My Crafty Things: FruitCorso; De Bockereyders (2013)

Like every year I join our building team in constructing a float for the FruitCorso parade.
Floats that are decorated with fruits, vegetables and seeds.

A Photoshop drawing I made from a print screen.

This year we got the design of "De Bockereyders" (The Billy-goat riders) which is an old folklore about a couple of bandits who would steal and rob from the rich people and divide it underneath the poor. At least this was the story we choose, since there are all kinds of different stories about them. Some say they are devil worshippers and they plundered churches and old farm houses while other stories tell the same kind of tale as the witch trials in Salem where innocent people were condemned for crimes they didn't do.

Anyway; as said: Our Bockenreyders are the good guys that acted like the Robin Hoods of their ages.

This year we had 2 designers; The one from last year + another builder. They came up with the idea to build 3 male goats, a captain with a mask and a hooded bandit

The model made by our designer.

We used the bars we already had from last year instead of welding a new low one. In the end this paid off quite well as it sorta disappeared inside the design.

I didn't do any welding this year. Instead I and 2 others were put into the Styrofoam cell to sculpt 2 human heads, 3 goat heads, 12 hooves, 4 hands, 2 boots, 4 horns (one set was made from iron) and 2 feet. This was quite a big task and we got some help from outside. A man who has helped several clubs with their sculptures. He showed up and in no time he finished a face and also did the jaw part of our Captain. Next to that he showed us what we had to change about the goat heads to really make them look like goats (we had a cow, aligator and some sort of rabbit).

From these rough shapes we had to make our finished faces/ heads.

I got the responsibility this year to do the final sculpting on the faces/ heads with plaster.
First I made pictures of what we had, then I used Photoshop to try to draw a better shaped face on it and tried to rebuild the face using plaster.

Before

After

Before

As you can see the end result is quite a change. But in a good way I might say.

One thing we did different this year were the eyes.

Normally we sculpt the eyes at the same time as the face and decorate them with seeds just like everything else, but I asked if I was allowed to make "real" eyes. I made a prototype from transparent globes, painted from the inside out. The designers really liked what I had created and got to make a set of brown and red eyes.

A transparant ball you can buy at most craft shops.

Finished brown eyes; 14 cm

Finished red eyes; 16 cm

Because we don't want everyone to be making these globes, I don't do an online step by step tutorial. But if you're really interested and want to make them f.e. Halloween, just send me a message and I'll send some of the pictures I made during the process.

They were covered up with plastic foil to prevent damage during the build. In the end that was cut off and the eyes were nice and shiney.

My next task was to design the faces. I worked together with the designers on this. And in the end they had enough faith in me to let me do the whole captains face the way I'd like to do it.
And so I did:

Painting

Adding seeds

Finishing the mask using: Blue Lupines,
Black pumpkin seeds, Black beans, Grass seeds,
Melon seeds and Tapioca.

Painted the lower half and added shade with brown beans.

Because our float was too big to fit through the door and viaducts, there had to be some break points inserted which could be lifted and lowered using hydraulics.