created with elbow joints, as long as the whole thing balanced out and was stable while standing.

With the frame put together, I had the problem of how to stand these things up by themselves without falling over. The Grim Reaper has custom 'Foot Stakes' which go into the ground and are wide in front and back to stabilize the Reaper. But even with these two stakes, the Reaper still shakes around a bit in the wind and I have to tie it down. I didn't want the Monster Dummies to be visibly tied down, I wanted them to appear life-like, and stand on their own. What to do, what to do?

Part 2: Fleshing out the Bodies

The Grim Reaper is covered by a big black robe, and you can't really tell what its body looks like under that robe. Several of my dummies were going to be clothed, and I needed a way to fill out those clothes to make them look real. I wanted width, bulk, girth, just like a real human. Especially around the shoulders and torso, to give them a strong, muscular look. How to do this?

A few ideas came to mind. The previous year I used newspapers to flesh out the Frankenstein, but I didn't like the lumpiness or the way the newspapers settle. I thought of using foam, like the expanding stuff that you can spray for insulation around foundations, etc. But that stuff is expensive, and I'd need far too much of it. I'm not a special effects expert, I am not experienced in using latex or other materials like several of the display artists around the web. I needed something rather inexpensive, that would easily fill out the frames. I finally settled on Bubble Wrap.The advantage to bubble wrap is that you can tape it with cheap packaging tape to the frame itself, and wrap it around the pipes until the bulk or girth you want has been achieved. It's cheap, and easy to get. I managed to secure a HUGE roll of the stuff off ebay for about $30 shipped. I used about half this roll to wrap all my dummies, and had plenty to spare.

For the arms, I just wrapped the bubble wrap around the pipes, a few layers depending on the girth I wanted. The chest had to be big and full, so I created an empty cavity around the torso by making an 'envelope' of sorts with two big pieces of bubble wrap on each side of the torso, taped together. Inside this envelope, I stuffed newspapers and packing peanuts, whatever filler material I had to take up the space in that torso. This just allowed me to fill in the torso without using excessive amounts of bubble wrap. I also added more bubble wrap to the outsides of the torso in the chest area to fill out the chest. Extra pieces around the shoulders and deltoid areas help to fill out the body area as well. I had a few of these new air pocket bubbles that some online stores like Amazon.com use for shipping, and those worked really well for filling out the chest muscle areas. I also did the 'envelope' thing with the legs, as they had to be thicker than the arms and I didn't want to end up wasting bubble wrap. In general, I just tried to add bubble wrap to simulate muscles and features of a real human body. It takes a bit of trial and error, stuffing the frame, then adding the clothes to check the appearance. The first dummy I stuffed was the Mummy, and that took a few days to do. By the time I got around to the last dummy, the Executioner, I did it in 3 hours. Just takes a bit of practice. And, don't forget to make a stomach and a butt! Pants don't stay up without a butt!

To hold the masks on to the frame, I stuck a foam wig head to the neck pipe, and placed the mask on top of the wig. The Mummy and Vampire mask were a bit large for the wig head, so I had to bubble wrap the foam head to get the masks to fit snugly. The 'T' joint at the neck allowed me to move the head up or down to adjust the pose. I also bubble wrapped the feet for a snugger fit for the boots for Frankenstein and the Executioner.

The Creepy Guy and the Vampire were both clothed in black robes, so all I had to do for these two were pad the shoulders and arms. Wrapping the torsos and legs would just be a waste of time, as no one would ever see the inside of the robes anyway. Padding the shoulders and arms was necessary for width and girth, and life-like appearance of the dummies.

And that's about it. All that's left is dressing the dummies with the desired costume or clothes, and the Monster Dummy is done. A bit of advice, though. It may be necessary to not secure the arms to the frame until the wrapping of the dummy is finished, in order to get the clothes on properly. My pipe connections were tight enough that I didn't need to secure the arms with screws, which made it a lot easier to put on and remove clothing.

Now go and check out the individual dummy pages for the little details that finished each Monster off.