Zombie Dent progress

So this Memorailia's cosplay (as I think I've mentioned) combines my love of zombies with my love of Douglas Adams, in the form of a zombified Arthur Dent from Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy.  I know, Arthur never gets zombified or anything even remotely similar, but it's an idea which I know will bring me a lot of joy on the day.  Granted I've been very slow getting started with this, but I'm finally making some progress.  I picked up a towel from Wilkinsons on Sunday afternoon, ordered a dressing gown from Tesco Direct on Sunday evening, and when it was ready to collect from the store today I also picked up some pyjamas.

So this evening I've started zombifying them. I've got five consistencies of fake blood and some black facepaint, so I've just been going to town.  For now I've just been working on the pyjama top and one side of the towel, tomorrow I'll do the other side of the towel and the pyjama bottoms, and then it just leaves the dressing gown.

The pyjama top was a bit more tedious, as I had to make a good, thick blood smear around the neck and tapering away as it headed down the chest; dribbled blood from where zombie Dent had been feeding.  I started off by thickly smearing some cake blood in, and then sloshing on increasingly thinner blood until I'd got a nice effect going.

The towel I had a lot more fun with :)

The first thing I did (as I didn't want this towel to look brand new) was to brush black Snazaroo facepaint over both sides of it.  Snazaroo is supposed to be applied with a moist sponge, but to give it more of a brushed on look I just wiped the towel directly but lightly over the open pot of facepaint.  It was a bit time-consuming, but I was happy with the outcome, after all I'm sure that Arthur must have got himself a little bit grubby before he caught his first victim.

I didn't use the cake blood on the towel either, as I wanted to get more of a cast-off look, so I went straight down to the liquids.  First of all I poured a little bit of runny blood (very much with the consistency of water) onto my hands and flicked it up and down the length of the towel to give a bit of background gore. Then I squeezed a trail of gel blood across the towel, before folding it in half and rubbing it in. Once that was done I repeated the process with the stage blood (very gooey consistency), and the result can be seen above.

I did one more thing after this photo was taken which I was incredibly pleased with. I took a mouthful of the stage blood (which was tricky, given its thickness!), rinsed it around in my mouth for a few seconds, and then coughed/spit it out in places across the towel. This gave a pretty incredible spatter effect, which I'll be using more of when I do the other side tomorrow.

 

I'm still undecided about whether to get slippers or not for this costume.  Obviously it adds to the authenticity, but with me dragging my feet around the hall all day it could end up proving painful.

The pyjama bottoms I'll be doing in a similar fashion to the top, but in addition I'll be tearing it a bit around the ankles.

The dressing gown I'll be going to town on a bit. It seems to be a zombie cliche that us walking corpses end up getting singed, so I'll be taking a blowtorch to my gown (out on the safety of the patio!) to give it a bit of charring.  Then it'll be getting a combination of the pj/towel treatments; cake blood, stage blood, cough/spit spatter, the works.  I will feel a bit of regret at this though, as it's turned out to actually be a really comfortable dressing gown!  I may invest in a second one for just lounging around the house.

 

Then of course the final element is the Guide.  I have one I made for my non-zombie Dent, which I'll be using for this.  I was toying with the idea of making a new Guide which simply said "Panic" on the front (in large, friendly letters), but I don't think I'll have the money to do one this side of Memorabilia.

Oh and I've also invested in zombie contact lenses for the first time since I started my zombie career! I've bought a pair of white ones, so I can put a prescription lens in one eye and a white lens in the other. It'll seem weird, but I should get used to it.  Stay tuned for photos in three weeks!

Undead opportunities...

Well I'm still yet to have any inkling of an official start date at the zombie manor house, but the continued effort of the brilliant folks at wish.co.uk to keep me occupied (and well-fed with brains) is continuing to pay dividends.

There's been something in the pipeline for a few weeks now which I've been waiting for confirmation on, and today I got it.  Now I haven't been told not to discuss/blog about it, but just to be on the safe side I'm going to keep it close to the chest.  So consider this a "watch this space" notification, but hopefully in just under 3 weeks time I'll have something exciting to update you with.

 

In the meantime, keep calm and zombie on...

Fishy Friends: 12 months on

Well this weekend marks 12 months since my little marine aquarium first had life introduced to it.  It's been something of a rollercoaster, mainly hopping between wonder and heartache, but I haven't regretted having it for a moment.  Here's how my tank as a whole is looking today...

The only thing about a full tank shot is that you can't really see any of the critters living in there, so let me give you a lineup.  As of today my tank contains:

• 2 black hermit crabs
• 1 red hermit crab
• 1 stripe-legged hermit crab
• 1 emerald crab
• 1 maroon clownfish
• 1 firefish
• 2 blue/green chromis
• 1 green brittle sea star
• 1 sand-sifiting starfish
• 1 coral banded shrimp
• 1 dancer shrimp
• 3 turbo snails
• 1 sand-sifting snail

And a brand new addition to the tank today:

I'm still trying to find out which species of hermit this is, but I've named him Jim and he's an absolutely magnificent specimen.

So overall the tank's doing well. I've sadly lost 3 fish in the last year and a number of invertebrates, but on the whole everything's thriving.  I'm thinking about getting a Coral Beauty at some point in the next couple of months, but at the moment I'm very happy with the way it's looking on the whole, and am looking forward to another 12 months of marine fun :)





Re: Your Brains - A follow up.

Well it looks like I'm back again!  My laptop was virused in August of last year, and seeing as I was broke I wasn't able to take it into a shop to get fixed.  As time wore on I realised that I was pretty damn happy being unable to spend my evenings dawdling about on the internet, so by the time I actually had the money to sort the problem I decided not to bother.  So I have been computer free for over 6 months and I think it's been a very good experience.

Anyways, I'm obviously up and running again now, so time to update the world on the biggest thing to happen in my life last year.

Remember the zombie audition I went to last June?  If not then my last blog entry before meltdown will explain all.  After several weeks of hearing nothing about it, I eventually gave up hope and carried on about my normal business.  It was something I would have loved to have won, but wasn't really expecting anything to come of it.  Then there was a sudden announcement... "sorry we've taken so long to decide, but we will have chosen a winner by the end of next week!"

Huzzah! There was still hope (if only a fool's hope).

But then next week came and went, and still there was no word.  Once again I shrugged, was thankful for the fun of the audition itself, and went on with my non-zombie life.  My social life took unexpected turns, my job grew stressful, I decided to get a new tattoo in October.  I love my ink, and a new one was long overdue.

And this was where the proverbial ball began to roll...

While on the way to the tattooist my phone rang. It wasn't a number I recognised and I didn't want to be late for my new ink, so I let it go to voicemail.  I went into the studio, sat down, spent a couple of hours under the needle, and headed off to rest my rather sore shoulder.  Once home and relaxing I checked my voicemails.  "Hi Rob, it's Laura from Wish.co.uk..."

That's right. The zombie people. 500 people competed for the role of Britain's Next Top Zombie, and I'm the one who walked away with the title.

HELL.

YEAH.

From there things have stumbled a little, but my zombie life (or unlife) is actually starting to move now.  I still haven't started at the Zombie Manor House in Warrington (which is where the audition was actually for), and a scheduled apppearence on ITV's This Morning on Halloween fell through at the last minute, but a couple of weeks ago I was actually called in for some promo work on the new Nicholas Hoult film Warm Bodies.

So there I am in the blue shirt behind with the gaping head and cheek wounds.  This was a fantastic trip down to London, and my first paid zombie work, which means I am now officially a professional zombie!

Hopefully the Manor House job will start soon as I can't wait to get started, but in the meantime the lovely people at Wish are trying to find things to keep me occupied.

Well that's my big update.  I am Britain's Next Top Zombie, and I'm loving the lifestyle that comes with it.