Ray Villafane's 3-D Pumpkin Carving Tutorials DVD

Loved the Villafane 3-D Pumpkin Carving Tutorial DVD because it had three degrees of carving difficulty for a person to start to try. Along with the DVD, I also purchased Villafane's carving tool kit so I could follow along with his tool use instructions for carving. You get advice on how to select your best pumpkin for carving as well as how to carve each part of a face, 3-D wise. Using the video instructions, I practiced on apples, potatoes,and small pie pumpkins before I carved my really big Jack O Lantern pumpkin. I must say, that while I was not in league with Mr. Villafane, I surprised myself on how good my 3-D carved pumpkin came out in the end. I was complimented on it through out the month of October. I highly recommend this tutorial DVD to anyone! Kids will love a new way to decorate a pumpkin, plus the tool kit tools, with no sharp edges, are relatively safe for kids. I say relatively because kids can hurt themselves with anything, and because a paring knife, while not included in the kit, was featured a lot for detailing the features of the carved faces. Cant wait for next October!

Ray Villafane is extremely talented and his creations are phenomenal but he is difficult for a novice to follow. There is no step by step to give you the basics. He starts the piece and then goes back to the same features over and over again adding more depth and detail. I had to replay DVD over and over again.. Everyone loved the pumpkin I created and I was pleased overall with the purchase. It does take practice so make sure you purchase more than one pumpkin and pay close attention to his instructions on selecting a pumpkin. Proper dimensions are key.

I used this video to learn and enhance my own pumpkin carving abilities. I love the way Ray Villafane explains how he does his amazing works of art when he carves pumpkins. In this two DVD set, Ray walks you through the most simple of pumpkin carvings to his most complex, where he shows you, not what to do detail by detail, but more importantly the steps and the principals that will allow you to use over and over every time you carve a new pumpkin! You can check out all the pumpkins I carved by learn Ray Villafane's simple pumpkin carving principals: http://youtube.com/c/paulomachadopumpkins

Lots of great tips and demos from one of the best pumpkin carvers in the world. I'm giving it 3 stars because of two things.. the picture quality is fairly poor, very difficult to see details. The second reason is that both dvds came loose and scratched up in the package. They barely stay in place. Upon my first viewing the DVD would freeze and skip because of this. For 35 bucks, I'd expected decent packaging. Again, the content itself is great, I'd just hoped for better picture quality and clean, scratcheless dvds.

Ray is a true artist and the video deals with shadowing anatomy and other aspects that translate to any media. The video is very long and very detailed. You get to watch the development of his artwork. Ray's teaching skills make the video informative as he drills the concepts into your head.This is one of the best teaching videos I have ever watched.Before this video I believed Ray to be the best pumpkin carver out there. Now I see he is a true artist and a great teacher as well.

The tutorials are effective as Ray clearly explains the important details of his carving process and also gives guidance on how to accomplish your own designs through your own creativity. I was very surprised to see that I could not only understand his process, but I was actually impressed with my own results as I carved my own pumpkin! It's not nearly as great as Ray's are, but I was thoroughly surprised with what I had done!

I am a huge fan. Ever since I saw Ray Villafane on the pumpkin wars, I was hooked. He is insanely talented and does a wonderful job going into detail exactly how to sculpt a pumpkin. There really isn't many words that can describe Ray Villafane and his work, he's simply incredible.. If you've ever wanted to learn how to carve/sculpt pumpkins, I highly recommend this video. It's outstanding.

Wish I could attach pictures of my 'BEFORE-watching- the-video' and 'AFTER-watching- the- video' pumpkins. It's proof that these videos are worth every cent. My first 3-D pumpkin (before I bought the video) got comments like, "oh, that's cute." But my 1st 3-D pumpkin AFTER watching the video got comments like, "holy crap! How'd you do that?!" If you want a better pumpkin, you gotta get these DVDs.