Creating Corporate Zombies: Buck The Norm Parade Part I

We're devilishly busy producing the second-year evolution of the Buck The Norm float for the Ghouls Gone Wild downtown parade this weekend. This year the float will be led by an undead horde of corporate zombies, who will represent "the norm."



So what does it take to create a ghoulish vision of the indebted and undead?

(My husband designed this year's Ghouls Gone Wild poster, tacked here in our Third Degree diner breakroom. He's lead art director at the Oklahoma Gazette who puts on the event.)



First: the perfect zombie hand. Lynn was quickly yanked out from behind his accounting desk, stuck under some dangerously exposed desk lamp bulbs, and forced to contort his hand into the perfect menacing claw.



We snapped the perfect shot.



And Lynn was a good sport.



And look at his hand (post Photoshop treatment, of course). It looks fake it looks so good!

These lightbox signs will be up on poles above the crowd, leading our zombies. This is Eaton Quade's warehouse, where get-it-done-Doug oversees all our float and large prop production.



Next step: creating costumes for our walking corpses.



These can't be just any old rag-tag, decomposing ghouls. These zombies are "the man." So matching corporate suits and ties for all, stuffed with money and complete with over sized coffee cups (also stuffed with bills.) Fake blood, green ooze, and all manners of clippings are now littering the back room of our agency. Yep, looks pretty much like any other day back there.



Last: the choreography. Teaching zombie steps like 1.) The Shuffle 2.) The Random Claw. How ironic that Kathleen is teaching TFCU volunteers how to walk like corporate zombies in their own boardroom. But, since it's a credit union boardroom, it's not quite so ironic.



Okay, that's not really the last step. There's so much more to do and share.

So wish us "buck!"

More to come after the parade. See last year's winning parade entry, here and here, awarded Beast In Show.