Evil Eyes

OK, so it's been a while, but I'm back in the saddle again! My custody issues are over, and Origins is finally behind me, so I am finally back in the workshop getting back in the swing of things. Before I tackle editing and uploading all the images from my Black Duke project, I thought I would start out with some light lifting and post one of my recent projects from this year's Origins Game Fair.

You may remember from previous posts that I have made several large set pieces for Origins. Namely The B.S.P. and Notorious B.I.C. This year my gaming group, Rogue Cthulhu, was given an exceptionally large room for our gaming needs. In a mad attempt to fill the space, I began working on additional set pieces.

This is Igg. He is a giant flying eyeball.


He was constructed from a 48" vinyl beach ball which was spray painted white and stenciled with an iris. The iris was also spray painted on. In order to keep the paint from sticking to itself while deflated, I dusted the whole thing with cornstarch. It worked, but was very messy.

The eyeball was hoisted up onto a 6.5 foot tall framework of pvc pipe, which was draped with black plastic roll table cover. For a sense of scale, that wall of black plastic sheeting behind him is 8ft. tall. The mouth was made from florescent poster board and taped on place.

The wings were actually from a Cthulhu costume that I had started several years ago, but never finished. I swear that they looked better before transport. I think that they curved a little bit too much in the heat. They were made from foam pool noodles over a pvc frame. The membrane is more plastic roll table covering. The wings are two pieces, designed to be mounted onto a backpack for the costume. For this application, they were simply duck taped to the pvc frame holding up the eyeball.

This is Oook. His twin brother. I whipped out a second pair of wings in just over a day for this project.


I was very pressed for time and resources for this project. They don't look like much (and they aren't), but they filled up the space nicely, and they were only about $10 each to build. The drying time for the ball was the longest time factor. That took several days to get a nice white coat on them. Other than that, It took an hour or so to put together the mouths, and about a day for each pair of wings. I already had some pvc cut to 3ft. and 6in. lengths, so piecing together the frames was nothing at all.

Here they are flanking a table of innocent gamers.

Notorious B.I.C.

The Notorious B.I.C. (Big Inflatable Cthulhu) was created in the summer of 2005 as a replacement for the retired BSP. As with its predecessor, it turned out nothing like the original concept. It began its life as a vintage olive drab nylon army surplus parachute that I purchased off of eBay. I had not seen a real parachute since I had been in kindergarten. I remembered them as being big, but I figured a lot of that was due to the fact that I was very small at the time. Not so. My mother and daughter and I took it out to a parking lot to open it up so I could get a visual idea of how much material I had to work with, and how the seams ran. Holy crap, this thing was HUGE! We couldn't even get it completely opened up, because the wind was starting to take hold of it, and it was easy to see that the three of us were going to have a problem keeping it under control if we got more than a slight breeze. It was nearly dragging us across the parking lot at the smallest gust.

My original design was along the same lines as what the BSP was supposed to have been (which should have been an omen). Actually, it would have looked a lot like my Cthulhu Snowman sculpture. I guess my imagination likes to get it's moneys worth out of a design idea. It was supposed to have a round body, topped by a round head with face tentacles. Then there would be arms and legs, hopefully with fingers and toes this time, attached to the side of the body. Over all, it would have looked a lot like those snowman blow up lawn decorations, but green, and Cthulhu. The body came together fine (which should have been another omen). Actually, the seams of the parachute worked to my advantage. I t was basically a big sphere. I held the seams together with safety pins and installed a large box fan at the rear seam to inflate it while I conceptualized the rest of the build. Once inflated, it filled up the entire basement of my mother's house floor to ceiling. It looked like a giant green pumpkin. I had left an opening at the top for airflow. This would allow air to fill the head segment.

Next I began work on the head. It would have also been basically a sphere, so it should have been easy to make, but there was a problem. Every time I through the next piece of material over the top of the body, expecting the air hole at the top to buoy it up so I could shape it, the whole thing deflated. At most, I figured, I was blocking the air hole, which should have made the thing inflate more. To block that hole should have increased the air pressure inside the body. But, every time, it deflated. I tried it over and over with the same result. This was going to be a problem. How was I going to attach a head and keep the whole thing inflated? After about two days of frustration, my mother made an off handed comment as she passed by to do the laundry. "Why don't you make that the head?", she said.


I'm not the kind of person who can roll with the punches easily. I am loath to revise my design once I figure out what I want. Physics be damned. But after another day of frustration, I had to concede defeat. The deflating problem was not going to go away. I started thinking of ways I could get away with not putting another section on top of this one. That brought me back to what my mother had said. I could put my face tentacles on the body, and make the whole sculpture into a giant Cthulhu head. Not what I originally wanted, but feasible.

Now, I had to add features to this giant green pumpkin, to sell it as a Cthulhu head. I used a marker to sketch out where I wanted things like the eyes and face tentacles to go. I had planned on using darts and pleats (and other improperly named sewing techniques) to create shape. In that vein, I created a sort of pocket that ran horizontally all across the front. This would become the eyebrow. I created it around a bent pool noodle, which would fill out the brow and give a menacing scowl to the eyes. I kept the pool noodle bent to the proper curve by running a piece of string through it's center and tying the ends together to create a bow (as in bow and arrow). The design was still very fluid, so I only safety pinned the brow in place until I got things finalized. I had saved the light up eyeballs from the BSP, and planned on reusing them for this project. All I needed to do was to create a little sculpted pocket for them to rest in.

The face tentacles were a little harder to create than I had expected (isn't everything?). I decided on four large tentacles (just like my snowman sculpture!) that would come straight out of the face at around floor level. Sewing them together was difficult just due to their size. It was very hard to see what I was doing and to keep everything lined up properly. It all just looked like a giant wad of fabric. The outer tentacles were supposed to be larger than the center ones, though they did come out a little larger than I would have liked. They almost look big enough to be arms. One little innovation I snuck in during the sewing stage, was to run a piece of mason line (string) down the length of each tentacle. I'll tell you what it is for shortly. To attach the tentacles, I decided to pin them to the inflated sphere, sew them in place, by hand, then cut holes in the sphere (from the inside) to allow the air to fill the tentacles. At least that part of the plan went off reasonably smoothly, though my hand sewing leaves a lot to be desired.

Once the tentacles were in place,the basic construction was finished, sort of. I did still have to test the eyes. More on that later. So far everything was held together with safety pins, except for the tentacles' seams were sewn and they were sewn to the face. Remember that I said I cut the holes to let air into the tentacles from the inside? the rear seam of the "pumpkin" was also held together with safety pins (lots of them). If I unfastened a few near the bottom, and entered quickly, I could get inside of the thing while it was inflated. AWWWESOOOMMME!!! I get excited by things like that. And remember those strings in the tentacles? Those are for making them move. Once inside, I could tug on those strings and make the tentacles move around. MOOORRRRE AWWWESOOOMMMME! You've got to love being able to mess with people from inside a giant Cthulhu head!

I wasn't sure what kind of fan I was going to use to keep the thing inflated, and I wanted to stay flexible, so I decided to use self stick velcro to seal the back seam. This would allow me to make the opening for the fan as large or small as necessary, and would also allow easy access in case anyone wanted to get inside to work the tentacles. The top and bottom of the sphere (and part of the seam) and the eyebrow pocket are actually still held together with safety pins. I had always intended to sew them up proper, but never got around to it. Hey, they work.


Once basic construction was completed, I deflated the sculpture and drug it out to the garage and re-inflated it for painting. I started with some flat black sprat paint to give it shape and definition. I made large black patches around the eyes to give the illusion of depth. I used florescent green spray paint to give it highlights and the same iridescent sheen that the BSP had under black light. I also used some air brush paint for more subtle details, but honestly, you can't really see them, especially in a dark room.


And now for the eye fiasco. Originally, I intended to have the self contained, battery powered illuminated plastic orbs that I had used on the BSP, sitting in a pocket like fold under the eyebrow. This is basically how they sat in the BSP. It didn't take long to see that plan wouldn't work. The eyes were far too heavy, and actually a little too small for the head. Since weight was the main problem, I decided to construct something to take up the weight. I spent several hours constructing an elaborate wooden stand to hold the eyes from the inside of the head. It was a plywood base, with a 2x4 post coming up from the middle, off of which swung two movable 1x2 arms with steel plates on their tips. I intended to put the stand inside the head, point the arms to where they eyes should be, and have the eyes attached from the outside of the fabric with magnets. A very complicated solution, that worked for crap. Unfortunately, I was out of time. I had to leave for Origins the next day. I would have to somehow fix it on the fly. I was beginning to have BSP flashbacks.

Once on site, I tried again to make the magnet pole-thingy work. It didn't. Even when I could keep it from falling over, it looked like total crap. It actually looked better with no eyes, just the dark sockets. So, that's how I left it for the first few hours. Then, in the midst of my disgust, I had a brain storm. At the moment I thought of it, I thought it was a stupid idea, and that it probably would look terrible, but what was I out to try. I grabbed a spare piece of florescent orange poster board from my supplies (I always come over prepared. Ask anyone). I cut out two large circles, cropped at the top, and with a big old cat's eye slit drawn on in black magic marker. It looked like it could have been made by a fourth grader. I tucked the top edge up under the eyebrow ridge, and secured them to the fabric with a little piece of doubled over duct tape. Holy shit! They looked awesome! And surprisingly, with the black light reflected off the florescent orange, they were about ten times brighter than the light up ones would have been. Even at a distance, with the room lights low, it looked like two very large glowing eyes peering out at you from the corner. I still use those same poster board eyes.

And thus, Notorious B.I.C. came to life. He was an instant sensation. People liked him even better than the BSP. Several people figured out that you can lay on the floor in front of it, with the tentacles over you, and it looks like you are being eaten. People love to have their pictures taken that way. I should charge for it :)

The Big Steaming Pile

The Big Steaming Pile (or BSP for short), was the centerpiece to the Rogue Cthulhu multi-media production I like to call the "Really Big Show", from 2002-2004. It was one of those projects that I despised, but that everyone else seemed to love. Absolutely nothing went right on this build. The construction was a nightmare, and the final product was so far from my original concept as to be unrecognizable. I hated it. I was completely prepared to chuck it in the dumpster before it was ever unveiled. But, I have to admit, the old guy kind of grew on me (like the slime mold that grew on it).

It was my intention to construct one of those vinyl inflatable toys like you see in people's pools. Mine would be in the shape of Great Cthulhu, and would be about 8 feet tall. Of course I had no vinyl, and no experience with this sort of thing, but I got it in my head that it would be easily accomplished with heavy gauge black polyethylene sheeting and one of those hand held heat sealers you use to keep your potato chips fresh. The best laid plans...

I found out several facts, that I had previously not acknowledged, pretty quickly.
Fact #1. I have absolutely no talent for creating and cutting patterns. I guess that semester of Home Econ. I took in 9th grade just wasn't enough to prepare me for the big leagues.
Fact #2. Hand held heat sealers that you see advertised on TV suck! After scouring the internet and paying $20 too much for one, I came to find out just how ineffective and poorly constructed these things are. Getting a perfect air tight seal is very difficult. getting one over the hundred or so feet of seams that I was going to need to construct this monstrosity was impossible.
Fact #3. Polyethylene is porous. It doesn't look like it, or seem like it would be, but it is. Even with a perfectly air tight seal (which I did manage to get a few times on small test pieces), the air will slowly leak out through the pores of the material over time.

What I expected would take me about a day or two turned into five of the longest, most torturous, days of my life. It was hot that summer. Very hot. Like 95-100F hot, which is pretty hellish for Ohio, with the humidity and all. I couldn't work for more than 10 minutes without taking a 15 minute break, and I must have drank a gallon of water per hour while I was working on that thing. After a few hours of experimenting with the heat sealer, it became pretty obvious that my plan was not working. There was no way this thing was going to stay inflated on its own. So, I started looking for other ways to achieve my goal. I didn't like the idea of stuffing it, but what else could I do? Then, I got a stroke of luck. I was cruising through one of my favorite discount stores (Marc's) and I found a vinyl inflatable sofa (love seat) for a couple of bucks. Once inflated, it was about 6 ft. long and about 3-4 ft. wide and deep. It was just the right size and approximately the right shape for the body of Cthulhu. I could stuff it with something inflatable! I scavenged through the pool toys and found a giant (4ft. diameter) beach ball, and several cheap pool rafts.

My new plan was to construct a skin out of the black plastic sheeting and stuff it with the inflatable items. Should be easy, I thought. The hard parts (the air tight seals) were already done for me. but of course, nothing is ever as easy as I think it is going to be.

I continued to use the crappy hand sealer unit, up until the point where it broke. Then I had to switch to contact cement. Since the thing didn't have to hold air any more, it could be made in pieces (and would likely have to be). I had intended for the arms and legs to look like... well, arms and legs. But my limited skill at pattern making was a serious impediment. I ended up making both the arms and legs into tentacles. For those of you who remember my Cthulhu Snowman Sculpture, this is the same problem that plagued me with that project (with predictably, the same result). Actually, the BSP and that sculpture look a lot alike, largely for the same reasons.

The main body was going to be basically, a squarish cylinder. I inflated the sofa, stood it on end, and wrapped it with two or three layers of carpet padding (foam rubber) to even out the shape. Then I wrapped it in the black plastic sheeting. Tada, a rectangular solid. Doesn't look much like Cthulhu, but it's a start. The body would be disassembled and deflated for storage and transport. We used a small shop-vac motor, which was reversible and could be used as a leaf blower, to inflate it on-site.

The legs I decided to stuff with the inflated pool rafts. That sort of worked. However, the legs were an odd shape and far too big for one pool raft each, so, I ended up stuffing the remaining room in the legs with whatever I could find, news paper, packing peanuts, Kraft paper, empty milk jugs, foam rubber,.. anything. I was getting pretty desperate by this point, and didn't care much what it looked like. The legs wouldn't actually be attached to the body. They would just sit next to it, with the thighs pressed up against the hip area. It would look like it was attached. Obviously, these could not be unstuffed or deflated and had to be stored and transported as they were.

The arms were just smaller tentacles. I stuffed those with foam packing peanuts and Kraft paper. They were attached to the body at the shoulder with industrial strength sticky backed Velcro. They would also remain stuffed and sealed for storage and transport.

I made the head into a large sac, with four tentacles coming out of the mouth area. These were stuffed with foam packing peanuts and sealed off from the inside, so the peanuts wouldn't fall out. The rest of the sac, I would stuff with the giant beach ball (which was only about half inflated) to form the head. This would just sit on top of the body and be held in place by a piece of black gaffers tape at the rear. The head needed a lot of on-site finessing to make it look decent. It had no eyes, as I had another special idea in mind for those. I took two 4in. clear plastic globes (designed to be Christmas tree ornaments) and painted them red with translucent paint. Then I wired up a flashlight battery to a couple of AA batteries in a battery clip from Radio Shack. One of these would go in each of the two globes, which could be opened. Once the head was in place and finessed into shape, I would nestle the globes into folds in the plastic at the side of the head. To me, they looked like giant glowing cicada eyes, but they did look kind of cool. The batteries were good for about a day. The eyes weren't actually attached, and the beach ball could be removed and deflated for transport and storage. Only the mouth tentacles remained stuffed.

Of course, most people don't think of Cthulhu as being black, but I had a plan for that as well. I bought a couple of cans of florescent green spray paint, and just let it mist down over the whole thing. In the light, it just gave the black plastic a dusty green tint (though a fairly heavy one), but in the room, with the black lights on, it glowed an eerie green!

If you haven't guessed by now, I named it the Big Steaming Pile because I that's what I thought of it by the time it was finished. I never got a chance to fully assemble it prior to its introduction at Origins in 2002, and I fully expected that it would look so crappy that I would just abort the project during setup, and chuck it in the dumpster. In the full light of day, it looked a lot like an 8ft. tall pile of stuffed garbage bags in a roughly anthropomorphic shape. That wasn't far from the truth. But in the dim interior of the Rogue Cthulhu room, with it's colored floodlights and black lights, and the glowing eyes turned on, it didn't look that bad. Well, it looked bad, but not that bad. Of course, since no one else was doing anything even remotely like this at the con, everyone who came and gawked at it thought it was cool as hell.

In 2003, I made a modification and added some wings. I had always intended for it to have wings, I just didn't have time to make them on the original build, and given how disgusted I was with the whole thing, I considered it a miracle that it got finished at all back then. The wings were a separate piece, that could also be broken down into smaller components for transport and storage. It was constructed mostly of pvc pipe. The part that was visible was made from two 1/2in. pvc pipes, with 45 degree elbows in the middle of each. These were covered with foam pool noodles. The pool noodles were draped with black plastic roll table cloth. The kind they use at parties and wedding receptions. The trailing edge was cut in a scalloped pattern to make it look like the membrane of bat type wing. The two pvc pipes came together in the middle and attached in a T joint, which had screws added to it to keep the joint locked together tight. Then the bottom of the T was joined, with a reducing coupler, to a vertical 2.5in. pvc pipe. That pipe was about 4ft. long and was attached to a plywood base plate that sat behind the BSP.

The BSP was unique among Cthulhu props, in that it came with its own slime. Between seasons, I had to store the thing outdoors under my car port. Every year it would get wet, covered with leaves, infested with spiders, and get more and more mold growing on it. It all added to the authenticity, I thought.

In 2004, I had seen enough of it, and was tired of storing it, hauling it, and repairing it. I vowed to make something better, and to make sure that I didn't rest on my laurels, I vowed that the BSP would not be returning home with me after the show. I had intended to throw it in the dumpster at the convention center, but as my team was tearing down the room, and I was making one quick lap through the dealers hall, some convention attendees, who said they were from Toledo, expressed an interest in taking it home with them. They said they wanted to use it at BashCon, though I don't know if they ever did. We gave it to them, lock stock and barrel. I don't really regret giving it away, but sometimes I do miss the old guy.

UPDATE: OK, so I can't confirm this, but here is what I have been told. The BSP never made it to BashCon. In fact, he never made it home with his new owners. As the story goes, the new owners were on their way home from Origins with the BSP stuffed into their car, damn near filling every available space. On the way home, they got into a car wreck, and from what I am told, the extra cushioning of the BSP stuffed into their car cushioned the impact and may have helped save the driver's life. I don't know if it is true, but it makes a good story, and makes my memories of this big pile of trash bags even more precious.