Art Day: Dark Crusader

This time around, to you I present:

The Dark Crusader

This is the project that has consumed my life for the past 4 weeks. The latter half though has been a constant non-stop project. I haven't had a day with less than 12 hours at work at all this week. I worked, I ate, and then I worked on the Dark Crusader.

Now he is complete, free to wreak havoc and bring pestilence upon the peasants that lay beneath the heel of his gore-stained boot.

This is a work project I've put together as part of Grande Prairie's Festival of Scarecrows. 40 businesses and artists each got the basic starter set: a 6 foot pole, some wire, some pipe tubing, and some screws and pipe joints.

Before I even learned what the whole ordeal entailed I knew what I wanted to build: A dark knight. He would be life sized and properly proportioned. He would have armor, he would have would have garments, and he would kick ass. Then I found out that this was a competition and a winner would be declared, and also that other radio stations were competing, dining me towards my goal even further.

Here's a series of photos of his various features:
His arms, legs, and torso are supported by a few lengths of 2x4 I screwed together.

Then his bulk and shape was created by balling together paper inside plastic bags. On top of that I strapped thin cardboard from mostly beer cases. On top of that, paper mache.

I'm quite proud of myself for sewing together his gloves. Those were made of some wool gardening gloves I picked up for a couple bucks, and on top of that I stitched some fabric to make a gauntlet, inside is some wire; making his fingers and thumb poseable.

I strung off a few bits of paper mache from a stump, and then painted him a bloody bandaged wound. Here you can see the original colour of the plastic buckets I cut up to make his armour.

This is the only part of the guy that isn't hand made. I picked up this skull for ten bones at a halloween store. It's pretty sick, and adds a real horror aspect to the Dark Crusader.

These stupid boots took me 4 hours to make. I had no idea what i was doing, so being that something that actually looked like a boot came out at the end of it is very surprising.

This is the belt buckle. It fills the only requirement that my gracious employer asked of me before I started this beast: "It has to have the Big Country logo somewhere." So what better place than his buckle?

You can also see here his tabard. This was stitched by me and fellow blogger and coworker Kristi.

Here's the real icing on the cake:

Light up eyes! Ba-boom mo-fo! Suck on that one.
In this photo you can kind of see some of the circuits in his head. It's just a simple LED, switch, and battery. We wanted to rig something amazing up, but the circuit as is does a really slick job.

Before concluding, I have to give thanks to my roommates who put up with this for a week, who helped me attach armour, and do some planning. I can't forget my coworkers either, especially the ones the offices to the immediate left and right of mine. They endured a constant waft of spray-paint that's been hovering around for the past week.

And I pay tribute to the lost braincells who died in the line of duty here. This is because I got quite loopy and probably high from the paint fumes filling my office day in and day out. Yu giys dod a griet jorb.

He's going on display in the Canadian Tire of Grande Prairie from October 1st to 14th, and then gets auctioned off for the Grande Prairie Sunrise Rotary Club. So it's all for a good cause, not just my petty competitive streak. Hopefully there's some sort of large trophy for my forthcoming major victory though.

If I lose, I'll get medieval on someone's ass.