The 9th Annual Zombietoberfest was just held in Audubon Gardern District. If fell on the same day as one of my Orlando Urban Sketch Workshops, so we used it as our location. With parking sparse, I parked several blocks away and walked to our meeting spot at Stardust Video and Coffee. We were two students short, so we waited for a while in front of Stardust and then decided to get rolling while the zombies were still shuffling about. The quick lesson and worksheets advised artists to do a sheet of zombie studies that focused on gesture and building the figures from simple shapes.
Since this was a very crowded event, the challenge was to find slow moving zombies. Fast energetic zombies would be impossible to sketch. For instance, a zombie taking a selfie would only take a few seconds before they turned and walked away. I decided to focus on Deviant Dollz, founded by artist Linda Janssen. This collection of miscreant dolls seem possessed or the victims of a horror movie.
Several grand parents picked out a doll for their grand daughter who made a magnificent bloody zombie. I didn’t see their choice, but the grand daughter decided she would prefer a bloody and beaten Raggedy Ann doll that looked like she had been abused by Raggedy Andy. Pam Schwartz begrudgingly explained the teddy bears to me. They were tied together in such a way so that their snout was up another bear’s butt. Apparently there is a film called the Human Centipede in which the people can only survive if they eat the excrement from another. The goal was to see how long the people could survive without being fed. I don’t think i need to see that film.
There was perhaps one zombie for every 40 attendees. The most popular zombie costume seemed to be females in bloody prom dresses. I’m not sure a zombie film has been made yet in which zombies invaded a prom, but it cold make and interesting premise. The Deviant Dollz booth was incredibly popular so I spent most of my
time trying to look around the crowd to see some of the dolls. Keeping track of all the artists in the crowd was impossible, so I let them all wrestle with the sketches on their own. Afterwards, we all met near the bloody zombie snow cone food truck to compare drawings and take a group photo.
