Our family's Halloween page. All about our props, costumes, special effects, and the lights and music which go into our haunted house display. Pics and explanations and short video clips showing the actions.
Got a bit warm here today- high 80s and a bright toasty-thing in the sky. Still, a good day for cutting and texturing foam. First up was the foam knife and heat gun- I cut the foam boards into blocks, then used the heat gun to add details:
After that was done, I applied Monster Mud to all the panels- right now they're beige, but we'll be painted and dry brushing and stippling and washing them to create more of a stone effect.
Once the outer wall textures are finished, the next step will be to complete the interior- either paint or Scene Setters stone wall pattern. Once that's done, we'll assemble the structure and build a roof, complete the details for the exterior, and begin work on the doors, broken wall, and rear wall; this looks into the garage, so it's the last part to complete before we tackle the interior project.
Lots to do still, but the hardest parts are behind us now.
Got the walls to the crypt entrance built and did a quick test-fit. Next step will be to permanently fasten them, cover the insides (canvas and scene setters), then start texturing the outside. Final steps will involve building a roof and adding architectural details like moldings, trim, etc.
Went to the building supply store this morning, eager to buy the foam board and 1x2"s to build my crypt entrance. They didn't have 4x8' board, but they offered a discount on 2x4' boards, so I bought (what I thought was) enough for both projects...
I had the schematic with me, and it spelled out how many boards I needed for the two projects. Since I was getting 2x4 instead of 4x8, and since 2x2=4 and 4x2=8, I reasoned that I needed twice as many of the smaller boards as I had listed in the larger sizes. Having completed my purchases, I returned home and commenced laying out my wall.
Aaaaannnddd....it all went "pear-shaped." If you saw this coming- congrats! Turns out, through some bizarre property of math, that you need four 2x4' boards to equal one 4x8' board. In one fell swoop, I went from more than enough for both projects to a bit more than enough for one project.
Meanwhile, the adhesive wasn't bonding to the foam properly, which meant my boards didn't stick to the wooden frames. The wood glue didn't adhere to the wood, so the frames fell apart. And it was hot and sunny, so I got cooked and burned.
For a day's worth of work, all I have to show are two boards glued to two pieces of wood, various other pieces of wood cut to length, and sunburn.
That's right, it's Walpurgisnacht- that Central/Northern European festival where witches are said to dance around bonfires in celebration of Spring. Six more months to Halloween- getting ready yet? Lots to do before game day...
Finalized our builds for this year's haunt, now we can start acquiring the materials and building a little at a time. The project list looks like:
Hard-wiring all the LEDs for the candles
Building a free-standing mausoleum
Building a free-standing entrance to our crypt
Building a crypt inside the garage
Creating a burial vault for the other garage door
Creating a free-standing tomb in the garage
Creating dried-out corpses
The basic plans for the structures are below:
The crypt entrance
The mausoleum
The basic ideas:
This would be perfect for the New Orleans-themed section.
Image courtesy of the Vatican
Image courtesy of National Geographic
Once the structures are built, they'll be extensively weathered and detailed. The crypt entrance will (ideally) have two wooden doors (foam really) or two wrought-iron (PVC) gates, and a broken section of wall on the side. The trick-or-treaters will enter the front gate, pass through the gap in the wall, and make their way to the front porch. They'll be able to look inside the garage to see the crypt scene, which will be lit with a blue spotlight above (a "moonlight" effect) and candelabras/candles for accent lighting. Inside the crypt entrance is still up in the air. I haven't decided what, if anything, to put in there. I'm debating either a "stained glass" window effect or just a painting on the unbroken wall, with more accent lighting.
The mausoleum for the New Orleans side will have Spanish Moss draped everywhere and maybe some flat tombstones on the driveway to give it a crowded look common in cemetaries in that area. Maybe we'll do a firefly lighting effect, and we'll probably have a static blacklit ghost in the mausoleum itself. Potentially may try a Pepper's Ghost effect in the crypt, we'll see how much time we end up with.
Welcome to 2014!
SpiderWitch, Drac Jr, and your gracious host had a most enjoyable holiday. And now that the Christmas ornaments are put away and everything is back to normal (more or less), it's time to start thinking about Halloween.
If we learned anything from last year, it's that we need more time to accommodate the last-minute projects and the stuff which doesn't work the way we envisioned. So we'll be starting in July. Which means we need to determine the project list, well, now if we're going to be ready to start.
SpiderWitch wants to do a New Orleans-themed vignette on the side of the house opposite the front door. Spanish moss, urns with flowers and candles in front of above-ground crypts, maybe some lightning bugs darting lazily among the trees. If we could open the crypt, perhaps a ghoul inside with a fluorescent light.
In front of the garage, we plan to put up a canopy and build some walls to represent a crypt entrance- wrought iron doors on rusty hinges will open up to a dark enclosed space; the garage door will be up, but blocked off by another wrought iron gate opening up on a crypt with skeletons resting on niches in the walls, and a central sarcophagus. Maybe a Pepper's Ghost type illusion in here.
Exiting through a hole in the "wall", the guests will make their way to the porch, where the front door will have been replaced by Drac's coffin lid. Maybe- this might be too scary, and honestly I'm still on the fence about it.
We're trying to figure out where to put "the girls"- our Weeping Angels. We plan to put at least one of them on a turntable and have her move in response to guests.
We're going to try to use social media to do a "dress rehearsal" where the kids can come out in costume and take pictures ahead of the big day.
Stay tuned, we'll be updating the blog with more projects...
Halloween 2013 is over. Months of prep, research, building, painting, testing- all down to one night. Blood, sweat, fortunately no tears. But a fair amount of blood. All for about 3 hours of trick or treating. Is it worth it?
Absolutely.
So many kids said "thank you for doing this for us." They thanked us for the time we spent making it, thanked us for putting in the effort, thanked us for making it special. "Thanks for giving us something to talk about tomorrow," one pair of teens offered.
Most of the kids made a point of telling us how much they liked the decorations. Parents too, but it's the kids we're doing this for. Today's trick or treater will be tomorrow's haunter, and we're giving them some great memories to draw upon. Thirty years from now, the kid who told me how great my house looked will be listening to another kid tell HIM how great his house looks.
Even better, there were many more houses with foggers, music, lights, and so forth. The trend in our neighborhood is for more decorations, and I have hopes that the next few years will see a golden age of haunted houses.
There were still the jerky kids who show up with little/no costume and barely mumbled trick or treat- but they were the minority and most of them came around. I can be...persuasive.
The fog machines put out too much fog- at one point we had zero visibility, and for much of the night the fog was actually covering about half the block- I turned it off as it was a traffic hazard.
It was a lot of work, and at the end of the evening I was completely beat- but riding a wave of euphoria from the great response.
The angels proved to be a big hit, and surprisingly scary. Quite a few kids (and adults) didn't want to come up to the house because of them. I made several trips down to the sidewalk to deliver candy to little ones too frightened to come up.
Can't wait for next year!
Drac, Drac Jr., and the SpiderWitch pose for a family photo.
The fog begins to creep across the yard
Drac Jr. prepares to venture in search of candy
About 6pm, foggers haven't really chilled the vapor yet- that's why it's billowing up instead of across the grass. Still, makes a nice, eerie effect and if you're already expecting something to jump at you, the fog intensifies that fear- so many kids completely freaked themselves out without me doing a thing!
From the front porch looking out. The music is "Translyvania" from Nox Arcana. GREAT music, well worth what I paid for it.
This is a pretty representative video of the evening. There are the kids who only want the candy, the kids who like the decorations, and the kids who are REALLY impressed.
