Alien Autopsy & Cryochamber

 
 
 

First, a simple armature was created by taping together paper towel and toilet roll tubes.  The head was a $2 styrofoam wig stand; the back and top of the head were built up with layers of newspaper and tape to simulate the larger alien cranium, then the entire head was attached to the cardboard roll "neck" and "shoulder" with masses of masking tape.  Wire clothes hangers were bent into the rough shape of feet and hands and secured to the arms and legs.  Over all this, a shell of 1" chicken wire was attached.  Essentially, long pieces of the chicken wire were rolled around the cardboard appendages and secured.  A larger segment of wire was rolled up to form the body and was secured to the arms and legs by simply bending over the clipped edges of the wire.  Because this was going to be an autopsy, the front of the chest was then clipped open in an "I"-shape, and the flaps bent back against the outside of the chest.  I was concerned about the chest collapsing while the papier-mache and Monster Mud coating dried, so I stuffed the cavity with a bag of inflated balloons.  The wire was so stiff, this ended up not even being necessary.  
  Here, you see the alien after two layers of papier-mache.  The mixture I used was roughly 1 cup of flour to 4 cups of water, plus a generous squirt of Elmer's Glue.  Mix well, dip in your newspaper strips and go to it!  It's just like you remember in kindergarten.  Here in Southern California, it took about a day for both layers to dry completely.  And since no one would ever see the underside ot the  alien's body cavity, I didn't bother to cover it.
I originally planned on finishing off the alien with a coat of Monster Mud, a substance concocted by the folks at Terror Syndicate.  Well, the fabric I tried to use (muslin) ended up being far too densely woven and it just wouldn't soak up enough of the mud to really adhere to the alien body.  So I improvised.  I put on some disposable plastic gloves and simply smeared handfuls of the gray gunk all over the body.  It dried very quickly, despite the thick layer I put over the papier-mache.  I'm sure this was because there was no fabric to dry.  The unexpected benefit of this technique was that the mud dried in an uneven, mottled pattern and made the "skin" look quite deathly.  Once dried, a lightly spray-painted the sides of the chest cavity with black paint to simulate the look of ribs.  For the eyes, I used the plastic alien eyes from the Living Faces Alien mask (I spraypainted the inside black first, to ensure that you couldn't see through the plastic) and just glued them on in the appropriate spot.  For the party, the alien was laid out on the "autopsy" table and it's chest cavity filled with a tray of guacamole dip.  YUM!  
  Compared to the autopsy, the cryochamber was a breeze.  Unfortunately, I can't tell you what the tube was made out of.  It was this strange, thin, metallic-coated cardboard that a friend of mine who's a signmaker donated.  This was rolled up and stuck into a hole cut into a cardboard box that was painted matte black.  A hole was cut in the tube and the plastic top from a store-bought pumpkin pie was taped into it from behind.  The alien head from a cheesy, storebought Halloween decoration was suspended from the top of the tube from a thick cardboard lid.  The head lit up, but flashed on and off.  We hid another light inside the tube so that you could always see the head.  The control panel was simply a stack of cardboard boxes painted black, with blinking Christmas lights stuck in from behind.  The tube you see is a hose I confiscated from my vacuum cleaner!

I couldn't have gotten the party off the ground this year without the help of my fiance Thunder, and the following terrific friends:

Annie Basilio
John Lee
Suni Sidhu
Andrea Snyder

Thanks, guys.