A Dalek Year

Walt Keegan in Spotswood, New Jersey is spending a year building a Dalek! He explains, "For the past 7 years I have been building props for a Halloween Haunted House party that I do every year in my basement. Over that time I have taught myself a bunch of skills on how to build relatively low cost props. As part of a challenge to do something creative for 365 days, I decided to use it to build a full-sized Dalek from Doctor Who - (actually it looks like there may be 2 of them - one based on cardboard and one much more sturdy made of wood) something that I have called A Dalek Year."



Why did you decide to do this project? Last year I build the most involved and detailed props for a Halloween (We did an Alien movie theme) and as I start to run out of time, I fall back on processes and skills that I already know instead of learning new skills. I figured if I plan to give myself a year to build something big, I can ensure that I have the time to challenge my skill sets and learn new ones.



How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? While I just started this two weeks ago I have already tried 3 new paper mache recipes and tested a few different techniques. Ensuring that I do "something" on this project each day and account for it has also made me more responsible to do something creative everyday - and give myself time to try and make mistakes. I work in a corporate job where I really can't flex my creative muscles and need an outlet - and this has helped. I'll have more updates on how things change as I get deeper into the project.


Watch Walt's Dalek making progress HERE



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