Q&A: Sentinels

Questions regarding my projects and papier mache regularly fill my mailbox. In an effort to answer these questions and share information some of these questions will be regularly featured on this blog.

Jason wrote:

“What can be used other than the starch bottles ? I just don't use starch.”

Austin wrote:

“Hi, I was reading about how to make the halloween sentinals and i was just wondering what you used for the arms,hands, and collar bones. Thank you.”

The answer to the first question is any object will work to create the body armature for the Sentinels, I used starch bottles because I use liquid starch in my paste but any similiarily size and shaped bottle would work. Items that come to mind would be plastic juice containers, laundry detergent bottles, two liter pop bottles. My only advice would to make sure the container was relatively strong and resistant to crushing.

The arms, hands and collar bones were created from sheets of newspaper rolled into tubes then assembled with hot glue and tape to make the armature. The newspaper rolls were wrapped with masking tape for strength then coated with several layers of strip mache.

When creating the rib cage armatures for my creatures I always reference a photo or illustration of the human skeleton. The rolled tube of newspaper was flattened and bent to create the basic shape for the collarbone.

Fingers were created from small tubes of rolled newspaper and utility wire inserted into each finger.

Each finger was hot glued to a piece of corrugated cardboard cut into the shape of a palm.

Basic shapes all assembled to create the desired form.

The tutorial for the Sentinels can be found here.