Posted May 31, 20231 yr SPOOPY! (MOD please move thread to appropriate forum if necessary) In the last few years, I've been given a couple opportunities to design haunted and themed attractions. Not quite in the vein of "Imagineering" as so many of us quickly thought of back in our younger years, but more so on the freelance entertainment front. In 2018, I was approached by my hometown to design, build and run a "professional" kid-friendly haunted house. The theme was a dark twist on popular fairy tales, like Beauty & The Beast, Hansel & Gretel, etc. A year later in 2019, we put the haunt on, but it was honestly anything but professional (or financially successful) as a result of futile oversight, though it's something I learned a lot from, and I'll post some of that here. For this haunt, dubbed "Twisted Tales," we ordered a $6,000 actor-matronic dragon, but we got ripped off....so I decided to make one from scratch! His name is Chuck: I also carved and built our 12x4' logo sign: There's really very little photo/video wise of the inside of the attraction. But a walkthourgh lasted around 5 minutes, cost WAY too much for tickets (re: futile oversight), and lost a lot of money. I think the kids who acted in it had a lot of fun, or at least I hope they did. The haunt was not put on again the following year (because 2020), and it was never spoken of again after. There's a VERY detailed account of almost everything I did for this event on this thread over at Halloween Forum, should you be so interested. All the props, lighting, audio, costumes, set dressings, lumber, everything is currently in storage collecting dust. Breaks my heart ? Something, sometime, eventually...
June 1, 20231 yr Hot damn sir, that cardboard dragon is seriously impressive! I can't be that crafty with my hands in real life, I'd find a way to ruin it. One day I will go to one of your spoopy houses, mark my words. Also no worries about posting the wrong area, you posted it correctly! I ended up updating the forum title to include both digital art and arts/craft! there's this illusion of the reality, but it's not really really real, like it's beside and inside and inside and beside, but never on top.. nevermind, just kidding but not really
June 2, 20231 yr Author 23 hours ago, wolfpaw said: Hot damn sir, that cardboard dragon is seriously impressive! I can't be that crafty with my hands in real life, I'd find a way to ruin it. One day I will go to one of your spoopy houses, mark my words. You never know just how crafty you can be till you try! And nothing I do will ever warrant a trip to the opposite coast. But I appreciate the sentiment ? Here's a little something else I've made in the last couple of months - candles! They're for the Midsummer Scream Convention coming up in July. Needed a bunch for a satanic cult's sacrifice ritual. Ya know, just another day....but more on that another time. Something, sometime, eventually...
June 2, 20231 yr It's so cool how you can take ordinary things like that and make it look so good, come October I'll redecorate the site with spoopy things just for you. Also, if you won't come to me I'll come to you (I'll find you, no need to tell me where you are) ? there's this illusion of the reality, but it's not really really real, like it's beside and inside and inside and beside, but never on top.. nevermind, just kidding but not really
June 2, 20231 yr Well. This was impressive. I am fairly positive that I would ruin everything I touched in those photos. Thanks for sharing! "There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope." - Mark Twain
July 24, 20231 yr How on earth... this is insane! Creative, resourceful, and imaginative - great job! There's a great, big, beautiful tomorrow; shining at the end of every day.
August 9, 20231 yr Author On 6/1/2023 at 8:31 PM, wolfpaw said: It's so cool how you can take ordinary things like that and make it look so good, come October I'll redecorate the site with spoopy things just for you. Also, if you won't come to me I'll come to you (I'll find you, no need to tell me where you are) ? IT'S ALMOST OCTOBER!! On 6/1/2023 at 10:44 PM, Rhodedog80 said: Well. This was impressive. I am fairly positive that I would ruin everything I touched in those photos. Thanks for sharing! Everyone has craftiness in them, you just have to dig it out! On 7/23/2023 at 10:47 PM, Gin said: How on earth... this is insane! Creative, resourceful, and imaginative - great job! How? A lot can be accomplished with a really good hot glue gun and high pain tolerance (for when the glue drips onto your leg....and you're not wearing pants). Thanks Gin 💖 Another project I did back in '21 was build a model (not to scale, by any means) for a spooky house I wanted to create IRL. It started with chipboard. Each section of the "house" had magnets that held them all together: And then balsa wood: A little bit of paint, some rickety-looking shutters: A wittle teeny weeny doorbell: And the final painted product (I ran out of balsa to make a second pair of shutters): ok fine i was lazy and didn't want to BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! This spooky house model was a proof-of-concept for an interactive haunted house, to be built in the front yard as a facade. We live in a condo, and therefore don't have a yard, but the plan was to eventually GET a yard so I could built this thing out! Guests would walk up the porch, ring the doorbell, and the facade would come to life with any one of 20 randomized sequences. Some short edits of Halloween-centric songs, some jump-scare noises, sometimes nothing at all! Lights, fog, audio, and physical vibrations in the floor would all be part of the experience. And if you managed to stand and wait til the end of the chaos, the door would open and you'd get candy! Programming was done entirely via the Director Software on a Fright Ideas BooBox Flex MAX prop controller, running three 32ch DMX decoders (for the nano LEDs) and an ADJ WiFly Transceiver that fed eight ADJ Saber Spot Go lights. Something, sometime, eventually...
August 10, 20231 yr 9 hours ago, Kablary said: Everyone has craftiness in them, you just have to dig it out! Mine must be buried VERY deep... so deep that my (very crafty) mother could never dig it out! Seriously though, you're quite talented! FAR moreso than myself! The closest thing to "craftiness" that I get is much more practical... such as the PV power system I built with my father for my camper so I could have AC and a microwave when out camping... or the blueprints I made for the carpenters to follow to make our enclosed porch and the guest bathroom... or the whole-house battery backup I'm building for my home. Not so much "craftiness" as it is functional design, though! Your model for your facade is quite impressive. Best of luck with the full-size version! :^) The idea is to keep an open mind... just not so open that your brains fall out. - Harry Anderson
August 11, 20231 yr This is super awesome Kab! I love all the behind-the-scenes you've given us. I got curious and did some looking around on the BooBoxes and Director Software- that's a pretty cool ecosystem of electronics and software! I've dived into something similar for Christmas light displays and all of these systems are pretty costly haha I've also looked into designing my own wireless system based on inexpensive off-the-shelf chips like an ESP32 (I work as an Electronics Engineer now) but....maybe the extra $$ is worth the time saved. Thanks for sharing! I might be in need of your experience and advice on this kind of thing in the future! Looking forward to seeing more of your creations! Previous alias "Sino" Vimeo Soundcloud Spotify
August 11, 20231 yr Author On 8/9/2023 at 7:29 PM, RobertaME said: Mine must be buried VERY deep... so deep that my (very crafty) mother could never dig it out! Seriously though, you're quite talented! FAR moreso than myself! The closest thing to "craftiness" that I get is much more practical... such as the PV power system I built with my father for my camper so I could have AC and a microwave when out camping... or the blueprints I made for the carpenters to follow to make our enclosed porch and the guest bathroom... or the whole-house battery backup I'm building for my home. Not so much "craftiness" as it is functional design, though! Your model for your facade is quite impressive. Best of luck with the full-size version! :^) Ok I could never fathom what it takes to be able to put your entire house on a battery backup. But it's ok - I'm the guy you call when you need to disguise your devices as rocks or decorative planters 😉 37 minutes ago, Sinjon said: This is super awesome Kab! I love all the behind-the-scenes you've given us. I got curious and did some looking around on the BooBoxes and Director Software- that's a pretty cool ecosystem of electronics and software! I've dived into something similar for Christmas light displays and all of these systems are pretty costly haha I've also looked into designing my own wireless system based on inexpensive off-the-shelf chips like an ESP32 (I work as an Electronics Engineer now) but....maybe the extra $$ is worth the time saved. Thanks for sharing! I might be in need of your experience and advice on this kind of thing in the future! Looking forward to seeing more of your creations! Thanks Sino! You and RobertaME might be cut from the same cloth if you're getting into DIY electronics and engineering. The Fright Ideas ecosystem is indeed pretty cool. Most escape rooms nowadays use their EscapeKeepers to run all of the puzzles and doohickeys in those games. Did you look into Light-O-Rama for your Christmas display? I think those do pixel control (at least the more advanced systems), which isn't something I've touched. Let me know if there's anything I can help you with though! Edited August 11, 20231 yr by Kablary Something, sometime, eventually...
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