The Death of Innocence...
There comes a time in each young child's life where their innocence is lost. It might be from being bullied by an older sibling, or the destructive revelation that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are not real. At other times, a child is brutally beaten by a drunken parent, or they endure something worst that no child or adult should ever have to face in their lives.
In the witching hour, late at night, the "Death of Innocence" sneaks into the rooms of these young children, and stealing away their dolls....a symbol of their innocence, and in a peverse cruel manner, ends the joy that creature brings to their child. This reminds me of when my parents tossed out my toys. I would see them mangled in weird positions trapped in a plastic trash bag...sitting there in the driveway pleading for rescue from a dreadful fate. I rescue them if I could, but I could not save them all.
The new Dollman Suit is titled, "the Death of Innocence". It is the embodiment of this reaper of joyful toys...the Death of Innocence. It's purpose, to calmly roam the Earth, to entice young dolls into its grasp, and then to slowly skin them alive, and sew their flesh onto its suit...it is not a site for the young.
This year...the suit costed me much of early October. I didn't keep track of time, but it seemed to go much faster than I planned. There's almost no last minute rush to finish the costume.
I started with the coat...handsewn doll flesh coat. It's a bit heavy, but I believe well worth carrying the weight around. I only regret that I didn't have a "dummy model" to actually plan out a better design. I also wished I had placed more "full-bodied" dolls (inards and all) on the upper body as opposed to the lower body. Mmore weight up top allowed for less strain on the soul.
To adorn the head, I scrapped the Russian hat with small dolls idea and instead went something along the lines of Predator...with dreads. I hand braided dreads using twine, yarn, raffia, and othe threads and inserted beads and bells in the hair. I made 100 strands of hair for the head piece. My only regret....not testing the raffia's relationship with water first. Cranberry dyed raffia does NOT do well with water. If it rains, my face will turn a bright pink.
I salvaged the top stick for my standard and recarved a new main pole. This year, I went with a darker red stain for the wood and it worked well with the already brighter orange color of the top staff. The staff is adorned with dolls, and bells. I still need to track down the thicker boating rope. Thick rope is VERY expensive, and I don't think I'll make any additional purchases. This suit also costed quite a bit in materials. The staff is about eight feet tall with a teddy head on top.
Frills...there are many doll carcasses with their bodies impaled on hooks. I had to carve plastic hooks from plexiglass (kinda expensive if you think about it) to make sure that they were safer to use. I always ran into problems with chipped paint, so this year I varnished the painted pieces. I had a hard time painting the chains...make them gunmetal/silver. However, white based plastic chains are a pain, but black was not readily available. I had to finally remove from of the inards from the dolls to lighten the load.
This year, I also made boots...well, more like leggings. An old pair of shoes are now fuzzy. Hehe. But I also made leggings with more doll flesh and a number of belts. At the least, later I can recover the belt pieces and recyle them if necessary.
A bandolier of dolls (kinda like boyscout merit badges) also adorn the suit. I hope I made it to the right size, but now I can make stuff like that...which is kinda cool. This sentence makes NO sense at all huh? Further, I added an extra layer of doll flesh, a thinner layer to lay over the shoulder. This was kinda an offshoot from the Rugman suit that had a number of extra rug that were not tied to the suit but rather hung loosely from the shoulders.
I also made a few extra pieces for an assistant. A teddy bear head piece, an extra staff, and well, a thin strip of faux wolf fur.
Should be interesting. I'm doing a test run this Friday. Pictures to ensue.
Fox | 
