Verti Parker's music box

For Alex Pardee’s most recent show, Vertigo, he asked me to build one of the “props” he’d have displayed along side his new paintings.

When Alex does a solo show, he also writes an insanely detailed story to go along with the theme of the show. For his show “Vertigo”, he had the idea of a Nightmare Hunter that traveled the globe hunting nightmares that terrorized villages. The main character, Verti Parker, uses a custom music box that plays a series of notes which causes the nightmare to materialize. You can read more about the story here: Verti Parker site

Most importantly, we wanted the music box to be realistic and built in a manner that all the components were practical. We sat down and tried to figure out every detail of the box. How would Verti carry it? Is he right handed? What kind of materials does he have to work with? How old is the box? How would he carry it on his expeditions? How would he change the musical notes? We did some simple sketches and quickly decided on a design and size that seemed practical for Verti.

At first I tried looking for pre-made jewelry boxes or music boxes that I could easily deconstruct and use as a starting point to elaborate on. Nothing seemed to work right, and since time and cost were an issue, I decided to buy raw wood and build the entire box myself - this would ensure that the design would be 100% original. I don't have much of a background in woodworking, in fact, my only real experience was when I took Woodshop 1A in junior high - I built a wooden deer and got a C+. But hey, I figured this would be easy, its just a cube, right?

After cutting the initial sides of the box, I started building a cradle for all the exposed gears that would eventually be on the left side of the box. I wanted to have the gears look like they were coming deep from within the box, so I made the cradle about 3” deep and started stacking up clock parts, old door locks and other random brass metal objects. With the interior wood stained dark, it helped the illusion.

I assembled the box, leaving one side open so I could tighten anything that had to be bolted or screwed in from the outside.

I approached each side of the box a little differently. On the right hand side, I used the crank of an old spice grinder. We had the idea that Verti would be able to change different handles out to achieve different sounds.

For the speaker, I used an mason jar lid and a strainer. I painted them black and used Metallic Brass and some sandpaper to give it an older antiqued look. Like the crank, we wanted Verti to be able to change the speakers out.

I scratched some tick marks into the back. We figured that Verti would like to keep track of each nightmare he defeated.

I stuck a clock in the top. The idea was that Verti had to start playing the melody at certain times for an exact duration to lure the nightmare out.

The handle and trigger are, in my opinion, what really transformed the music box into a more of a offensive instrument. Verti is now able to easily aim the box in different directions while controlling the pitch with the trigger.

I also put together the luggage that the box would go into. We figured that the box would travel in its own special suitcase when Verti would go on his hunts. I liked the idea of him being able to assemble the music box - much like a rooftop sniper would put his gun together before a kill. As you can see, my cat approves.

I used an existing piece of luggage and built all the interior compartments. I put tools and spare parts on the lower section of the luggage and tiny jars with “relics” on the inside lid. We liked the idea of Verti taking a souvenir from each of his nightmare adventures. I also hid a mp3 player and speakers in the lining of the luggage that would loop a creepy melody.

And that's it! We built a little stand for the box to sit on, and it all fit together quite nicely.

Mrs. Mannequin

Recently I was asked to be part of a group show in LA called "Best Friends Forever" at the R&R Gallery. The show had a really fun premise; Each artist is given a mannequin to embellish upon, in any medium they prefer.

I was given a female mannequin and almost instantly I had the idea of doing some kind of post-apocalyptic military girl with mechanical limbs and some kind of similar helmet.

I sketched out the idea a few times and no matter how I drew her, it kept looking like a HUGE project, something that would take me months to finish. With only a few weeks to get the entire project completed, I needed help!

Enter Damon Alcorn and Marissa Derengowski. Damon is an all around creative guy who wrote the "Bhart" story in my last book and also helped me make the miniature for Zerofriends's Winter Stalker commercial. And Marissa is an amazing apparel designer who makes tons of custom clothing that has some of the coolest details ever, plus she's very pretty!

The idea called for a bunch of mechanical parts; pipes, tubes, gears, nuts, bolts, metal sheeting, etc. Luckily, one of our friends was talking about how he was planning on donating his car to charity because he hates driving, and loves charity. It took little convincing for us to sway him into letting us gut his car and scrap it for parts.

At first I thought we were just going to remove a few hoses and maybe take the distributor cap off. But after about a dozen cocktails and a few hundred swings of the sledge hammer, we practically took apart the entire car.

Aside from the car, we dismantled: a dish washer, an AC unit, and a couple of VCRs. Each time we took something apart, we'd lay out all the individual parts and try to figure out how each piece would fit onto the overall form of the mannequin. Now it was all about creatively assembling the individual parts together to build up a semi-convincing head and arm. Damon took on the task of making the arm, while I built the head.

For the base of the head I used a metal vase, and attached a bunch of plumbers tape to form somewhat of a skull structure; this made the form of the head extremely strong.

Using sheet metal, I cut up small pieces and attached them along the skull structure to build up more of the exterior surface.

The eyes and mouth were all random pieces that just seemed to fit together perfectly.

Initially, I was going to sculpt a mouth and teeth on the other side of the helmet, but it just didn't seem to go with the "mechanical" theme that was evolving. So I started attaching tubes on the other side of the face, almost as if part of the helmet had ripped off and exposed her muscle structure to be a web of wires.

Using the existing arm of the mannequin, Damon attached clamps and hoses to the forearm and bicep.

He then started designing and building a hand with fingers that actually had reasonable articulation. He also built the crate that she was attached to.

Meanwhile, Marissa was working on the uniform for our mannequin. She started off with a few articles of clothing; then basically re-cut and re-worked everything. Keeping true to the original concept, she used a variety of different materials to embellish the uniform.

In just about 9 days we got the entire thing completed. I'm super happy with the end result and I couldn't have done it with out the help of Damon and Marissa.

Dave Correia's Mannequin from Babylon Falling on Vimeo.

Let's Make a Model

For those of you who follow Alex Pardee, you probably have seen the Zerofriends commercial: The Winter Stalker. Well, at the end of the commercial, there is an exterior shot of Santa's shack that is actually a miniature that I built. So here is a little behind the scenes of the building process. Enjoy!

A few weeks before shooting, Steven Reedy asked me if I wanted to make a miniature for the new Zerofriends commercial he was planning on directing. I said "Sure....what's a miniature?"

He then told me about his idea for a "Santa/Stalker-esque" story. And at the end it needed a shot of a creepy shack. He basically said "Imagine if Santa lived in the Evil Dead shack." I loved the idea, and after an exchange of overly excited high-fives and hand gestures, I set out to build the miniature.

First, I needed a decent workshop. Alex, being the saint that he is, offered me a room in the Zerofriends slaughterhouse to convert into a temp workshop. I spent a solid day hanging tools, building a workbench, organizing lights and basically making the room comfortable for a few weeks of work.

Before building anything, I needed to do some quick sketches to determine a style we thought would fit the Winter Stalker. After a few conversations, Steven and I decided on a small, rundown, one door, one window shack with some slightly over-exaggerated angles.
Now began the construction. From this point on, I was never really sure what I was doing. I had a very clear vision of how I wanted it to look in the end, but I wasn't exactly sure how to do it. I started building the platform about 30 inches off the ground. This made it easy to work around and would make it ideal for a camera to swing in, if necessary.

I decided to build up a hill behind the shack. There was some initial talk of just doing a flat landscape, then painting a sky and background, but I felt backing the shack up against a mountain rage would add to the seclusion of creepy Santa. Knowing the mountains would have to have some architectural integrity to support small trees and some weight of the fake show, I built a frame and used chicken wire and plaster of paris to create the mountains.

For the shack, I used an old detergent box as the base. I was able to get slightly skewed angles by cutting the box up and taping it back together. The wood paneling was some kind of door slat I found at the hardware store. After a few cocktails I was able to swing my hatchet and produce tons of tiny wood strips that would cover the box.

I bought some 1/8" door skin and hand cut each shingle with a razor blade. I tried a couple of different patterns for the roof, but the one you see here is the one that looked best.

Since the untreated wood was a raw beige color, I had to go in there and "age" it. Acrylics darkened the wood just fine, and it only needed one coat.

The trees were a mixture of clippings I found from around my yard. It was pretty awesome going outside at 2am swinging a hatchet at my landlord's shrubbery. I played with perspective a little by putting the smaller ones in the back and larger ones in the front.

From here it was small details - a north pole, wooden fence, tree stumps, firewood, shovels, frost on the windows, smoking chimney, bucket full of candy canes, a snowman with the zerofriend face...ya know, all the normal things you'd find in Creepy Santa's yard.

I tried a few different methods for the snow - powdered sugar, granulated sugar, salt, asbestos, dandruff. While some tasted better than others, the most believable turned out to be powered plaster. I also learned that you can't just sprinkle fake snow with your pretty little fingers, no, I had to use a strainer so the snow would fall evenly on the model.

Now for the shooting! Director Steven Reedy and DP Chris Saul came over and set the scene. Chris has an excellent eye for lighting and was able to hook up a very convincing moon light. He also rigged the smoke machine with some dry ice for a really cool rolling fog effect.

Here's a little video of us testing some fog.