2008 - Ryuk

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For 2008 my daughters love of anime has matured a bit and she just loves the Death Note series. We were not sure which character to do as most are just humans that look pretty normal. She wanted me to do "L" but he just wasn't "Halloween" enough.

We found several pictures of Ryuk and with a blending of several images I had a design that I liked. Then, by hand in Photoshop, like all the others, I created the outline and then engineered the final design.

It is harder than most people think to create a pattern. First it has to look like the target character, but even more important, it has to be carve-able and the remaining pumpkin parts all have to connect and have enough support to not break. For instance, you can't have floating eyeballs, they have to attach. The weight of each part has to have enough pumpkin holding it in place to support its weight.

This year the pumpkin man outdid himself and got us a HUGE... make that GIGANTIC pumpkin, so part of my design was to have a pattern that could take advantage of all that space. This pattern even wraps around the sides a bit. This is my first pattern to have a lot of width, so we will have to see how well that works out.

If you want to use a smaller pumpkin, only do the head and hair and do not carve the body and shoulders. This should work pretty well and most fans will still know it's Ryuk just from the hair, face and the tell tale earring.

About Ryuk

Ryuk (リューク Ryūku?) is a fictional character of manga and anime series Death Note created by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. In the series, he is a Shinigami bored with the activities (or lack thereof) of the Shinigami Realm, so he decides to obtain a second Death Note and drop it in the human world for someone to find, hoping to relieve his boredom. He succeeds in tricking the Shinigami King out of a second Death Note. He deliberately writes the instructions inside the front cover (in English, which he assumed to be the most popular language in the human realm) so people would understand its purpose.

The Death Note is discovered by Light Yagami, and Ryuk follows him around for much of the series to see how Light uses it. Ryuk has a fairly humanoid appearance. His skin is gray, or a purplish color, his limbs are abnormally long, and he has bulging yellow eyes with black irises (red in the anime); in the films, he is represented by CGI. He is voiced by Shidō Nakamura in the Japanese anime and live-action adaptations, while Brian Drummond voices him in the English dub.

Ryuk is characterized by his constant amusement by, and apathy in regards to, Light's problems as well as his interest in humans. He enjoys seeing Light overcome the various challenges put to him, and often waits until the worst possible moment to inform him of a certain aspect of the Death Note just to get a laugh. He is occasionally helpful if it serves his own interests, such as obtaining apples or furthering his own amusement, but for the most part will jokingly ask Light what his next move will be or have Light explain to him the point of a certain action. He tells Light in the first volume he doesn't always look at what Light writes because he finds it more amusing. The sfist describes Ryuk as a "crazy-looking, supernatural creature with these wicked eyes" who becomes ("surprisingly") a "moral compass" for Light in the film version of Death Note.

Ryuk has a great fondness for apples, comparing them to cigarettes and alcohol for Shinigami (Shinigami apples are withered and taste like sand, as he shows Misa at one point, it even turns into sand after it is dropped in the human world), and will go through a type of withdrawal if he goes for too long without eating them. His withdrawal symptoms involve twisting himself up like a pretzel and doing handstands. He also states that he is shy around girls; when Misa hugs him he becomes intangible. In addition to apples, Ryuk is fond of video games, first shown in the omake eight-panel comic series, where he asks for a Silver Game Boy Advance SP, originally published in Weekly Shonen Jump Volume 4-5 (double issue) in 2005. On another occasion, Ryuk asks Light if he wants to play Mario Golf (changed to "video games" in the anime), but receives no answer since Light's bedroom is bugged with cameras.

As Ryuk explains when he first meets Light, he is bound to take Light's life when his time comes. In the manga, Ryuk does this after Light is shot several times by Matsuda. He desperately begs Ryuk to write the names of the investigation team and the SPK members in the Death Note, which he first implies he will do, but Ryuk, reminding Light that he is not on anyone's side, just writes Light's name instead. He was expecting Light might have thought of some way out of his situation, but seeing as he was desperate enough to go to Ryuk for help, he decided it was all over for him. Ryuk returns to the Shinigami realm.

In the anime, Light does not ask for Ryuk's help and manages to escape the warehouse thanks to Mikami's suicide distracting everyone else. However, his wounds are too severe for him to escape very far, and Ryuk, who is watching him from atop a pole, decides that following Light around during a prison sentence is not worth his time and thus writes Light's name in his Death Note, remarking that he had a lot of fun with him regardless. Light dies peacefully, with an apparition of L standing over him - mirroring Light standing over L on his death.

The second film ends in much the same manner as the manga, except Ryuk's silence leads Light to believe that he is willing to help. When Light learns differently, Light yells at Ryuk and jumps through him, trying in vain to stop his death before dying in his father's arms; before this, Ryuk takes this opportunity to reveal to Light that humans who have used the Death Note are unable to enter either Heaven or Hell regardless of their actions in life. In the spin-off L: Change the WorLd Ryuk offers L the Death Note, but when L refuses and proceeds to burn it, Ryuk moans about L being boring and disappears, returning to the Shinigami realm.