Monday, December 1, 2008

So it begins...

Of all the quotes one can get out of the Lord Of The Rings movies, that's the one that sticks with me. King Theodin atop the walls of Helm's Deep, noticing that the Uruk-Hai kegger outside has gotten all kinds of rowdy. So it begins, he mutters aloud. I speak of course of Christmas- or Christmonth, as I like to call it. Radio stations belching out Xmas carols all month long tends to do that to me.

...I hope you all had a good Black Friday, specifically you early-morning consumers. Hope you got some good deals, and I also hope that as of this writing you've finally scraped the last bit of temp worker flesh from the treads of your sneakers. What the hell is the matter with you people?

...Now that December's started, I won't be taking any more custom orders for Christmas. The ones I already have are keeping me busy, and I don't know how needed I'll be at my steady job. Sorry about that.

But there will be new monsters throughout the month, so purchase those if you will. ;)

Monday, November 24, 2008

Winter has arrived...

...bringing out the faux Norsemen inside myself. As much of a bummer as the cold months of November through February are, they tend to make the metal music crunchier.

As for the holiday blues, do what I do: watch all manner of disgusting horror films throughout Black Friday to Christmas Day. Remember in Pulp Fiction when they drove that giant adrenaline needle into Uma Thurman's ticker? That's what Cannibal Holocaust will do for me after I psychologically overdose on too much holiday cheer and needless hype.


...Doing some Christmas commissions right now, but I wanted to post this up real quick. Back in the spring, my friend Heather asked me to make her a random smattering of miniatures to reward her most exceptional karate students. It's something I've kept meaning to post after finishing it in the summer.

Here are my favorite ones- the guy with the kama and the demon mask, specifically.

Speaking of minis, there's a few more in the store now. Buy them.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Gears of War and Gifts of Win

I was commissioned by a member of Etsy to build some Gears of War miniatures as a gift. Here are Damon Baird, Augustus "The Cole Train" Cole, and a Locust Drone. Behold:



Baird, Cole and the Locust Drone stand approximately 2.5" (6.35 cm) high. Their battle armor is built from felt and little balsa wood risers in their boots. Baird wields a shotgun, the Drone packs a sub-machine gun, and Cole has that wicked assault rifle with the chainsaw underneath- all the weapons are built from plastic, wood and felt.

I finally broke down and bought a used copy of Gears of War for reference. (Video games as tax write-offs. My job now officially pwns.) Frankly I don't get excited anymore over soldiers in big bulky battle armor, looking like Volkswagen Impersonators, or V.I. JOEs for short. ALIENS was 20 years ago, and that's all I'll say because that little nugget of knowledge packs glass shards in it, and doesn't go down quite so easily.

I always thought GoW was a first-person shooter which- unless it's Condemned- doesn't do much for me either- o Frith and Inle; I'm impossible to please. Turns out the game is in third-person perspective. I see what the fuss is about- it's memorable, it's exciting, and it's actually pretty innovative. Shooting petrol tanks to light up the night and (old school alert!) thwart the grues, though, is very intense. Remember the grues from Zork...? They now have wings. And numbers.

I'm not sold on the cover system, probably because the auto-aim of both Manhunt or Grand Theft Auto IV have spoiled me. I know I don't like enemies that take six or seven rounds to the head before sating the maggot munchies. And I am amused that super-soldier Marcus Fenix can't jump over anything in his path unless he first bashes the object with his armored butt.

(....)

...Anyway, my birthday is coming up and it's around this time that I inform people of what I would like. My mantra has always been Horror Movies~Heavy Metal~Video Games~Horror Movies~Heavy Metal~Video Games and it rings louder in this economy. Three pages of ideas comprise my Amazon Wish List, and I also decree that my thirty-fucking-seventh year on Earth shalt be heralded with Liu Kang- that Shaolin slab of mutton- getting his teeth kicked in by The Joker. ...Let's hear you cluck your HAI-YAHs through cheeks pulled back to your EARS, cheese-boy...!

If you want to get creative on me I would love an official Blood Island- you know, the Shark Board- professionally printed and Plak-It'ed for AMPUTHEATRE combat- but that'd be kind of hard to surprise me with. You'd have to wrestle me to the ground and run off with my AMPUTHEATRE data, specifically the Official Board CD and the Dremel Font, and assure me that it would all be for a good cause.

...What might be easier? Learn enough Cyrillic to go to Alkonost's official website and buy me an album. Say it with me: FUCK THE SHIPPING COSTS; THE GIL-MONSTER NEEDS ARIAS, WINDMILLS, AND METEORITES! RUSSIAN METEORITES!!

Now if you'll excuse me, I feel the need to storm something.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Oh, should I post something here...?

I need to return to blogging. I realize that I expressly made this blog to do just that, and the idea of writing has just... meh. So I kind of swore to myself that after the Presidential Election (wow, history has occurred! Pretty cool!) I'd resume keyboarding incessantly about nothing again. Well, not nothing...


The ZombieFest 2008 was a wonderful affair and we had a great time all around. It was the best I had ever done at a show like that, so let's keep the event in the mall next year as well. (Nothing like being across from a Rite-Aid when you've forgotten something for your booth.) My wife and I took many, many pictures during the event, and you can find those here.

The Chenille Macabre store has been stocked with new monsters every week this year. I've lost track of how many I've made all told, and if you've bought a monster from me you are my new best friend. This week's monsters are the following:

The feral Snow Akuneko, the fearless Spartan, the mysterious Ghost Pirate, and the conniving Dark Elf. Snap them up, quick.

But mostly I miss yapping about horror films I've seen and complaining about webstuff, I promise to do that more often. Honest.

Monday, October 13, 2008

New at Chenille Macabre


Hello, Etsy Dark Teamsters...

Kind of a blue period going on over at Chenille Macabre this week! New in the store are a Pigmask Killer Mini, and deluxe miniatures of the Queen Of Destruction and a Sea Monster!

Quite busy as of late; churning out more monsters for the ZombieFest 2008 in Monroeville, PA! tIt's happening this October on the 25th and 26th! If you're headed out that way, come check out the Chenille Macabre display!

Yours,
The Gil-Monster

Monday, June 23, 2008

New at the store: Minotaur Figure

Check out this bad boy. 6" high, with a massive crowbill for a weapon. Hammer the rider off his horse, then stick him when he's on the ground.

You SoulCalibur players who favor Astaroth (I'm one of you) should know I was repeating to myself over and over "Pretentious little bug!" during the construction.

(....)

...And now an important message from the George Carlin Institute: "FUCK DEATH."

Carlin was one of my biggest comedic influences. He was to be my write-in candidate for this year's election.

I'm going to miss him.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Just call it "Car Wars: The Movie"

My friend Tom Gleason of Spinning Grave Productions and Dark Destinations sent me the trailer to a remake that I was imagining myself remaking, specifically the awesome Death Race 2000.

So anyway: First gear. Where the hell is Frankenstein? Or "Machine Gun" Joe Viterbo, or Calamity Jane, or any of the other crazy-ass drivers from the original movie...? Who are these grizzled, whining losers? Prison, shmison: did any of them need to be repeatedly reconstructed like David Carradine's awesome character? Let me answer that like Frankenstein would: with a blunt, short "NO."

Second gear. Where the hell is the nudity? These fly girls can walk in all the slow-motion they wish- are they gonna take their clothes off...? I only say this because I'm a randy pervy goat boy- and that there was flesh aplenty in the original film!

Third gear. Where the hell is the satire? That ripping off of The Running Man means nothing: where're the nods to Mr. President? To the resistance? Where're the score values for running over pedestrians...?

Third gear into fifth. WHERE ARE THE PEDESTRIANS!?!?

WHERE'S THE INNOCENT PEOPLE all over the streets, staining the grills of the cars with their copious blood...? The Death Race is about thinning the population through vehicular manslaughter- or at least it was!! C'MON!!! Jigsaw and the Elite Hunting brigade are currently running around snipping Achilles' tendons left and right- wouldn't now be an ideal cinematic climate to release something as violent and edgy as a real Death Race 200o remake, instead of this...?

I might be proven wrong, but guns on the cars don't fill me with hope...

Monday, June 16, 2008

New: Vampire Lord Figure

Okay, now he was fun to make. Complicated yes, but fun.

I originally bought these light blue chenille stems to make some kind of Cenobite, or even one of the Oro from the Condemned games (play those if you haven't. They're scary as hucking fell). I was on a fetish armor kick but then I thought those type of creatures might be a little too out there for the marketplace. Then I decided light blue was a perfectly acceptable vampire flesh tone.

Felt and windowscreen make up this bad boy's armor, with a red bloodstone in the center. Check out more photos here.

The knife was stolen from a generic 12" military figure. Has anyone else noticed this? How there's a gentle song of "Thaaaank yooooou..." on the breeze whenever a 1/12 scale horror figure gets a 1/6 scale knife painted bloody...? No...?

I've got a surplus of monsters in the shop, so I'm uploading two beasties a week instead of three for a while.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

New: Tengu Mini with Tanto


...Cute little guy. He was a bit of a relief to make; sometimes one needs a change from the same old goblins and gnolls and maniacs.

I realize that tengu aren't always malevolent spirits, but then again... this is Chenille Macabre...

More photos here.

By the way, check this out. It's exciting to find others who do what I do.

Monday, June 9, 2008

New: Chimaera Figure

As you might imagine, this guy took some time to do. He's enormous- 15" to 17" long, depending on which head you measure from- with a wingspan over a foot in length. The price is fair; building polycephalic monsters (that's the right term, right?) is always a crazefest- especially polycephalic (maybe it is the wrong term, but I'm on a roll) monsters with wings- which have to be built before the body is finished. And because I'm sort of a stickler for biology, I like to make sure the transition from lion chest to goat butt is pretty seamless.

And yet, after all of that, this might be like the tenth Chimaera I've built (not all of them this big), just because they're such fun to do. Sell, my pet. Sell.

It was something we had been promising to do for the longest time, and my wife and I finally fulfilled it: we went to the opera together- La Boheme, specifically. I think this was my first time; maybe I fell asleep during one at grade school- no recollection. Mrs. Gil-Monster stated that La Boheme was one of the main influences for the film Moulin Rouge, which didn't serve to alleviate my apprehensions as much as it did remind me that preceding "Watch Moulin Rouge again" on the list is "Pour scorpions down the front of my jeans" as well as "Tattoo the Periodic Table of the Elements on my gums with a soldering iron".

You know La Boheme's damage. Starving Bohemian artists try to stay warm on Christmas Eve. One of them convinces a neighboring waif to fall in love with him, and everybody everywhere is blissful until it's dropped that Mimi the waif is fatally afflicted with deus ex machinitis. Yes. La Boheme is aggressively and unapologetically plotless. (Why ...yes. The toy vendor was integral. Sure.) But still- it was still a beautiful and rich performance. The actors were all quite physical in their singing- apart from Mimi (yes I know she's supposed to be sick but sick people shouldn't be belting their lungs out anyway; gesture, woman!)

"I hate Bohemians", I thought in the final act as the four artists pranced about their flat, mimicking tittering women and fencing with paintbrushes. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't moved as the curtains fell for the final time.

So is my wife, by the way. "Feh! I do not 'cry' at the OPERA!" she said before the lights dimmed.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

New: Deep One Mini


Eager for Great C'Thulhu to awake from his deathly slumber is this 2" high terror from the deep! Highly poseable, with an anglerfish lure to sniff out those pesky tourists to Innsmouth. Check out his Etsy page for more images.
-The Gil-Monster

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Kitsune Mini with Chicken Claw Sickle

...He's new in the store today. 2 inches high with a (non-removable) plastic chicken sickle to punish his enemies. Check out his Etsy page for more details.
-The Gil-Monster

Monday, June 2, 2008

Stabbity Ann

New in the Etsy store, it's Stabbity Ann! A red-headed librarian who for some unknown reason has taken to painting her face, punking herself out, and stalking the night to stab men to death. She wears barbed wire bracers and a windowscreen shirt. Her knives fit in both her hands and her calf sheaths. Take her home!

...In other news, I see that my deviantART page passed 2,000 views. Very cool indeed.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Back from the holiday

Hope you all had a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend. Notice the width of your monitor screen...? That distance is an inch or two greater more than the one I drove my car through in order to avoid hitting deer on the interstate last Friday night- thank you, years of video games. Oh, and there was also the Mensa graduate in the pick-up truck who wanted to make a U-ie onto I-90 Northbound- and the ass of his trailer home is hanging out into the left lane. Fortunately I was only going 75 mph, and I've managed to pick most of his family out of my grill.

In spite of that little snarl-up, it was good to get away. I got to hang out with my parents again, pick through more spiky metal crap for building, eat Primanti's, and see Mike and Chris again. That had been too too long. Lemme know if your kids need any more comedy material, guys.

As you might have guessed, we got to finally check out the Monster Mini Golf. Last year at ZombieFest, we never got the chance, as close as it was to the venue. Fortunately my parents live near the area, so my wife and I took my mom. Lots of animatronic horrors bouncing about. The darkness and neon hides a lot of small tunnels about the maze-like course, suitable to putt through and maintain par.
(....)

Way back at UBCon 2008, Evil Warden MOAD Terran HQ snatched some photos of the madness that is AMPUTHEATRE. And now I have a chance to post them:
This is Ling Chi, a kung fu master with a bushido mask and human flesh flags flying from his shoulders. He knows several different martial arts styles and demostrated every one of them on The Thicket in less than 1/10th of a second.
One of the more popular of AMPUTHEATRE's Slashers is Gutwrench; a robot specifically built to kill the serial killer Jinglebunny. In this photo, we see that Gutwrench forsakes his anti-tank rockets, buzzsaw head and wood chipper morphing abilities to wield a wicked-ass steak knife! ...Ling Chi! CATCH!!!
Then the Slashers all warmed themselves by the Sacrificial Fire Pit.
Mandibula seemed exceptionally cold.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Quick update

Beginning on Page 2, I've added some more photos to the Chenille Macabre Gallery. I'll put up some facts about each piece later on.

While I was toiling away on the Chenille, I see that the Werewolf figure has amassed some 1300 views... not too bad. I gotta thank Jen for both assembling my website and making it easy for me to update the gallery. If you haven't read her chaotic collection of penguin mayhem yet, check out Pencognito now. I'll wait.

Actually, I can't wait. I'm needed elsewhere. Back soon.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Hi, I'm The Gil-Monster

...Let's just launch this mother. Buenos nagas. I'm The Gil-Monster. I'm a sinister toymaker lurking about upstate New York and building all sorts of hideous beasts out of Chenille stems (that's pipecleaners). I use felt, paint, marker and lotsa other things, but yes... pipecleaners.

I started working with pipecleaners when I was four years old... just twisting them and making shapes. Now thirty years later, in which my sense of humor got twisted and then twisted again and then twisted a lot more, I'm building horrors similar to what you see in the slideshow in the sidebar. I am a fan of heavy metal music, horror films, and violent video games... which may have a faint influence on my work; you tell me.

(....)

Because of my passions I've invented and patented my own board game: AMPUTHEATRE; a gruesome affair which involves incarcerated serial killers fighting to the gory, bloody death. Instead of miniatures, AMPUTHEATRE employs action figures with removable heads and arms. Decapitation, dismemberment and even immolation reign supreme in the World's Goriest Board Game. You can read more about it here.

Meets for AMPUTHEATRE will be posted on this site- whether it's for a gaming or horror convention or just a meet somewhere in the city. Check the game out- you can jump in at any time in the action.

(....)

I also sell my pipecleaner work online. At Chenille Macabre is where you can purchase handmade, original pipecleaner monsters, all unique and signed by me. Each monster is built from scratch and poseable upon completion. The actual site is a little under construction right now... you can also go to my Etsy page and purchase work there. New additions to the store, as well as what's in my showcase, are featured in the sidebar.

And yes, I do do custom work, so don't be afraid to ask.

Chenille Macabre is a proud member of the Etsy Dark Team; a band of similarly sinister artists all promoting each other. Please check out their wares via the bottle link in the sidebar, and then check it out again... new work and new artists are added all the time.

So hello, good to meet you and I'll be in touch.

Vaya con dios, Slayers.

Friday, May 2, 2008

Test post

Still under construction. I want this to look awesome. Hopefully this won't bleed into the sidebar. More later.