Again, I really appreciate the kind words. The thing I think that makes him work so well are the eyes, they have a lot of detail in them. I have to admit some of the ones I do are pre-made patterns, but not all of them. All of them do however consist of some shading and some cutting, that really helps to get the 3D effect.
I used to buy those pumpkin-master books from Wally-world and do the cut out thing, but I wanted to step it up and after a lot of research and trial and error, this is where I am now. I also sell them locally, I do special requests of all sorts of things, and portraits of people which come out really good. I end up doing a lot of pumpkins of people's kids(for obvious reasons I don't want to post pics of them here) and those obviously have no pattern. I start with the picture and modify it into a pattern on photo-shop before I start carving.