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I want to give full credit to SpookyBlue, whose design I followed here. Spook has a far better tutorial than I will cover here. This will be something of a quick overview, complete with my beginner's mistakes.
I put on my thick gardening gloves and some eye protection and wrestled the chicken wire head into a roughly spherical shape. As I said before, there were a few spots in Stewie's build where I didn't quite follow the directions exactly, and this was the start. Stewie's head wound up more football-shaped than round, hence the name Stewie. Oh, well. As I said in a previous entry, I'll fix it in post. I took a few feet of 3/4" PVC pipe, drilled a hole through the pipe towards the top (leaving space to attach a stalk later) and one farther down the pipe so I could wire the chicken wire "sphere," now reinforced with duct tape, to the pipe. If I had realized at the time that I was building Stewie larger from the start, I would have chosen a thicker pipe to support the weight. I did mention SpookyBlue's tutorial was better than this one, right? We also wired a light socket with an orange fluorescent light bulb I had picked up at Walgreen's into his head for an evil flaming effect later.
At this point I rolled up more chicken wire into tubes to form breastbone and ribs, drilling holes
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This was truly where I mixed up Spook's instructions and made the ribs way too large. In addition, the way I placed Stewie's head on the pipe (looking for a relatively good spot for his face later on), and placed his ribs created forward-heaviness as the project went on and I added more elements. If I had thought about it, I would have wrapped the ribs more towards his back.
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Up to this point, Stewie had been small enough to be supported by a clamp on my workbench. Now I needed to be able to move around him as I started his layers of papier mache. I asked for my husband's input on the issue, and he came up with the idea for a bucket with a post set in cement. I got 1" PVC with the idea of sliding the 3/4" inside, but had to go back to Lowe's and get a coupler to make it work. I added wheels to the bottom before the concrete was poured, so I could move it around easier by myself.
Later, as Stewie's rapid weight gain put him in danger of face-planting almost daily, we got a galvanized tub, a 1 1/2" galvanized pipe, and a 50lb bag of concrete. The tub spread the weight out nicely and gave him a more stable platform.
I was ready to start the first layer of papier mache. For people who just want to knock out a prop fast, this is not for you. This takes time and patience, and if you focus on what you're doing, you can achieve a sort of relaxing, Zen-like state. This
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After I applied three layers of newspaper strips to Stewie's head and body, I cut out his eyes and mouth, going for a really big, evil, toothy grin. Then I started with real papier mache. This is an art form, and since it was my first time, there was a learning curve involved. I
soon got the hang of it, doing my best to keep the mixture on the dry side. It took me a couple of days to work out where I wanted ridges and the details for his teeth, but once I had a clear picture in my head, it was pretty easy. I also used rolled-up newspaper to form ridges and duct-taped them to Stewie's head.
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I made sure to cut an access hatch in the back of his head so I could change the light bulb when needed. I also made sure to continue the ridges and details I had started on the front to the back, so that he'd look finished on all sides.
More tomorrow!
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