It's Andy Fish!

A few years ago I was teaching a class on 3D art, and the final class fell on Halloween night– as the class ran from 5-8 it was the perfect opportunity to create a giant Skull puppet we could walk around the neighborhood.

It took us 2-3 classes to get the skulls design figured out– I remember I stepped back and had them do their initial design which turned out to be a giant flat skull face– no dimensions at all.

Whipping up a smaller scale version I showed them how they could build up plains like when you’re learning portraiture to build up the brows, cheeks and have a working mouth making it a true giant puppet. I did the same thing with the hand design including bendable fingers but time was an issue (each class met for 3 hours) so we ended up using their flat head design for he hands scoring each finger joint so they’d wave as we shook them around on giant sticks.

After the raw cardboard was assembled by using a slot method we covered the entire skull with 3-4 rolls of white duct tape- this would help strengthen the sculpture and offer a level of protection should there be any dampness on the night of our walk.

The kids did 99% of the work and we used large plastic balls for the eyes.

The top of the head was a flat surface which was created by the shelf like brow- looking through the museums collection of found objects we found some several boxes of used CD Roms that were up for grabs and created a sort of “brain” which would hopefully capture the street lights and car headlights during our walk around a three block radius surrounding the museum.

The CDs were individually connected using hot glue and some thin wire that would still allow a bit of movement. On the table you can see that we glued the CDs towards the front of the skull in an arch type of shape for additional strength.

Giving everything a chance to dry and for darkness to fall we crafted a shroud for him and once dry, we carried him down the stairs to the street level.

As per usual with this type of installation it wasn’t long before the police showed up– and they took a few selfies with Skully Boy as we’d dubbed him. The night was slightly wet as you can see so the duct tape did its job of keeping him together.

We got a lot of happy honks from drivers going by and at one point a group of small kids came up to see what he was all about, luckily I had my assistant bring a pumpkin with some candy in it.

A fun night– and one I’ll never forget.

I loved working with Teens and College kids.