Took Last Night Off!

Hey everyone,

I have to report that no work was done on the Hollow last night.

So, why report that?

Because we got last minute tickets to see the Steve Miller Band!



Man, what a night.  It was so much fun and I got so many videos.  I posted Jet Airliner because it's one song, for some unknown reason, I wasn't singing throughout!  Not sure why I wasn't singing.  It's a great song.  Must have been giving my voice a rest.  But, that's a good thing!  Because I wanted to post something but didn't want to beat anybody down with having to hear me sing.  No person should ever have to listen to that!

I know, I know.  This has nothing to do with Halloween but it is the reason that work on Hollinger Hollow came to a screeching halt for one night and I thought I should explain.

OK.  Back to work.

Talk to you all later!

Spider and Pumpkin Updates!

Hey guys,

Just a few quick updates from earlier this week...

The Spider is coming along nicely!

Staple Pumpkin will glow green!

Pre-Treatment!

Looking more and more like a pumpkin!

Work also continues on the Haunted Tree but I don't have any really cool pictures to show so more updates on that to follow.

Later!

Starting the Tree!

Hello everyone,

I'm still waiting on the delivery of the parts needed to make this years new and updated attractions so this last weekend we started working on the tree that will hold my wife's pumpkin creations!

And just how are we going to construct our Haunted Tree?

Yep.  We're going to attempt making a 7 foot tall tree out of PVC, chicken wire and Great Stuff foam.

The "skeleton" of the tree walking like an Egyptian!

Decided to add a sturdier base. Used zip ties to attach the board. I LOVE zip ties!

I added the newspaper to help the chicken wire keep it's shape. It's not really needed but it did give the Great Stuff something extra to hold on to.

This took 14, 16oz. cans of Great Stuff!

After an hour of finishing the chicken wire and adding another 12 cans of Great Stuff I have the trunk of the tree. That's right! It's a tree!

And that is where we are at the moment. 

So, why did I do the things I did? 

The skeleton of the tree is to hold the branches.  I didn't want to just stick some PVC into the sides of the Great Stuff trunk and hope they stayed attached.  The legs and spine of the skeleton is 3/4" PVC and the branches is 1/2".  The TV Screen (as my wife likes to call it) at the top of the skeleton is so I can get the PVC Fittings where the branches attach to the side of the tree. The fittings actually extend through the chicken wire and are left exposed on the sides.

Doing just the trunk used all of the Great Stuff I purchased so the rest of the week I will shave/shape the foam to look more like a tree trunk. 

I will let you know how that goes.

Later!

Pumpkin Display... Dare We Try This?

Hey everyone,

This year we want to show off some artificial pumpkins my wife has been making and we were really trying to come up with a cool way of displaying them.

Well, this is what we came up with...

A Haunted Tree with branches that will hold all of my wife's pumpkin creations!

The picture, of course, is just some more of my animation and Photoshop "skills" at work.

The real question is are we able to build this, especially with all the projects we have left to finish and Halloween just a little over a month away?

Time will tell.

Later!

Working Hard!

Hey guys,

Been really busy this week.  Let's see what we've been doing.

So, this is the beginning of the Hot Coals prop we're working on to place in front of the Hell Hole. (The hands are for something else I'll show you later. You can also see the new columns in the upper right corner.  Still so much to do!)

Here is the fleet of pumpkins my wife is building for a new Pumpkin Display.

Here's my contribution to the Pumpkin Display.  I still have a lot more painting to do.

And my wife is also building a spider to add to our Spider Guy display.  I'm hoping to animate him.

We are also building something new for the Pumpkin Display that I will tell you about later.

Talk to you later!

Animated Tombstone!

Hey guys,

Those who regularly visit my blog may know I dab a little in animation.  I'm certainly no expert, it's just a little hobby I have.

Anyway, I've seen online, Mr. Chicken's Yard Haunt to be precise (http://chickenhaunt.blogspot.com/p/tombstone.html) where he projects shadows of creepy hands, cracks with roaches coming out, and various graveyard animals on a blank tombstone and thought how much I'd love to do something like that.  I mean, it's a tombstone!  I have a graveyard! It was like it was meant to be!

Of course, I don't want to use shadows in my video, since that is really very cool and I don't want to blatantly steal Mr. Chicken's idea, so I made my own little animation.

And, here it is...



So, the plan is to project that on a blank tombstone in the graveyard and set up some speakers to play the sound.

We have the little projector.  I'm just not sure about the sound yet.

I will eventually do a test of the prop and of course, I'll show you how that goes.

Later!

Building More Columns....

Hey guys,

We're back to building more gate columns.  Weeeeee!

I've outlined this a couple times in the past.  Click here, here and here to see everything that's involved.

So, I'm not going to beat you down with details since I've already done that in previous posts.  I just wanted you to know we're working hard!

Later!