How to create your own Kerry King Pinhead

The latest issue of Metal Hammer is our most shocking of all time, and who better to feature on the cover than the mighty Kerry King… but we’ve given him a bit of a makeover.

But how did we transform the founding father of Slayer into one of the most iconic horror characters of all time? Well, with the aide of the rad guys at Magic Torch.

“It was quite tricky finding a decent head for us to build on,” says creative wizard Michael Chipperfield. “We settled on a cheapo polystyrene job from eBay and hacked it with a craft knife to try and match it to the shape of Kerry’s dome. The skin we used was designed for tattoo practice but was spot on for our needs – would’ve been perfect with a slight skin texture but you can’t win ‘em all!”

Here’s a step by step gallery of how it all came together…

“We got carried away with the animated version and shot loads of footage to back up the reveal of Kerry as Pinhead,” admits Michael. “We also built a 2.5D version of Kerry in Cinema 4D, allowing us to shoot him from slightly different angles compared to the original photo. With this we could pull off a convincing reveal and close-ups of the nails embedded in his head with a moving camera.

“If we had the chance to do it again we’d aim for more layers of gore under the skin, more glistening blood in the cuts, and a more convincing finish to the skin itself – but working in tight magazine deadlines, we couldn’t start again!”

Click here for your copy of Metal Hammer with Pinhead Kerry.

Metal Hammer

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