Silent Hill-ish Spooky Framed Mannequin

As a Silent Hill fan, my Halloween front yard is always inspired by this video game franchise. This creation is not a re-creation of something that exists in the game, but it's in the same spooky style. My two main inspirations are from these scenes in Silent Hill (PS1) and Silent Hill 2 (PS2) where you have those things hanging on the walls.

Tools

1. a jigsaw
2. a drill screwdriver
3. pliers
4. staple gun
5. hot glue gun

Supplies

1. planks of wood (I did everything using pallet wood)
2. foam roll
3. any kind of paper (a lot!)
4. duck tape
5. trash bags
6. glue
7. paint
8. screws
9. screw hooks
10. metal wire, or metal hanger

Assemble several planks together to build a frame, and make sure that a human can fit in it. Mine is about 2.20 meters in height and 1.20 meters in width. Since I used pallet wood, none of my planks were long enough so I had to assemble several planks together. If you have longer planks, that won't be needed.

In the 4 corners, I glued and screwed planked I sawed at a 45 degrees angle to solidify the structure. This will also serve later, when adding the wires.

In the back, I stapled thin foam to cover the structure.

Now it's time to build our mannequin. I measured all limbs from a real human size mannequin, but you can do it on yourself. Just make sure that the proportions are right. See the structure of the skeleton on the pictures. I wanted the arms and hands to be joined, and for this I simply put a little piece of wood in between the planks so that they are slightly coming forward, then I screwed them together with only one screw. This way I can still adjust the position of the arms. The final skeleton can then be placed back in the frame to check if it fits well.

Our skeleton now needs to meat on it, and that's why we have all that paper. Crumple the paper, position it on the skeleton, and use duck tape to keep it in place. Add as much as needed to obtain the desired width. You can of course use anything else than paper to stuff the mannequin.

For the head, try to obtain something vaguely similar to a face, with a bump for the nose and above the eyes. You don't have to be precise though, as this will all be hidden in the end.

Now that the mannequin is stuffed, you'll have to attach it to the frame. For this, check where exactly the hips and shoulders planks are positioned, and screw 2 planks at the back of the frame at the corresponding place.

Then, screw from the back, with the mannequin in place, so that the mannequin is attached at its shoulders and hips.

Cut the trash bags open to obtain a mostly flat plastic surface, and position them over the mannequin, covering all the width of the frame.

Then, use neoprene glue to firmly glue all this together.

I used 2 layers of paint here. First some orange/brown covering all the plastic bags, and then black. For the black paint, I painted with my hands directly. I wanted to obtain a dirty effect, and I insisted on the contours of the mannequin, and the sides of the frame. And I added random stains all over.

For the frame, I mixed that same orange/brown and black paint. But I didn't mix them well, on purpose. I didn't want a uniform colour, and not mixing the paints well allowed having random variations which I like.

We're now almost ready, and what remains is to add wires around the neck and feet.

Screw one hook in each of the corners of the frame, and for the wire I unfolded metal handers but if you already have a metal wire, you can use it. Pierce through the plastic so that you can bring the wire all around the neck and feet, and attach the wires together.

Finally, I wanted to have a barbwire-like effect. So I cut short pieces of metal wire, folded them in the right shape and then glued them to the main wires using hot glue.

This piece is meant to be positioned vertically, and ideally you'd place a warm light source on the ground and some fog. In my installation I added some (fake) barbed wire in front of it plus some additional elements around it, for a Halloween tunnel of terror.

Welcome to Silent Hill!