Funny thing: I accidently signed up for this challenge, before I figured out it was SPN-only and not actually my side of the Supernatural sandbox, which is RPF... But I could not resist the lure of The Nightmare Before Christmas as creative inspiration for some arts&crafts. After I discovered I would have to roleplay with Sam & Dean instead of J2, I immediately knew the scene I would put them in. In fact, I think it works even better than it would have with actors *grins* I hope you agree. May I present to you:
Title: The Shadow On The Moon
Challenge:
super_disneyDisney Prompt: (Tim Burton's) The Nightmare Before Christmas
Pairing/Gen: Canon* Sam & Dean Winchester (as Jack Skellington & Sally)
Rating: PG for spookiness
Medium: Clay! (and a bit of painting and papercutting;)
Warnings: Graveyard, skulls, angsty scene, spoilers for S05Ep04 The End
Summary: Sam is not quite himself and Dean is upset. *Add subtext at your own risk.
[Click to zoom!]
"Oh, hello Dean..."
"Whatever you do, you will always end up... here."
Close up of Lucifer!Sam
Close up of Emo!Dean
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Notes & References:
The title 'The Shadow On The Moon' is a line from the film's most famous song This is Halloween. Jack Skellington, the pumpkin king, is bored with organizing Halloween for the citizens of Halloween Town. When one day he discovers Christmas Town, he decides to kidnap Santa and have a go at that holiday for a change. Yet the concept of being merry is not quite clear to him. His friend Sally tries to warn him of possible disaster, but to no avail.
The doom and gloom setting of this film brought to mind the scene in Supernatural S05Ep04 The End and I could not help but see Lucifer!Sam as Jack and Sad!Dean as Sally. So I simply had to portray our Winchester boys like that. Lucifer refused to dress in black though, so he got to keep his white suit;)
As per usual, the Making of-section is huge. Feel free to skip:) [Go to credits]
Behind the scenes
Here's how the puppets were made... and how they broke arms and legs... and how I had to fix them again... and again... Despite those accidents, every time I asked myself the question 'Are you having fun', I would answer with a loud 'Hell, yeah'. :-) Enjoy the process in pictures!
This is the set up and sketch I handed in to the mods:
When I finally started with clay, I first worked on Sam and then build Dean. Each puppet took about 4 hours to build, I spent an additional hour or so in a second sesson for Sam. there was a week in between making Sam and Dean, but I'm putting their progress photos next to each other; Sam's on the left, Dean's on the right.
Broken arm for Sam... but that's nothing compared to what happened to Dean a week later; he is completely falling apart :(
If you can't handle any more drama and angst, you can skip to the end here: [
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End of first Sam session...
Start of second Sam session...
If only I had remembered from the start
that I had intended to bend Sam's arm;
that would have saved me this operation.
Newly bend arm on the left; a reminder of what it looked like before behind Dean on the right:)
Right after applying a layer for pants on Sam's right leg, the battery of my camera died... You can enjoy Dean's butt while I recharge :-p
Here you can see Sam's finished bell bottoms and the rose I made while I couldn't take any photos. A week after the clay-session I sanded all the figures, paying extra attention to smoothing Dean's behind *g*
Painting [
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When it came to painting, I had intended to once again start with Sam, but when I discovered he had cracked his leg, I had to operate on him and let the new layer of clay dry first. So I started with Dean. I painted both of them -and the rose- in one day with another session for touch ups a week later.
Trying to find the right combination of Sad Dean and Sally's face.
The three layers of Dean...
Sideburns, baby. <3
Result after first painting day and on the right a close up after second session a week later;)
Finishing touch: Single Emo Tear of Manly Angst.
The Background [
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I made a backdrop of the nightsky featuring Jack Skellington's head as the moon and cut some gravestones to create a spooky atmosphere fitting both the film and the Supernatural scene:)
Drew a pencil circle around the lid of a cooking pot and filled it in with white paint, then scratched the outline of Jack's face with a Q-tip...
... and smudged the eyes and edges with a tissue: voila! Drew rough gravestones shapes (based on graveyard from the film) with white eyeliner on black cardbord.
Cut them and painted them gray.
Smudged the paint a bit to make them look old. Had awesome skull lights for scenery but unfortunately they turned out too bright to photograph in the scene.
Building the set. The skull lights did offer a spooky light from below for the final shoot:)
The End. (See what I did there?;)
Credits
Shout out to
sillie82 for knowing exactly what episode I was talking about. Thanks to
Screencapped.NET for providing high res screen caps of that scene from Supernatural and
The Focus Pull for better stills of the movie than I could capture of my DVD:) References of roses were found on
Kortink.NL and
Põltsamaa-Roosiaed.
Comments, questions and/or concrit, however short or detailed, are more than welcome:)
J.
My masterlist of artsy fiddling | Other clay artwork:
Sam & Dean in: The Curse of Were-Rabbit