Noel Dickover a man living in suburban Virginia has created the ultimate Halloween pumpkin carve for Star Wars nerds. The father-of-two has mastered a sculpted pumpkin in the shape of the famous film’s Death Star. He also has hundreds of intricate designs for monsters, fantasy characters, and even Si-Fi favourites – check out his tutorial if you’re in need of tips see link below.
The Death Star, from the movie Star Wars, can be considered a hybrid “pumpkin carve/pumpkin sculpt”. Pumpkin carving involves using the pumpkin almost as a surface for an image that is carved into the pumpkin. This is pretty much a 2D image. A pumpkin sculpt uses the pumpkin itself as a 3D object. Because the pumpkin itself is the object and not a pattern on a pumpkin, we can probably call it a sculpture. But unlike most sculptures, the way you carve it is exactly how you might do a pattern.
How Long Does it Take, and Is it Worth It? In all, if you start with a large pumpkin, you can expect to spend anywhere from 4 – 10 hours in making your Death Star. If you’ve never spent this long on a pumpkin, Noel can only tell you that if you’re hoping for an awesome reaction, you will have a very hard time beating the Death Star. This thing is a HUGE hit with everyone. Even jaded teenagers are blown away. Even online, check out last year’s Wired.com’s contest for the geekiest pumpkin carves, and you’ll see the Death Star sitting HIGH atop some absolutely terrific competition.
What Skills are needed?: This tutorial assumes you have done pumpkin carving before. Specifically, where you can either cut all the way through, cut just the skin off or leave the pumpkin skin on to have a 3-color pumpkin. If you’re even mildly fluent with this type of pumpkin carving, you should find that Carving the Death Star is quite easy, if time consuming. If you need to learn the basics, highly recommend going to the CarvingPumpkins.com Instructions section, and then to visit the Q&A board for questions.
Read more on Noel’s website here