As you recall, I’m between jobs this week and tickets go on sale this Friday, which means the whole week is dedicated to working on this show in general and finishing the juggling skeletons gag in particular.
Here’s about half of today’s efforts, in terms of hours spent:
Those are the armatures for six skeleton hands, including a PVC pipe cuff (for stabililty and connecting these hands to their respective forearms) and a bunch of carpal bones (the foil balls), five of which will be glued in a ring to each cuff. The bent wire will be fleshed out (boned out?) into metacarpals and phalanges; if I were making a hand with skin, then those loops would not need to reach all the way to the wrist. This wire is way thicker than I needed and I wasted a lot of time working with it—lesson learned. And yes, I know the skeletons only have four fingers.
The other half of today’s efforts doesn’t deserve a picture, but I started covering six balloons in papier mache. These will be the bases for the skulls. They all need plenty more layers before I can pop the balloons, but as they start looking more cranium-like I will share photos.
There are a minimum of five skeletons in this show, and a sixth if I’m feeling adventurous. Two of them pop out from behind tombstones and therefore don’t need bodies and maybe don’t even need hands; the others are out in the open, so they’re more complicated.
In the morning I head back to Home Depot for some more stuff: I’m somehow short on PVC connectors again, I’d like some smaller-gauge wire on hand for the future, and I’m finally buying a heat gun (and a respirator!) so I can get some bend into the PVC pipe spines. Then I can come home and start building the spines, which will also get holes drilled in them for the ribs, which will be made of wire and bunched together at the sternum with another bit of wire, then everything gets bulked up with cardboard and papier mache. Not all of that is in scope for tomorrow, but before the day’s end I’ll also start building the arms and legs (primarily the femurs and humeruseseses): that’s more PVC pipe, bulked out to get that boney shape. I’ll also have help tomorrow. More on that then!
It’s 3am. Bye!