2012-Day 10- Scenes from the upgraded Mansion

Entrance hall. Notice the 'real' webs! Skeleton and stacked books prop with chandelier a little further back.

Chandelier view from the foyer

Ghouls, this was a huge upgrade from last year! We got rid of the cheesy scene-setter sheeting and replaced it with foam 'wooden' panels you can see on the right. Probably the biggest breakthrough this year was use of a web gun to create the webs. I'm telling you this stuff is amazing! Here is an instructional video from Haunted Props that explains how it works. These webs look and feel like the real thing. We installed the chandelier at the back of the hallway.

2012-Day 16- Rolling update

Vortex bridge reassembled!

Chandelier nearly complete. One arm needs to be reattached.

The vortex bridge assembly was completed yesterday. I had a friend come over to help and we finished it in just over an hour! No significant degradation yet of the wood components now in the 3rd year of use. Next we will test the motor and put the fabric up. So actually the vortex is right now a little ahead of schedule. The rest of the haunt is getting there but I think we're a couple days behind. The chandelier is about 90% done but we had a glitch with one of the arms coming off after the glue failed (see image above). The problem is the inner pvc is also glued and when you screw the arm into it, it might actually increase the stresses on the glue. So far 5 out of 6 arms look fine. We do have a 'plan B' which is to use wooden dowels instead of pvc which can be screwed into the base rather than glued.

2012- Day 21- Chandelier update

Corpse arms complete with collars. We will have to add the chain links to the collars in the next few days for the final installation!

We're working on putting together the pieces finally! The arms are done. You can see a couple of them here holding the candles. It is possible, Ghouls, to bend the fingers into a fist once the latex and painting are totally done. You might have to add a drop or 2 of glue to hold the candle in there depending on how the fingers can bend around it. Now you might have to touch up some paint around the knuckles after positioning the fingers but I think I will do that once the chandelier is actually hung. The collars are easily screwed into the forearms with a single screw after predrilling. You can see how they effectively hide the connection between the hand and forearm like I mentioned earlier! Two additional challenges if you wind up doing this. One is how to connect the arms to the hexagonal base which you can see toward the upper right of the image. I decided to overengineer the construction to increase the durability by first routing into the wood a depth of maybe an inch or so, then gluing a short pvc segment into it. This way I can screw the arms into the pvc as well as glue them into the base. The original design by Merlin has an additional collar on the other end as well as the wrist. My arms had to be much shorter because of space and I wanted people to be able to see the forearm detail so I left out the additional collar. The other design consideration is the electrical wiring. I bought the candles already wired, so these paired wires (one positive, one negative) can be fed through the pvc from the base of the hand out the end of the forearm pretty easily. You don't need an extra conduit to stick in there.

2012- Day 25- Corpse arms road show

Completed corpse hands and forearms. Don't worry about the apparent hand to forearm width difference. The collars will hide those transitions!

I have to work on the road this weekend and here at an old colonial inn in New England. This place could easily be a haunt. It would be perfect! Huge rooms with 30 foot ceilings and hardly any sunlight coming in here. Very few people here. Lots of empty space. At any rate I decided to bring the materials I'm using for the corpse chandelier. Today the rest of the latexing was finished for the hands and forearms. I had to shorten the forearms from Merlin's original design because I don't have as much space in the mansion hall. The hand to forearm transition will be hidden by the collars which I did paint but have not yet attached here, so you will not see the edge of the pvc against the hand like you do here. Tomorrow I will paint the extremities a nutmeg brown color. One thing I found was that in order to make the forearms look more realistic they have to be  a little wider at the base. I used the cotton balls but also added tissue wrapped around the base to hold the cotton in place after applying the latex. You can then use a toothpic or pencil etc to draw in the tendons and tissue planes

2012-Day 29 Corpse chandelier update

One of the 6 corpse hands which will  be connected to the chandelier base

The final October schedule is under way. Corpse chandelier must be hung and entrance hall done by the 15th! As I mentioned in an earlier post I found this prop idea on the Monster page of Halloween project links.  Please bookmark this page Ghouls! There is a ton of cool stuff on there and there isn't any reason you necessarily have to reinvent the wheel as it were! Be forewarned this prop is taking a lot longer than advertised! Fairly cheap to make not including the candles, but a LOT longer than a couple of hours. Give it at least a couple of weeks. The hand shown here probably took about an hour by itself. The directions are clear enough. They can be found here. Thank you Merlin! When you make them be sure to familiarize yourself with a hand skeleton and understand there are multiple bones. Four segments for each except the thumb which has 3. The longest segment is at the bottom called the metacarpal. The rest are called phalanges. Notice the relative lengths of the individual digits and how the long finger (3rd finger) is the longest, index and ring are approximately the same length and small finger (fifth) is the shortest. Model your hands after your own. That's the easiest way to get the lengths right! You can get the bic pens at a dollar store for a couple dollars.Remove the pen portion, then cut the plastic tubes to match the lengths of the finger segments like you see here or in Merlin's tutorial. Take pieces of wire hanger and slide the segments over it. Use a 1-2 inch by 4-5 inch PVC piping to install the fingers onto. I used a hammer to flatten one end of the PVC. You don't have to crush the end totally. Just flatten it enough so you can drill 5 holes across the top. Start with the thumb hole on the side about 1" down from the end and use about a 1/8" drill bit, then drill the other 4 holes across the top about 1/2" from the end. You want the thumb hole set down and on the side a bit. Attach the digits by sliding the end of the wire into the holes. You can bend the end of the wire inside the PVC to stabilize the digit in the rough position you want. Then take your duct tape to secure them. If you are running wire through the arms make sure to leave an opening in the end of the PVC by the palm of the hand. Don't close it off with the tape. I have to wait and see if I am going to need an actual conduit to get the wire through the arm to the center of the chandelier. I don't think so. Finally if you plan to have the hands hold the candles you should cut the tape in the webspace between the thumb abd the index because you will need to bend that thumb way down eventually.

2012- Day 81 -Flicker candles

We're busy making the crypt upgrades. I did manage to pull some vines and some creepy looking twigs etc from the yard. I also did one coat of gray on the crypt ceiling. We'll see if that takes out the shine.
I have everything for the chandelier except the mask latex. Looks like I'll have to go online for that, but we will have to make the thing first. It looks very involved. I don't know how these guys can say this takes only a couple of hours! One of the keys, Ghouls, is obviously the candles. We are all looking for the ultimate candle that looks real but isn't! Now I know there are some Wizards out there that can do these from scratch. I am not a Wizard. I'm more of a mad scientist. I am going to concede the candle making and instead I found these things called Rosco candles , "indistinguishable from real flame". OK well let's not get carried away, but so far, and I have been looking for a couple of years now, they are the best I have seen. They come wired and you just connect to a 9 volt power source. Here is kind of what it looks like:

2012 Day 94- Corpse chandelier

Our 'big' prop project this year will be the corpse chandelier. I have a chandelier prop that we have used in the past which does have a shake motor built into it, but it hasn't gotten a lot of attention. You can see that prop here in the top image. It's kind of cool, but I thought we needed something with a little more creep to it. I found the solution a couple of years ago searching through the 'Monster page of Halloween project links'. Those of you who are not familiar with this resource really need to investigate it! Don't feel you have to come up with everything on your own and reinvent the wheel!  Here at the 'Halls of Doom' most of the sets, props and effects are tweeks of  previously developed projects, many of which are found on the Monster page. One of these, the corpse chandelier, is perfect for the upgrade of the Mansion hallway we are looking for! I probably will not build the candles from scratch though.

2012-Day 136- We're Baaaaaaack!

Welcome back all you goblins and ghoulies from Halloweens past! We are BACK again for Halloween 2012! Can't believe it! The Nightmare before Christmas 2011 came and went..and we definitely survived. So now a couple of things. You will notice the posts have the year first before the day countdown. I thought this would make more sense since it is the 3rd (or is it 4th?) year of the blog. The next very important thing is to look at the images I have for you today. Anything "spooky" you notice about them? Yes that's correct! We never took down the haunt from last year! WHAT! I made a very strong case to the mayor of Halloween town. (Guess who that might be!) My take on it was this: I went into the haunt after the cancellation from last year's freak snowstorm. I looked at all the magical stuff we put together: The haunted elevator with it's detailing and intricate pulley system, the crypt room with the crush wall and painstaking paneling details, the pepper's ghost mechanics including the track we finally got to work smoothly etc etc. Bottom line was this: there was no way this could be taken down and put up exactly the same way. Does anyone think that Da Vinci could repaint the Mona Lisa EXACTLY as it was..OK a little exaggeration, but you get my point. Since we were going to do the same build anyway, it would have been a disaster to have to take this stuff down. It would never have worked. So my case was considered and the Mayor consented. Thankfully the winter was very mild as we did not have a garage!

Back panel of the elevator to the right

Crush wall. I did take down the exit door from the crush room

Entrance hall

And now it's back to work. Just because there was no take down does not mean we're finished. Noooooooo! It means we need to go one step further.
1) Better video coverage. I do have a new camera so we should have time to do this better
2) Upgraded mansion entrance hall. We have extra foam etc we can use and will replace the chandelier with one 'more appropriate'. Better scares for that section
3) Finish the crush room detailing. The back wall was not really done
4) The one capital expense this year will be a web gun. The store bought webs just don't cut it
5) Added sound for the pepper's ghost
6) A nicely detailed haunt entrance doorway with great fx sound and light
7) PLENTY of time to test and retest the whole set. No excuses this time

Day 6- Some front hall details

The entrance hall is a standard mansion set with the pictures along each wall. Please refer to the plan diagram in post on the right side of this page. Last 2 images show a quick and dirty 'drop panel'. We will have a picture mounted on the black board. The wood is a very dense particle board. I used some aluminum frame pieces from a shower door we took down for the side slots and greased the insides. We will have a ghoul actor stand behind the picture. As the guests go by the latch on the backside of the board is slid over to the left and the board falls with a crash!  The panel can be 'reloaded' using the eye bolt and latch. Very simple and cheap and took about 30 minutes to build. We also have our standard haunted chandelier. I wanted to make one but didn't have time so instead we are using a prop I have had for several years. It does have a shake feature which we will activate using an X10 module.