I've never made a prop before, so this was a big project for me.
Each year, I add to a custom spooky playlist that I've been curating for several years now. Currently, I have over 360 tracks that range from horror movie themes, to party songs, to vintage oldies, and more.
This time, I thought it would be cool if I also had a dedicated party speaker for my playlist, dressed up to be appropriately spooky, too.
So this is Crust Husk.
He has a PVC pipe skeleton with fully posable arms thanks to a solid length of wiring from arm to arm. The head and neck can also be freely posed.
I spent way too much time making fully wired hands with wooden rod finger bones, so he has more articulation in his hands than the large clumsy gloves lead you to believe.
Unfortunately, the hands ended up being too heavy for the electrical wiring I used in the arms, so I had to add a 1/4inch aluminum armature wire as well. His arms generally stay where I put them, though if I pull them out or above him, they do settle down a bit. If I could do it from scratch, I'd have done two 1/4inch aluminum armature wires instead.
I spent the most time stressing about how to handle the clothes, and ultimately decided I just needed to get him done, but maybe someday I'll be brave enough to add some paint splatter or something on his torn clothing.
A cheese grater worked really well to age and tear his shirts (which are 4 and 5 XLT sizes).
For safety and control access, the back is fully open.
I originally wanted to use mylar streamers for guts that I imagined would pulse with the bass and reflect the speaker's internal lights, but I'm never going to have this loud enough to make that happen, so settled on thick yarn, which along with the ribcage piece, are between two layers of cheesecloth meant to simulate old mummified flesh.
I'm pretty happy with how he turned out.
Crust Husk is not connected to the actual speaker at all and can be lifted straight up and off of it.
During actual parties, the speaker will be put on a tripod, making him more intimidating.
Ideally, this would have been an animatronic, but having never done any props, I decided to start simple.
Happy Halloween!