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Carving LIKE A BOSS

by:Pox

2011/11/27

What's more iconic during the month of October than a carved pumpkin? I really can't think of anything. No, seriously, I'm THAT stupid.

I haven't taken a knife to one of these bad boys in probably 10 years... Ever since.. the accident... *sob*... ...

Anyway, follow along!

First off, pick what you want on your pumpkin. I decided to make an Abobokin this year. What the fuck is Abobo you ask? Why it's a game I am working on with Rog and Nick based on a character from Double Dragon, a game older than your dad.

Go check out the site and sign up for the beta test right now. And while you're at it, give us all your money.

He's a pretty face that one.

You can see that I made a little mock-up of what he might look like as a pumpkin. You get 2 colors if you carve it like I do too! What a bargain! The holes are the light orange and the half-flesh parts are the regular orange on the sprite. If this makes no sense to you right now, it will later on.

You'll need to glue this on your pumpkin so prepare it for printing... I just remove the black because only an idiot would waste all that ink.

Now it's time to prepare your pumpkin. If you want to make it easy on yourself, get a larger one with a flat face. If you want TO BE AWESOME, get a really round one that will be a pain in the ass to carve properly.

First of, open the top up USING A KNIFE. Not a spoon. A KNIFE. Then scoop out the gloop, separating the seeds. Well if you want to eat the seeds. Otherwise just throw that crap in the garbage.

That's what it looks like INSIDE AN OUT OF FOCUS PUMPKIN!

To make the seeds, put them on a baking sheet and shove them in the oven for about an hour at 250f. Put whatever you want on them. Bacon grease, candy, salt...whatever!

Shake/turn them every 15 minutes or so. You can eat them whole, no need to separate each one to get at the little seed inside.

I chose salt.

Alright time to get carving. First, you'll want to glue your design onto the pumpkin in as flat a manner as possible. Since you're awesome ( because you're reading this site) it means you picked up a nice spherical pumpkin that will be impossible to glue anything flat on. But fear not, for the solution is simple. I will show you using one corner of the sheet here.

As you can see, it lifts up quite a bit.

Cut the problem area in half...

Then just make the halves overlap so the sheet sits more snuggly on the pumpkin face.

And then just tape the halves together on the pumpkin!

Do this as many times as you want. The more you do it, the better your design will fit. Of course it's not possible to put a flat design on a sphere ( see:world maps) so this will cause your image to be warped. Compensate for this as much as you can in the next steps.

Alright now take a needle ( I didn't have one, only have my knife point) and puncture the pumpkin following the drawing. Place the holes maybe 1/8th of an inch or 2-3mm apart. The more, the better, but you don't really need THAT many.

As you can see, you can't see the holes because of the Flash. SEE?

Once you're done, rip off the paper and using a marker, connect the dots according to your design. If possible, use something that you can wash off.

Make sure you mark the areas to cut out and the ones to leave alone, unless you have more of an attention span than I do.... yeah I would have mangled this thing pretty badly otherwise...

Then, using whatever tools you have, start carving. I used an exacto knife for this. Pretty much the perfect tool, but then again I'm a genius. If you can find a knife with a blade that's a quarter of an inch thick, use that instead. HA.

Now you'll notice that there's two kinds of holes here. I've made some go all the way through the flesh and some only go halfway. Clever, I know. The holes that are only half deep will light up much less and thus allow you to have two colors. So go nuts. Not sure it would work with 3 colors but you can always try and let me know!

If you're going to try this, make sure to be conservative with the depth at first. You can always cut deeper but you can't add pumpkin back.

So that's what pure beauty looks like...

Now time for a test light! It was daytime when I was done so I just put it in the bathroom, where horror truly belongs.

Place a candle at the bottom of your pumpkin and light it. You can always be a little BITCH and use an electric source like a small flashlight or a bulb, but when your house doesn't burn down and you don't get any of that sweet insurance money, don't come crying to me.

AAAAAAAAAAAAH MY SOUL!

Alright this looks good...

Now just leave it outside to slowly rot. That is the true spirit of the season: wasting vegetables.

Wait are pumpkin vegetables or fruits... They're kind of like a squash and that's a vegetable... or..are they... ... but then... those grow like cucumbers and THAT'S a vegetable...

and...

...hum... ..

...

...

And that's why I only eat candy.

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