Village Troll

Finally on deciding this year's theme, it was proposed we would deal with all Halloween's traditional creatures, the demon, the witch, zombie, troll, ghost, werewolf, scarecrow....etc.
And set them in an old Dutch settlement.

And here is the details of the Troll and his kitchen.

Step 1:
This was my second attempt at shaping objects with chicken wire, the first being pumpkins.
I was surprised how easy it was, though I did have an advantage of watching a master at it over the past two years. So due to others schedules I need to get this guy going, so within two hours I managed to shape the guy.
Now this isn't as difficult as people make it out to be. It's like me with drawing, it's very trying to sketch something I haven't seen, even something from head, but if I have an image next to me, and can study it, I'm better at make a close copy of it. Same thing here. Thanks to the work of Brian Froud, I had an image to work with as far as the body goes, which I based on the character of Hoggle from Jim Henson's 'Labyrinth.'





After that was done, I gave a real basic inside frame of wood that reached from his neck down to where the feet would be, it was in the length of two grown-ups legs, and I screwed on 6 inch pieces of wood to simulate feet so that at this stage it could support it's own weight. And placed his 'feet' into a pair of giant boots, that we fortunately had picked up at a thrift store some years prior.

Step 2:
Skin.
We were in a rush, and thing worked out in the end, but if you want to keep it together for a long period, use expanding foam(Great Stuff) on the inside, I haven't used the stuff, but I've seen the result and makes for great reinforcement on things. But it is extra money, and I didn't have it.
Foil seems like a flimsy tool, but it does maintain the shape and cover all the holes of the wire pattern.
You may elect to use one of the following for the 2nd tougher skin, duct tape for a tough sucker or taping paper onto foil(don't recommend but if your restrained on money..), either way you go the next step is paper mache.

Step 3:
Details.
Originally the idea was to get our make-up man to use latex on the head area and build it up with skin and warts, but time was running out, so we decided to paint the face and hide the rest with rags. Under dim lighting noone ever pointed out that it was merely painted, if you did it cheaply just place the figure somewhere with low lighting, candle or fire light and it'll look real.
The trick is really to focus on features, our guy already had real boots, so we also gave him monster gloves, that were store bought previously, if we had gone with latex it would of been more fitting, but like it's been said "time is the fire in which we burn."
We had bought an old man mask for the hair that we were using on our witch, so we just glued some of his white hair around the face and gave him a beard and eye brows.
By chance, I had picked up some eyeball painted and shaped candles that I thought stood out amongst the cheap stuff at the 99 cent store, and boy did they pay off, by just sticking some pens into the back and taping around the eye to give a more lifelike stare these really paid off!
I did paint the pant area brown, and we would've painted the body, but we just ended up covering him with sheets.

Step 4:
Surrounding.
And the only other detail I care to mention is his fireplace.
This was done by finding a massive HDtv screen box in the dumpster of an electronics store(dumpster diving saves money kids) flipping it on its opening, cutting the front open in a stylistic way, painting it black and then drop spots of grey paint around the front and use the brush on them in a circular fashion to create a rock shape.
Firmly and tightly taping a white garbage bag on the inside covering the gap of the new hole and lighting it with an special colored lamp bulb.



Believe it or not, this was the quickest thing that gone done in a record of one day's time.