So I worked really hard on this pumpkin carving...mostly just to see if I could pull it off. I could point to all kinds of things that went horribly wrong, including how the whole face fell out on Sunday afternoon (bummer, I wanted to light it up again!). Plenty of things weren't quite how I'd planned, but it still turned out pretty cool.Because one person asked and because I think it would be cool to preserve this information for posterity, I'll go into some details about this award-winning carving. I started out by choosing an online photo of "The Freak" that I thought would work for my purposes. I chose this one:
I cropped it so that only Timmy's face showed and then ran it through Photoshop's "Cutout" filter that made it look something like this:
I used that as my template, but it lost some detail, so I had Daddy go back and find me an appropriately sized SF logo for the cap and I added the white of his eyes, which you could see in the original photo.
I used a pin to poke the outlines into the pumpkin, through the paper. I started carving with a Dremel, with a small router bit attached. It kinda worked. At least it gave me a specific depth to carve to. After carving the brightest bits to that depth (the deepest it could go through a 1-inch+ thick rind) and just scraping the skin off the things I wanted to get less light from...that taking a mere several hours...I determined that no light was going to get through that and used a plain ol' knife to cut out the thin parts entirely, then used the Dremel to drill the other parts deeper.
I cut a circle around the outside just so the cap would show up. Unfortunately, I didn't quite think that through all the way. Cutting too far was going to make the face fall out, so I only got part way and ended up with sort of a lightning bolt edge on one side. By then, the pizza had arrived for dinner, so I took a break.
I wanted to write "Beware of the Freak" around the outside, but trick-or-treaters were already starting to come to the door and I was worried that if I tried to cut too much, I'd end up breaking all the delicate stuff I'd already done. Still, I thought the "Freak" aspect was particularly apropos, considering "The Freak" is one of Tim Lincecum's nicknames and because it was Halloween. So, I settled for "Freak". And this is what I ended up with:
It looks like it took a lot of work, but it hardly looks like it'd be impressive. i was pretty psyched when I first checked it out with a candle inside. Totally worth the effort!
As mentioned in the previous post, I submitted it to the San Francisco Giants pumpkin carving contest. For all I know, no one else bothered to enter. I mean, the Giants' season has been over for weeks now. I can't even tell you what I was doing poking around on their website, where I noticed the contest ad.
I enter the occasional contest here and there, but I never win. So imagine my surprise when I got this e-mail from the Giants' Marketing and Entertainment Manager:
Stacey,
Congratulations, you are the winner of our Pumpkin Carving contest! You have won a player autographed baseball. If you can please reply all to this e-mail and provide your address we can get this out to you as soon as possible.
Congratulations once again and awesome job, your “Freak” pumpkin is very impressive!
Joe
I cropped it so that only Timmy's face showed and then ran it through Photoshop's "Cutout" filter that made it look something like this:
I used that as my template, but it lost some detail, so I had Daddy go back and find me an appropriately sized SF logo for the cap and I added the white of his eyes, which you could see in the original photo.I used a pin to poke the outlines into the pumpkin, through the paper. I started carving with a Dremel, with a small router bit attached. It kinda worked. At least it gave me a specific depth to carve to. After carving the brightest bits to that depth (the deepest it could go through a 1-inch+ thick rind) and just scraping the skin off the things I wanted to get less light from...that taking a mere several hours...I determined that no light was going to get through that and used a plain ol' knife to cut out the thin parts entirely, then used the Dremel to drill the other parts deeper.
I cut a circle around the outside just so the cap would show up. Unfortunately, I didn't quite think that through all the way. Cutting too far was going to make the face fall out, so I only got part way and ended up with sort of a lightning bolt edge on one side. By then, the pizza had arrived for dinner, so I took a break.
I wanted to write "Beware of the Freak" around the outside, but trick-or-treaters were already starting to come to the door and I was worried that if I tried to cut too much, I'd end up breaking all the delicate stuff I'd already done. Still, I thought the "Freak" aspect was particularly apropos, considering "The Freak" is one of Tim Lincecum's nicknames and because it was Halloween. So, I settled for "Freak". And this is what I ended up with:
It looks like it took a lot of work, but it hardly looks like it'd be impressive. i was pretty psyched when I first checked it out with a candle inside. Totally worth the effort!As mentioned in the previous post, I submitted it to the San Francisco Giants pumpkin carving contest. For all I know, no one else bothered to enter. I mean, the Giants' season has been over for weeks now. I can't even tell you what I was doing poking around on their website, where I noticed the contest ad.
I enter the occasional contest here and there, but I never win. So imagine my surprise when I got this e-mail from the Giants' Marketing and Entertainment Manager:
Stacey,
Congratulations, you are the winner of our Pumpkin Carving contest! You have won a player autographed baseball. If you can please reply all to this e-mail and provide your address we can get this out to you as soon as possible.
Congratulations once again and awesome job, your “Freak” pumpkin is very impressive!
Joe
Huh. Imagine that! We'll have to see how that whole "autographed baseball" thing turns out!
2 comments:
That is SO impressive!
B
Wow! Congratulations! You never said but I'mn sure Smunch was extra excited about having a Giants pumpkin to show off to the trick or treaters. You're amazing with the intensity of the projects you delve into (cakes, teacher gifts, parties), now pumpkins. Of course, we'll all be watching and waiting to see what you come up with for next year...;)
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