Creating Frankenstein's Monster

rachamuffin
Aug 6, 2015
2 min read

I'm a massive fan of horror movies, as I'm sure you've gathered by now. So I wanted to make something that gave a nod to one of the all-time classics "Frankenstein."

My favourite actor who took on the role of Frankenstein's Monster in 1931 is Boris Karlofff. I think he played the role perfectly and I have a lot of love for his character.

So I began with a quick sketch of what I would like my monster to look like. Then I created a foam armature to begin building onto. After many careful hours of sculpting he began to look a bit like this-

As I was working to a deadline, I didn't manage to get as much texture onto the sculpt as I would have liked. So I worked until I was happy with it and then started to prepare Frankie to be moulded.

I used a metal shim to prepare him for his new Fibreglass jacket and got to work making the mould.

I had a few issues with the mould locking shut around his ears, so I knew I had a finite number of attempts to cast this guy before the mould split, so I got to work straight away.

As the old saying goes- third time lucky! On the third attempt I managed to pull a lovely clean cast out of the mould.

Then I started hair punching. Hair punching takes a while, but is incredibly therapeutic. I even modified an ordinary sewing needle and made a handle for it to make life easier. Once I had hair punched the edges I applied a wig to the crown of his head.

And here he is! I cast him some eyes, painted them and then varnished them so that they would look reaslistic and styled his hair so that he would look suitably bedraggled.

He's not a perfect likeness of Mr Karloff, but he's a lovely Frankenstein's Monster. I would have loved to have had more time to complete him!