Out of Darkness

10:09 AM - 7/6/2006

A Couple Favorite Disney World Props

9:31 PM - 7/3/2006

HauntForum Contest Voting Now Underway

2:13 PM - 7/2/2006

Got Some Inspiration Care of a Trip to FLA

1:36 PM - 7/2/2006

Halloween in June pictures

These are the only two pictures that I had the chance to take while working the Fright Fest NH haunt earlier this month...

I'm the good looking one in the middle...lol!

That is the costume I wore for 5 hours straight.  It was brutal hot in the building nevermind in the costume.  It was fun though, spooking never gets boring...

12:20 PM - 6/29/2006

The Head is Coming Together!

I finally got the face in the wig head working and look pretty good.  I broke one of the eyes and had to reglue the stem back on(Yeah, that's right, this man is able to break 2 ton epoxy).

  It was was probably oily from the eyeball juice.

The Nose and chin have been placed using glue and some extra Great Stuff that was oozing out.  The eyes have some tape on them for a temporary eyelids, until I can get to the finishing touches.

This picture of the back of the head shows, or really doesn't show, how the circuit board and switch of the Dougie has been carved into the wighead.  I'm going to add some wire to the speaker and hide it in the neck area and also use a 1/8" audio splitter coming out of the CD player so that I can use other speakers as well.  The Dougie speaker alone just won't do the job.

Here is a video of the face in action so far.

Witch Video

3:14 PM - Jun. 21, 2006

Halloween in June?!?!

A fellow New Hampshire haunter, Eric from Haunted Overload http://www.hauntedoverload.com/main.htm emailed me about another group of haunters in NH, Fright Fest NH http://www.frightfestnh.com/index.htm that are running a fund raiser this weekend.  They’re looking for people to come help out in running this event at their haunt to play the spooks for one night.  I was pleased that Eric had thought of me and sent the email about this, what could be better than Halloween in June?  C’mon, I had to do this!  So tomorrow night 6/15 I’ll be heading up to Nashua NH to see what the Fright Fest set up is all about and find out what I’ll be doing on Friday night for the actual event.  This should be a good chance to make some more Halloween contacts and have some fun at the same time.  I will post again and let you all know how this goes and what the haunt was like.

Please check out the links to these friends sites when you can!  Eric’s setup for Haunted Overload is incredible to say the least!  I can’t wait to see the Fright Fest haunt in person!

See Ya!

Paul

4:58 PM - 6/14/2006

Will this witch ever be done?

I had a little time over the past weekend to work on the never-ending witch project.  After reading Deathtouch's blog he has apparently thrown down the gauntlet and says he'll finish before me.  Of this, I have little doubt, things have gotten busier of late.  Anyway, there are some updates to show, nothing mind blowing though.

The Mad Martian eyeballs finally arrived and I was working on the head again....

I've also mounted the Dougie corpse into a wig head to give me something to work off of when creating the final features.  At this point I'm leaning toward some type of paper mache to finish with.

Just need to carve away any interfering foam and build out from there.

I also put the finishing touches on the cauldron, finally. (except for the orange lights, no big deal though)  The stirring stick is also just about done some finishing touches on the paint and it good to go.  Sorry didn't get a pic of it...next post, swear!

It looks decent enough                       Classic Mr Unpleasant

There should be more progress by the weekend, at least that's what I'm hoping.

9:47 PM - Jun. 13, 2006

Nothing started means nothing done...

Man I'm really getting sick of the rain we've been having up here in NH.  I haven't been able to get anything started on my dragon prop because of this weather, it sucks!  I have to build a frame for this thing and think I won't have room to do it inside correctly.  So outdoors is the place but it's very wet right now and has been for weeks.  Maybe sometime this Sunday I'll be able to start laying out some stuff and get my lazy ass in gear, before I know it it'll be OCtober and I'll be in the same boat as last year....WAY BEHIND!!

Hope all of you are having a better time at any new projects you have going together!

9:19 AM - 6/9/2006

Das Rot

  First of all, Happy Birthday to Bill (My Brother)

  If  imitation is the sincerest form of flattery the John at Pumpkinrot.com has to be one of the most flattered prop builders.  Hopefully my version will be just as complimentary...we'll soon find out.

Where do you get a cauldron to use as the head in May?  Why at a garage sale where else.   Thanks to the Stromville Fleamarket's giant sized version of a garage sale, I was able to pick one up along with some other items.  Even though Mrs Unpleasant is actually the Christmas Queen, she certainly has an eye for spotting the Halloween essentials that I need to create props.  So, a great big hug and thank you to her for all of her loving support.

Since it was fresh on my mind, I decide to start the PumpkinRot while I had some down-time from working on the witch project.  Here it is in it's humble beginnings

I don't know if you can see all the variation of faces I drew on the cauldron before I did any cutting.  It's important to get just the look and equally as import to measure twice cut once (ex-carpenter here after all).  You'd better believe that there are an equal amount of face attempts on the other side of the cauldron as well.  NOTE -  I HIGHLY reccommend the use of tin shears to cut the cauldron, I tried a few other techniques before these and nothing compared to the ease of cut of the shears.

11:11 AM - Jun. 2, 2006

The Witch on hold and a New Beginning

Well' I haven't posted anything in a little while, with the site being down and a trip to Lawrenceville GA to visit our best buddies.  That doesn't mean that there is nothing new to report.  I continued working on the witch project and got a little more of the painting done and began working on her head.

I definitely like the contrast of the bands, it's painted with acrylic met@llic paint(Antique Copper).  I still have to give it the rusty look but so far so good IMHO

These are pictures of the soon to be stirring stick.  I used a ppiece of 2" thick foam to carve a slot to accept the pipe and capped it with a piece of 3/4" foam.  It is all held together with caulk with seems to work very well on this foam.  While things dried...Let's Hack Dougie!

Before................................................................After being stripped of his dignity.

I got him all cleaned up and ready for the next step.  I'm waiting for some new eyes from the MadMartian (2 weeks so far).  So that's where it stands for now, so while waiting I think I'll get started on a PumpkinRot.

10:03 AM - May. 30, 2006

And the motor is...

6:18 AM - May. 10, 2006

Witch/Cauldron Continued

  Ok, over the weekend I had very little time to work on the prop but I did mange to get some time in.  It didn't take me long to realize that the motor was mounted incorrectly(That's what happens when ya build props mad), so the first thing I did was to get the neck movement operational.  It took some bending and some reconfiguring of the previous mounting but I got it all hooked up and working perfectly.

You may also notice in this pic, that the hand's armatures were also completed.  After that, the cauldron got a coat of black latex(matte finish) paint on the unfinished areas, so it's starting to shape up a bit.  I think the brass straps and rivets will make a nice contrast to the black of the cauldron. Here's a pic of the cauldron in it's current state.

Of course, work got busier today so the project is on hold for a few days at least.

4:08 PM - May. 9, 2006

Witch progress + My very 1st Rant(on a Blog at least)

       OK, yesterdays progress was decent thanks to a slow day at the office(which is actually in the house).  I was able to start assembly of the witch and do the caulking of the cauldron.  Everything was going smoothly, I had the stereo playin', the beers were cold and something was getting done.  Until (warning to readers, RANT to follow) I had to make a trip to the Home Creepo(I prefer Lowes but it's farther) to get parts.  Sometimes this prop building is as bad as doing plumbing which usually results in at least a half a dozen trips to the store.  This trip was a result of the bins at these DIY home stores being mixed up from other people taking sizes from one and putting them in another.  So I have to waste gas, time and money to replace the pieces that shouldn't be in my possession in the 1st place.  I know what you're thinking, I should be more careful with my purchase, Caveat emptor and all of that nonsense.  Well, two words for that, ______  _______ !(I'll let you fill 'em in, I'm going to try to keep this clean) Thats what they hire people(there's that word again) for supposedly, who am I kidding though, they are never around when you need them anyway.  So I had to wait in line(that's a whole other issue) and spend more time and money for three PVC fittings and one U-bolt, Unbelievable!

Man, I need to relax, 1....2....3............10.  OK, I'm alright now.  So here are some progress pics from yesterday.

This pic shows the point at which I was forced to abdicate my project and head to the afore mentioned establishment due to the wrong sized pieces and missing U-bolt(pictured).  If you noticed the splotch of Liquid Nails on the cauldron, it's a goof.  That's where I picked to start putting the rivets on and I didn't remember the board that goes on the outside.

This is where I finished for the day, with the arm assemblies and neck motor mounted.  In this pic you'll notice that there are no green lights in the cauldron, I forgot to keep them out after Christmas, so now I have to rummage through the attic.  I'm not looking forward to that.  All things considered a decent days prop building(for me anyway)

Yeah, yeah, I know my shop's a mess

8:43 AM - May. 4, 2006

Thanks ScareF/X

Thanks ScareF/X for the link to the face image.  I jumped the gun a bit and found another face that I used for the "Head in Jar"

It came from this face that I thought was creepy, the hair was courtesy of our golden retriever's tail.

I'll just have to have more than one face in a jar...what the heck, It's a great effect.

10:28 AM - May. 2, 2006

April Stinks!

It seems that every year around this time I get sick. Allergies play a big part of it, they sneak on me and I'm down and out for at least two weeks(This time it was 3 wks). So the prop building came to a halt, But in the past week I did manage to put a little bit of time into that. I started the witch and cauldron project inspired by scareF/X and BlackWidow. I've got the cauldron to it's pre painted stage so far with some minor design changes including scareF/X's recommendation of just putting a big screw through the arm into the stirring stick. Here are some progress photos... 

The motor is mounted using a 12" construction strap and a 5/4" piece wood. I chose to 5/4" wood instead of 3/4 because there is a good sized ridge running across the center of the bottom of 55 gallon drum. I wanted to be able to cut a groove in the wood to straddle that ridge. Also, I chose to use Styrofoam balls cut in half for the rivets to give them more dimension. I'll probably paint the straps a different color than the cauldron, maybe a brass or copper color, I don't know yet.

9:53 AM - May. 2, 2006

Halloween Toolbar

I have updated the IE Halloween Toolbar at http://www.halloweentoolbar.com .

12:51 PM - 5/1/2006

IE Halloween Toolbar

I started updating the IE Halloween Toolbar.  There are a few new features that I intend on adding such as the ability to search multiple search engines/sites from the toolbar.  A couple of other features I do not want to mention yet as I am still working out the bugs.

Go ahead and install the IE Halloween Toolbar and it will automatically update once the new features are available.

4:26 PM - 4/28/2006

BlogCrypt.com update

Recently updated blogcrypt.com with new and improved features such as:

• Private Messaging
• Better Mailing Lists
• RSS Feeds
• Ban IP Addresses
• Improved Pinging Of Blog Directories
• More Templates
• More Control Of The Design Of Your Blog
• Improved File Uploading System
• New Image Upload Feature Directly On WYSIWYG Entry Composer
• More Storage Space
• Owners Can Add Other Members (Co-Authors)
• Improved User Profile Page
• New Member Search Page
• Have More Than One Blog Under One Account.
  
  
  

11:21 PM - 4/16/2006

I swore I'd Never!....

 I swore I'd never start a blog, who has time for that.  Well, Here it is and apparently I have some time.  I guess, I just wanted to be in with the cool people of the HalloweenForum.com.  They are always saying Oh blog this, and such & such, blog that.  Well, here I am and I finally gave in to the peer pressure.  But this will help me stay motivated to get those props under way.  I'm starting earlier this year because my "Prop to do list" Isn't getting any shorter and I wanted to take it to the next level in '06'.  Definitely test the waters of pneumatics and add more "home grown" props to my haunt.   My haunt is just a yard haunt but I enjoy it, and TOT'ers seem to as well.

My 1st attempt this year is sort of a combination talking crank witch and a version of scareFX's Stirring Witch & Caudron (it's beautifully done). So with that said I've got to get busy!

3:22 PM - Mar. 31, 2006