These are some Halloween decorations you'll never want to take down
If you're anything like me, you know that spooky decorations aren't just for October – you've got to show your love for Halloween all year long. What better way to do that than with a gorgeous art piece like the ones made by Unwrapped Art?
I recently had the chance to ask the artists behind Unwrapped Art some questions about their work, which they describe as "[making] unique scenes with collectible figures that show a moment captured from the life of the character. To put it simply, we like to make these collectibles come alive". For clarity, all their answers will be in quotes.
Of course, many of the characters their art is based around aren't so much coming "alive" as "undead" – their work is frequently inspired by all things Halloween and horror related. The reason why is pretty simple – "Its what we like! It made sense to us, and we saw a market for these items after so much customer interest."
Their reason for starting their own online shop is similarly succinct: "We’re both artists who enjoy collectible figures and making scenes. If we didn’t make these to sell, we would probably be making these for ourselves".
As for what specific Halloween movies they like, there's (perhaps unsurprisingly) quite a list – "The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Crow, Donnie Darko. Frankenstein, Dracula, Boris Karloff’s Black Sabbath, Beetlejuice, and many more."
So, how exactly do they go about making a scene? Well, in their own words, "We get a figure, and we examine it for a while. Taking in account, its expression gesture, and personality of the character. Our imagination then inspires us to create a scene from their world, or invent a new one. We let the figures speak to us mostly, testament to the original character design and how well the life of the character has been captured as a figure. We are currently experimenting with accessories, props and characters that never made it into any other type of production beyond film. We’d like to make completely new adventures or scenarios for the characters. Something like letting the story continue, or acting out a sequel that never took place".
Clearly, they're pretty passionate about all their work. However, I was interested to know what stood out as their favourite creations. Again, they provided a list: "The Large Corpse Bride Scene, that it captures the mood of the film; something like a living poster. The Horror window scenes, are a creation from my imagination displaying a terrifying character looking through a window at the viewer. When you look at these pieces you become part of the scene, experienced by those characters in the story. Intentional breaking of the fourth wall, almost like a mirror the viewer gets to look in, and the subject is doing the same. Also any pieces that are completely made from scratch, knowing that they don’t exist anywhere else in the world fuels are creativity further in bringing more items to life".
The pair have been creating and selling art for a while now, and in that time they've done some pretty interesting things – things like selling their art at events, and meeting other spooky creators. While the pandemic is currently limiting these opportunities, they're excited to do more events "once it’s safe...whenever that happens again. We’ve experienced much growth online since the start of the pandemic, so we’re eager for our followers to have the chance to view our work in person".
As for other spooky creators, they had lots of good things to say about other people in the community. "@whimsy.in.wonderland has been a huge supporter and she has some great Halloween items this year. Also @creationsbyhailey, @gothicbetties and @blissnknotcrochet have very nice handmade items and we’ve received nothing but support from them. We appreciate the tight-knit online small business community and would like to shout them all out!"
If you want to see more Unwrapped Art, or even commission your own piece, you can follow them on Instagram – and, hopefully, someday in the future they'll be back at live events that you can attend.