(scary music) (person panting) (scary music) (person panting) (scary music) (tool scraping the pumpkin) - I am Brian Bateman.

I am a professional pumpkin carver, this time of year.

(scary music) I think I originally got into it just carving cool pumpkins for my kids and just pushing myself to see how far I could go and I discovered that I could go pretty far.

(dog barking) I thought it would be fun to do him with the helmet.

You don't usually see Thanos with a helmet on but I thought it'd be fun to do it with a helmet because I could use the pumpkin itself as the helmet.

So the first thing I did was draw the helmet.

(upbeat music) You scrape away a thin line of the pumpkin with it because it's V-shaped there.

(upbeat music) My next step is gonna be to carve away everything here in the face.

(upbeat music) And at this level, you don't want to carve deep 'cause you want to leave yourself a lot of thickness.

(tool scraping the pumpkin) It's weird narrating my carving.

I feel like, I feel like Bob Ross.

Just gonna paint some nice little trees and a little deer over here.

(scary music) The truth is, I'm good at what I practice and so are you.

Everybody gets better at whatever it is they practice.

So, so definitely the pumpkins I carve today are better than what I was carving 15 years ago.

(scary music) So an internally lit pumpkin really has to be carved in the dark in order to get the right effects.

So, when I'm carving an internally lit pumpkin I have to start with the light bulb on inside the pumpkin.

I use an LED bulb 'cause it doesn't get real hot.

And, and so I'm sitting in the dark and the thinner the skin, the brighter the spot.

So it's, it's sort of the opposite of what's intuitive, you know?

And that's why it's important to do it in the dark.

When you turn the light on it really doesn't look like much.

So those kinds of pumpkins only look good, you know, on your front stoop at night, or in a dark room or a dim restaurant, things like that.

And then, there are 3D pumpkins, which is like more, if you've ever seen Ray Villafane those are the types of pumpkins that he does where you don't even have to empty out the pumpkin.

You don't have to carve out the insides.

You just carve your image right into it.

(intense music) You really kind of have to just eyeball it.

You can't, you know, because you're scraping off the skin at the beginning and just going for it.

There we go.

It didn't even occur to me until I was watching videos that it's important to keep spraying your pumpkin to keep it moist.

Man, that made such a big difference.

(upbeat organ music) (water bubbling) I have these, these glass marbles that are kind of flat and we'll see how that works.

(upbeat organ music) Oh my gosh, I'm scared.

(upbeat organ music) It helps to have a background in drawing and art and things like that.

But however your pumpkin looks the first time you try to do a complex design, you just keep trying.

You just keep trying and practicing and you get better at it.

(upbeat music) (intense music)