My name is James Hall, I'm a pumpkin carver,
I've won Halloween awards twice,
and a number of online contest.
Today, I've been challenged to explain pumpkin carving
in 13 levels of increasing complexity.
[upbeat music]
Pumpkin carving is, kind of a realm
where a lot of skill is required.
There's a lot of craft that you have to learn,
the further you get into it.
And you're on the clock,
because as soon as you cut into that pumpkin,
it's starting to rot.
So, you learn to let go
of the things that you worked hard at.
We're gonna be creating here today,
or just the designs that eyebrows.
No design is really better or worse than another,
this is my interpretation of the challenge.
Level one, basic jack-o'-lantern.
It's just the two triangle eyes, simple mouth,
maybe you nose if you're feeling really, really fancy.
I'm choosing this pumpkin
because it's just got that classic shape.
When you see illustrations
of jack-o'-lanterns on a little posters,
Halloween cards, they all look like this.
First, I'm gonna go ahead and cut the top off
so I can get to all the guts inside.
Do not cut straight down,
you wanna go in, add an angle to cut that lid,
because if you go straight up and down,
you'll put the pumpkin lid on there
and it'll just drop all the way through.
This is just like the little basic plastic pumpkin scoop
if you got the pumpkin carving kits.
If you don't have one of these, a spoon will work.
Then, you just start off by drawing
what you want to carve into the pumpkin,
any kind of washable felt tip marker will work,
if you don't like it, you take a wet paper towel
and start over again.
Then, you will go ahead and cut the facial details out,
and you're gonna be cutting all the way
through the pumpkin wall.
I prefer fillet knife, because if the use a knife
that a bit too hefty when you're cutting, it'll grip,
and then, when you pull it all of a sudden it'll pop free,
which is a good way to accidentally cut pieces
off the pumpkin and your finger.
Easy mistakes to make in placement of the facial features,
take a step back, otherwise you end up carving an eye
and realizing that your second eye is,
an inch lower and twice as big,
which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Pumpkin's are supposed to be monstrous and ugly, anyway,
you can do the classic artists thing and lie
and say you did something on purpose
because you're a genius.
This is the classic jack-o-lantern, cut the top off,
make sure you go at an angle, scoop it out really good,
then you just cut the two eyes,
the nose and the mouth and that's it.
Level two, embellished jack-o'-lantern.
The important thing to remember
when you're adding embellish details,
paying attention to what a face actually does,
not just playing triangle for an eye,
but adding maybe some creases in the corner,
just show one eyes squinting, varying the size
to chill one eyes more open.
So, what I'll do first, is go ahead
and raise the corner of the mouth,
follow the line you already established,
you could even come back carve in the corners
that way you get that crease
that you get at the corner of your mouth
when you smile really big.
Next, I wanna give this eye a little bit of a crease here,
to make it look like it's squinting slightly from smile.
Actually bringing the eye out a little bit,
give it a little bit of a curve.
Next, to make this eye look like
it's actually a shuttle a little bit more than this one,
this side has to be expanded.
Another thing you can do is modify the nose, just a tiny bit
because as with everything else,
when your face does something big, like smile,
your nose will change just a tiny bit.
Just a bit of a sneer.
Don't forget if you're carving a pumpkin,
there's more than one side.
If you mess that up, turned around, start again,
turn that side of the wall when you light it.
A really good way to play with any Jack-o'-lantern,
is just add more teeth,
I find that's a good answer
for pretty much any monster design.
And then you have, very slightly embellished jack-o'-latern,
the same thing as the first,
just with a tiny bit more character.
For level three,
what we're doing is actually trying to make
a direct representation of an image,
on the pumpkin.
Level three, realistic pumpkin.
Instead of just carving a triangle and saying that's an eye,
you're gonna be carving the shapes
that light makes when it bounces off an object.
It's kind of like the difference between
having a piece of paper and drawing a smiley face on it,
and then, having a piece of paper
and printing out a photograph on it.
Start by drawing the image on the pumpkin.
And even for people that have been doing this a long time,
that is always a good step.
This design is going to be...
It's kind of a classic European dragon,
they're good for Halloween
because they're the angry version of a dragon.
One of the other things you have to draw
with a marker first is highlights,
pick a source, if you have a face,
and the light is supposed to be coming from the right side,
you're gonna be carving out
like a spot here and a spot here.
Even if it's something imaginary,
light still bounces off pretty much the same way.
Then, cut the top off,
since this pumpkin is bigger, it's gonna be a lot thicker
This is a drywall saw, you can get it at any hardware store.
The thing goes through pumpkin incredibly well,
so, it'll take the top off very easily.
Once again, just get everything out of there.
You're gonna have to be a little bit more persistent
with it, you wanna try to get the pumpkin wall
nice and smooth, dowse and eval.
The next thing we're gonna do is,
start carving some of the highlights, out of this pumpkin.
If you've drawn on here with a marker,
there's a good chance that while you're working on it,
it'll automatically erase a lot of the marker lines.
Pumpkin juice is really good at taking ink off.
What I'm doing now, is going in
and putting in a little bit of an outline.
You wanna make sure that you don't carve an outline
and an unbroken line all the way around the piece,
'cause then there's nothing but this tiny bit here
supporting all this pumpkin hanging out there.
You really have to make sure that you build in
little support systems in here.
The tip of the horn doesn't necessarily have to be chilling,
it's implied, you know it's there,
same thing with the tongue.
That's the whole reason that tongue is there
in the first place, otherwise, the pumpkin is
almost certainly gonna break on you.
Now, this is at an early stage,
it's almost an illustration of dragon.
The more detail you add to it,
the more pronounced it's going to get.
So, the next steps, you're gonna start
to see this thing take shape a lot more.
Level four, adding a background.
This level is much more complex
because by adding a background,
you're telling more of a story
and it takes a lot more thoughts
and possibly a few more tricks, like perspective.
And you wanna make sure that,
when you draw your background,
you account for the connection spots,
wanna make sure that those lines connect into that,
so you still maintain that kind of support.
Then, just go ahead and cut out
whatever it is you've decided on.
At this point, you really wanna be using like a fine saw,
if you're trying to get in this kind of detail.
The main thing is take your time,
remember, the more you cut away,
the more flimsy the pumpkin becomes.
This thing is round, so it's an organic shape,
it'll display organic shapes more easily.
For the dragon, I'm gonna put them in a cave,
a hallway or a room that involves carving straight lines.
The problem is if you try to carve a straight line
across the pumpkin, from certain angles,
it will always look like it's bent.
With organic background,
you've got a little more room to play with.
You can view it from over here, or over here,
and it still looks essentially the same.
Now, you can see it in level four,
by adding a background it really makes the detail
pop on this, because you've got a contrast
of the dark shape here with the bright background.
And so, the later levels, we can go in and add a little bit
of detail and a little bit of definition.
'Cause right now, this is still
a very simplified version of this scene.
For the next level, let's increase the detail.
Level five, layer carving.
You wanna get the most out of whatever image
that you've chosen,
and to do that, you really need to work
with more than just black and white.
The outer rind of a pumpkin is opaque,
that's what blocks of light.
If you shave off just that dark layer of skin,
the pumpkin meat underneath is actually translucent,
you put a light behind it, it'll still show it through.
You will have a nice range of shade you can go through.
The deeper you carve the brighter it gets.
I'm gonna start off by working on the dragon itself.
I wanna make sure that I get all the highlights,
right where I want them to be.
And any place where there's gonna be a really dark section,
you can just leave, the light on that surface.
Whereas with a regular sculpture where you carve in,
that's where the shadow is gonna be, it's reverse.
You're essentially carving it negative,
you now have to find the right tool
and just shave off different layers of the pumpkin.
These are ones that I've made myself,
and it's just a bristle from a street sweeper that came off.
Oddly enough, these things are made
of really, really good, high carbon steel,
so, they actually sharpen up and last better
than the store-bought ones.
And then just a stick,
I think this used to be part of the Christmas tree.
Obviously, this one will cut out around shape
whereas this one will give you a nice sharp line.
You can't just go to the art store,
and buy a little pack of loop tools.
You probably, are gonna have to sharpen them up first,
'cause you need something with a good edge
to go through a pumpkin.
It's very fibrous, and neural like to rip apart and fray.
Now, I finished with this level,
so, I've added little bit more detailed
with the face added scales,
highlighted the teeth and gave the background
a little bit more definition.
But I'm sure we can get a bit more detail in this,
so, let's move on to the next level.
Level six, back carving.
We're adding complexity to this by carving on the inside,
the tricky technique because you're carving
without being able to see exactly what you're doing.
So you're essentially working blind.
I'm gonna be using this technique on the dragon
to highlight the top of the neck,
'cause it's gonna be covered in scale detail.
And once that's in there, it's a lot easier to go in
and do large go highlights from the back,
then it is to try to go in and carve out
each individual little scale
that I think needs to be brighter.
The details I'm tryna highlight are the areas
where the light would be strongest,
eye sockets and cheekbones and jaw lines.
Those are things that we look at,
and it helps us read a face, just a little bit faster.
For this logo, you wanna leave the light on,
especially if you don't have any areas that are cut out
and it's just solids with a bit of the line shaved off,
you really wanna have that light on,
'cause then your best guess is gonna be based on the shadow
that you see through the surface.
You're working on a surface that's curved around your hand.
It's a concave surface.
With a chisel or a gouge,
those tools will go forward and then dig out,
and if the piece has bending away from it,
that works really well.
If it'd been an intuit, it's a lot harder
to get that to curve,
so, loop tools are a better way to go.
And now that we're done,
you can see kind of the highlights along the scales,
any place where the light is supposed to hit it,
and a little bit along the mouth to define it,
bit along the horn of the cheekbones.
If you're doing a detailed piece,
the easiest way to go ahead and hack off a loss
and give you really strong highlights in broad areas,
is just to go through the back
and carve it out after you've fleshed out the details.
If you've done it right, you should end up
with a pumpkin that you're pretty happy with,
if not, you end up with something that you can throw
in your neighbor's yard.
Next, we're gonna move into a new pumpkin
to show you some more complex levels of pumpkin carving.
Level seven, three-dimensional carving.
3D carving is carving the pumpkin,
like you're sculpting a piece of stone,
or carving a piece of wood.
You really have to know the object in three dimensions.
If you're carving a face, you need to know
about how far the nose comes out from the face,
how deep the eyes sink in,
shadow's gonna form just due to the way the light falls
on this actual object now.
It can be very much equal to,
or for some people easier to do.
But this is gonna draw on skills
that most people have never used,
when carving a pumpkin.
First, you wanna make sure you get the rind off,
so you have a nice blank canvas to work with.
I'm choosing to carve a monster into this pumpkin
pretty much because of the shape of this pumpkin,
because this makes knob here,
that very easily becomes a head.
Places where it's flat,
or where the pumpkin is at its thinnest,
flat parts lends itself well to lit carving.
Carvier, it is more lends itself to sculpting.
The next step is sketching out,
a basic design not with a marker,
but with the end of loop tool.
Since you're gonna be carving all these details
back further, any lines that you make here
are gonna disappear anyway.
I'm carving and taking meat out here
to create a shadow underneath something,
ways of carving,
I'm carving that meat out to decorate a highlight.
As you're carving into the pumpkin,
you wanna feel how soft the pumpkin is.
Once you really start to get through the pumpkin wall,
it'll give a little bit more,
and you'll be able to feel the fibers of the pumpkin,
and you know that you don't wanna carve
any deeper into that area.
This is a foam rasp.
You can find that in any hardware store,
this will take off small layers at a time.
The carve under the cheekbone that goes down
into the jaw line.
This is an excellent tool to get that nice little carve,
'cause sometimes you put a loop tool in there and drag it,
and it's gonna take off a bit more than you want.
Now, this little tool is good for getting very fine detail.
And as the sculpture goes on,
you're gonna progress from larger tools
down into smaller ones.
You want ones that pop some of the actual little pieces out,
and you remember with the embellished jack-o'-lantern,
I turned the corner up to give it more of a sneer,
and you could tell that's what's going on here,
same ideas of observation and memorizing exactly
what the corners of the mouth do.
That being said, this is a totally different process,
you have to use loop tools to kinda carve out
where the eyes are, and research them,
sculpt them out exactly how you want them to look.
Going into the next level,
we're gonna be using the whole form of this pumpkin
to kind of describe this theme,
as opposed to the previous pumpkin's
which we've been using edge single side.
Level eight, sculpting a background.
Adding a background, [instrumental music]
is gonna be very different
than the background we added in the previous levels.
You're cutting into the pumpkin as much as you can
to push the background back,
but not so deep that you're cutting all the way
through the pumpkin.
The tools that we're gonna be using,
are gonna be the same as the previous step.
Now, what I'm doing with this,
is kind of letting the pumpkin dictate
what exactly should be carved.
By that, I mean, I'm just kind of paying attention
to the natural shape of it,
because of this bulge here and the way it sticks out,
it automatically makes me think of a shoulder.
You have to take the whole thing
into account, pretty much at all times.
The very least until you get everything
basically roughed out,
and you really can't focus in one small spot.
What I'm doing right now, is trying to separate the head
from the background of the pumpkin,
and by doing that
also help define the shoulder a little bit.
That foam rasp is gonna become very important
because one of the easiest ways to uniformly push back
the pumpkin wall, so the subject stands forward
is to take that rasp and just keep shaving down,
and shaving down, and do it a little bit at a time.
It can be a bit tedious, but it's better to do that
than to accidentally punch all the way through the pumpkin.
You don't even have to go all the way through,
but you could hit a layer of pumpkin
that is almost uncomfortable.
It will be very, very fibrous and very loose,
and as soon as you try to pull the tool across it,
it'll just fray and break apart.
That gives you an idea of
what you're trying to do when you make a background.
As a little bit more to our guy here,
including a nice little tattoo, 'cause he's a mantra,
but he loves his mom.
And as you can see with the three dimensional background,
it allows you to operate the pumpkin
from more than one angle.
With the classic pumpkin,
you are pretty much restricted to viewing it
from one point of view.
Next, we're gonna increase the complexity
by taking pieces of the pumpkin and adding it
to the outside of the pumpkin.
Level nine, adding additional pieces.
It can be very tricky to do this,
instead of just a foreshortened hand,
you actually have a hand coming out from the pumpkin.
The first thing I'm gonna do is,
cut off some pieces of pumpkin from the back,
all that back that you're not using that's raw materials.
You can use super glue, which works surprisingly well,
especially for small pieces,
or for larger pieces, you're gonna wanna use dowel rods
to give the extra piece a bit of support
and sync it up, it becomes very breakable.
So, it's not only something to sink into the pumpkin
to keep it in place, a dowel rod is also there
to reinforce the piece that you're attaching.
At this point, I've got the two small horns shaped.
It's a lot easier to shave something down
when it's in one whole piece.
I wedded to separate them until the end.
Pumpkin is always gonna be extremely slippery,
when you are using sharp tools, often the ones like a rasp
that you're often drawing towards you.
The tinier, the piece,
the more of a pain it's gonna be to work with.
And now, I've got to carve
into where I'm gonna rush the horns,
this is for a couple of reasons;
One, because you wanna sink the pumpkin in there,
so it really looks like it is part of the piece.
And two, if you have a little part where it rests in,
it's a cures better.
And these things don't have to be absolutely perfect,
remember, he is a monster.
After the gluing process,
slice up the horns against the head,
again, really make sure that it fits well,
[blows] and now, you've got a monster with horns.
It's something that it's not truly a huge change,
but it definitely adds something just a little bit more.
I wonder what else we could put on there.
Level 10, 3D carving with lights.
In this pumpkin, I'm gonna be adding some light to the eyes.
It's gonna be different than adding lights
to the pumpkins we did on earlier levels
because we no longer have the rind
to block that light from coming out.
Remember, you shaved off the opaque part of it,
so the whole pumpkin may light up.
The area that I want lit on this is, it's eye.
That seems like a really cool effect,
to do that I need to get to the back of the eye.
Easiest way to do that, is that hole that I just cut
for the horns, I'm just gonna use the soft,
widen it out a little bit, and you can see now,
I can reach my hand in there.
You're gonna get some gunk all over your arm,
but you know, that happens, it's pumpkin carving.
Now, what I'm gonna do here is, reaching into the loop tool
and shave the back of the eye down just a little bit.
I will do want to make a nice flat spot
where I can attach to that light.
If I push on the pumpkin,
I can get a little bit of an idea of where I'm at.
To make this light more precise,
I need to narrow down its beam a little bit.
So, for that, I'm gonna be using aluminum foil
to block a good part of it.
Just cut the tiniest hole in it,
so you can really make that light go exactly
where you want it to.
And you can see how much it's refocused that beam.
Put the light in this little wire bracket that I've made
and it'll just stick in place.
Okay, that works out pretty well.
For classic jack-o'-lanterns,
and some of the previous pumpkins we've carved,
light is necessary.
It's the thing that makes that jack-o'-lanterns work.
For this light, is more of an accent piece,
a fun thing to add on top of everything else,
'cause what doesn't look cooler with glowing eyes.
Level 11, using multiple pumpkins.
This level increases in complexity
just by using more materials.
You typically have a core pumpkin,
and then kind of a sacrificial pumpkin
that is there for spare parts,
and so, you can cut pieces off and add it,
and that's what we're gonna be doing here.
First, I'm gonna draw out exactly what I want
on the side of that pumpkin,
is an example of how each level builds on the skills
that you learned and the previous levels.
And now, just cut it out myself.
Right now, I'm using the rasp just round off the edges,
I don't really wanna take anything off the back,
all I'm doing is taking that sharp corner off,
'cause it'll look just a little bit better without that.
It doesn't have to be absolutely perfect,
this guy is a monster,
but he's kind of a cartoon looking monster.
So, it's more fun to keep him slightly silly looking.
The next step is to make sure that these fits
exactly how I want them on the core pumpkin.
Using big pieces, that's when you start to get
into the realm of armature,
and having things really lock into place.
And these are just barbecue, skewers,
you can find pretty much anywhere.
You go to the grocery store and you can find these things.
The skewers are gonna go from the wing,
and stick all the way into the base of the pumpkin.
Since this wing is a bit more out than the other wing is,
it's a bit more resistant to staying close.
I went ahead and attach them to, they weren't even,
because he's positioned, so one shoulder is raised
and the other one is coming down.
Typically, preachers like us,
we don't stand perfectly rigid,
and exactly the same meaning of their side.
And, apparently knew the do monsters.
Now, I'm not gonna add any more pieces of pumpkin to this,
but I'm gonna do one last thing,
to add one more level of complexity.
And just pop up the details, just a tiny bit more.
Level 12, painting the pumpkin.
We've done a great deal of sculpture and work on this thing.
Paint is a great way to accent all that hard work
to really make it stand out.
Personally, I like to only add a little bit of shadow
to get some accent in there,
because I like people to really see that, no that's pumpkin.
Even though with the details carved into it,
you get these nice dark spots,
pumpkin is light and it is translucent.
So, it doesn't necessarily give you
these nice defined shadows,
white is defined as you might want them to be.
I personally prefer using an air brush.
I know that's a tool that a lot of people don't have,
it's kind of a specialty device,
but you can use your acrylic paint and a little brush
and get some color in.
It is a very wet surface,
don't be surprised if you come back an hour later,
and he put your hand on it
and the paint just comes off on your hands
'cause it's not really gonna dry on this.
Don't worry about the noise,
that's just the air brush compressor pumping itself back up.
That's actually pretty quiet for an air brush compressor.
And now, this is our finished pumpkin, handsome as he is.
A completed pumpkin really builds on everything
that we've learned so far, in previous levels.
Once you've learned how to sculpt in three dimensions,
you really have to nail that realism at every angle.
We've added additional pieces to the outside of the pumpkin,
we've used lights to create accents.
We've incorporated multiple pumpkins to build this piece up.
And finally, we've actually used some paints,
really punch some detail and add shadow.
Level 13, pushing the limits. [instrumental music]
At this point, what we're doing
is basically just completely showing off,
you're taking the pumpkin and using it,
not as a pumpkin really anymore, just as raw materials.
You're often taking it and turning it into something
that no longer resembles pumpkin at all.
You're using what you learned in terms of sculpture,
in of thickness of the pumpkin, and how sturdy it is,
and attaching it together.
The design that I've got for this level is,
the upper torso of a pumpkin zombie.
Now I've got this deal armature that I've built,
covered in wiring mesh,
and I'm gonna be taking pieces of the pumpkin
and layering it on to that armature.
You can't build an armature out of just like PVC pipe
and a dowel rod, if you're gonna be stacking
a lot of pumpkin on it.
You need steel, you need heavy amounts of woods
to make sure it can hold.
The other problem is those heavy pieces of pumpkin,
they break, these slide off.
Pumpkin is slippery, it does all sorts of stuff,
so you have to figure out a way to anchor it to that frame.
And I've also got servos mounted inside of the head.
So, we've put a pumpkin on top of that end
hopefully it'll move, once it's all done.
It's trying to do everything that none of these materials
want to do.
Level 13, breaking every rule.
I based it off of zombie movies that I've seen,
Mongolian armor and just way too much time spent
playing video games and watching horror flicks,
and happily, it all actually works.
These represent my levels of pumpkin carving,
other carvers will certainly have their own interpretation
of what that means, but this is what complexity means to me.
The future of pumpkin carving is taking traditional
jack-o'-lanterns like this,
developing new techniques, and building,
and trying new things.
Very much like we've done here today,
and it'll just keep progressing like that into the future.
Thank you wired. [gentle upbeat music]
