by Matthew Thompson
Hello everyone! For about a decade now, I have taken to making video game-themed Jack-O-Lanterns for Halloween each year. Cartoony platforming protagonists have become kind of my go-to for these pumpkin carvings. In the past, that has included the PS2’s holy trinity of Jak, Ratchet and Sly, the limbless wonder Rayman, and finally last year the legendary, mustachioed plumber himself Mario (in a Tanooki suit of course!). This year I tackled another platforming favorite of mine, Mario’s dinosaur buddy Yoshi. Now I am here to share some pictures of the carving. Here they are!
Here is a look at the whole thing. My original idea was to do a carving of the entire character, but it felt a little too similar to Mario’s from last year. So I decided to carve just Yoshi’s head on the front, but to compliment it with one of Yoshi’s eggs on the back. By carving it on the back, it projects the egg design onto the wall as you can see in the upper corner of the picture. I think it looks pretty cool!
Here is a closer look at the at Yoshi’s face. I usually do some cutouts, but was a little short on time and ended up just doing the shaving style for this one, so I’d be able to do the egg as well. As a result, this one turned out a bit simpler than some of mine in the past, but I still like the way it turned out. I think it captures the character well.
This is a look at the egg on the back. I had originally done this in the shaved style as well, but it wasn’t showing bright enough on the wall, so I had to call an audible here. I tried cutting out the center area leaving the egg’s spots attached by a tiny bit of pumpkin, but that just looked a bit sloppy still. I was going to have to get creative. Next, I just cut the two spots off (the half one towards the bottom stayed), smoothed out the edges of the egg, and then poked paper clips through the spots and back into the main pumpkin. Not going to lie, it felt a bit like cheating, but I think it looks way better. Having had to give up on one particular design years ago after messing something up, I was happy to be able to salvage this one.
That will do it for this post. I have added links to all my creations from past years below in case any of you haven’t had the chance to see them. Thanks for checking out my new carving and I hope you all had a Happy Halloween!
Link and Tetra from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
The Triple Option 
Love it!
Glad you liked it!
Wow! You are awesome at pumpkin carving 🙂
Thanks! I ended up entering this one in a contest online and won a $60 game of my choice as a prize! Was pretty exciting! I got Assassin’s Creed Origins.
Nice!! 😀 Congrats.
Awesome Yoshi! It’s very cool how the egg’s shadow is cast onto the wall.
Wow, that’s some real clean work!
Awesome design!!!