Zombie Barbie

You thought I was done mutilating Barbies after Cthulhu didn't you?

Yeah, me too.

But here we are again, with something a bit cliched perhaps but also an excuse to use all my learned knowledge from the few years of being in a Halloween club.

So let's get started with the "How to Make your own Zombie Barbie and save."


It began, as all unholy acts do, with a trip to WalMart. There were a lot of various Barbies with weird things already adhered to their midsection as they proclaimed themselves princess of the ballet and Grand Wizard of the Empire but I needed a simple one with as little clothing as possible so I'd have one hell of a challenge on my hands.

Enter Barbie's only Black Friend. She was on clearance along with Ken (Barbie's only gay friend). Let the games begin.

The first thing I did was take an exacto blade to her face and chop up her jaw and remove an eye. I then proceeded to do something you must never ever EVER attempt.

I gave Barbie a jawbone.

Sure it looks cool but you have no idea how it destroyed my mind, turning me into a hollow shell of what I once was weeping regularly into the corner about lobsters. (Note, your choice of crustacean may change)

But you still want to know how, don't you? Fine. Take polymer clay, carefully attempt to measure how to fit it inside. Fail miserably. Take a vague guess and using dentist tools etch out teeth.

Bake.

Now attempt to pop open Barbie's face while inserting your freakishly modeled teeth cursing to every god you can think of and creating a few new ones for good measure.

Eventually I broke down and got out the industrial epoxy. This is the shit that you have to mix together and will be making an appearance later. I didn't want to coat her entire face in it but I had no choice, the teeth kept trying to migrate away from their designated hole.

A combination of gravity, sheer will power and threats with a sand blaster finally got them to stay in place.

You'll probably also notice her motley skin. That's courtesy of a dremel which I also used for unholy deeds. Don't worry, you'll see.

I chopped out sections of her arm, her leg, and her guts. The midsection and leg I then filled with latexed paper towels to give some depth and then added bones/intestines made out of polymer clay again. This worked slightly better than the teeth but not by much, stupid crayfish.

You can also see that I'd etched out some ribs with the dremel oh and stupidly started latexing.

For anyone who really wants to try this madness this is where I get my latex by the gallon. And that link should help to explain why I am the way that I am.

It keeps fairly well, though I'm always reconstituting it with water when it starts to get too thick (which happened midway through ZomBarbie).

Anyway, I had an epiphany to make ZomBarbie's undeath easier and painted her skin red BEFORE latexing.

Why am I suddenly hungry for steak?

The hope was that doing a bit of work ahead of time will save on painting problems later. I honestly have no idea if it helped or not. I always have painting problems.

All the fun parts are done, now to get down to the bones of slowly, dangerously adding scraps of latex coated paper towel to her skin.

I honest to cheese used a set of dental picks to carefully shred the edges and press it in to place. The biggest problem with latex is you get it on your warm fingers, it hardens and is soon sticking all over the place. But with tools you only have to deal with that problem about 10% of the time.

Seriously, if you're going to try this get dental picks. Life and madness saver.

I did her in a lot of stages, far more than Cthulhu. It was a lot of waiting for one section to dry, putting on a few more, rinse, repeat. Beat back the unholy horde.

Is she latexed to your happy specifications? Good, now to break out the paint. I started with a glossy brown (I think it was called Maple Syrup because we must name every brown after some food) and coated her in it.

Then, for the mottled and undead look I got to use, I swear this is true, Santa's Flesh color. I thinned it with water and mooshed it around and it gave the perfect look of "Dear God What Is That?!"

Then there was a lot of shading with black, some more browns, I brought out my fake ribs and collar bone with a white. Etc. etc. All boring stuff.

The final touch was adding the blood. A fun trick I learned with my giant wooden sword to create permanent blood pools is to use that 5 minute epoxy. Just swirl it together with a toothpick, add a few drops of red dye or paint and gloop it all over whatever you want to look horrifying. It'll harden, be goopy looking, but also eerily reflective.

Anyway, that out to do it. Now we have ZomBarbie, easy peasy.

I had a few false starts with her hair. I tried Bleaching it but that went nowhere, so while it was still sopping wet I took our heat gun to it (Oh yeah, I own a heat gun, he he he). That melted her hair into a nice mottled mess so it was no longer a creepy shiny plastic on top of undead flesh.

I went a bit crazy on the back and created a spine with the latex  even though it's completely covered by her hair. Oh well, I know it's there.

A few skin pictures.

And that is the birth and undeath of ZomBarbie. It's okay if you think she looks terrible, she's supposed to.

What's the point of having two horrific monsters in doll form if not to pose them together?