Cemetary Fence

This side looks a little cluttered---the furniture and birdbath will be gone. You can sort-of see Clara hanging on the porch--she'll be surrounded with the facade of a mausoleum soon!

















I like the un-even-ness of it.

















The majority of the tombstones will go on this side.

















Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out.

Happy Halloween!

Clara Flies!

After a few more modifications to the rig, Clara finally flies! I love the "thin" look but Suzi and I both want a little more width at the "shoulder" area. We're both glad we didn't go with some kind of frame underneat, but she's going to work on the draping of the cheesecloth to give her a little more width.

Of course I've yet to see a picture that does these ghosts justice and these are more of the same, but here she is:


















She's got GREAT movement. The crank shaft is 10 inches long giving her an approximate 20 inch range of motion! I also moved one "wrist" so they weren't equal distances away from teh cam.
















As you can see, I've also been busy building cemetery fence pieces. 5 down, 7 to go!


















We're also having fun with Halloween at work. BJ and I were asked to "Get Zombied" for a creative editing job on Night Of The Living Dead! I think we look pretty cool!























Just call me Headwound Harry!















Is that gray hair on BJ???
















NICE!

















More pics as we work on the facade for Clara's mausoleum and finish the fence!

Finishing The Rig

I needed more odds and ends to finish the rig. Eyebolts, nuts, 5 minute epoxy, spray paint, etc. Told Suzi Ineeded a couple more dollars worth of stuff---ended up $28.

















I used 5 minute epoxy to mount the cut off rotisserie spit to the motor as a crank shaft:

I then used PVC cement to assemble the rig:

















Here is the assembled rig with the motor in place but not mounted:
















It all got a couple coats of black spray paint:

















And here is the rig hanging where Clara will haunt: on the corner of our front porch:

















Next year she'll get her own Mausoleum, but for now we'll make a facade off the corner of the porch and surround the back with black plastic sheeting. I'll post pics of the facade as it gets assembled and put in place.

Time for Suzi to get started on the ghost and we'll see how she flies.

Our First Prop Building Experience

I'm attempting to build a Flying Crank Ghost. This will be the first Halloween Prop I've attempted. Check out the original by Phantasmechanics HERE !

I decided to build it out of 1/2 PVC. Here is the dry-assembled rig:

It measures approximately 36" by 30". The cross braces in the center are for the motor mount.

Originally, I destroyed a $5 Walmart fan for the motor:

BJ convinced me it was too fast without enough torque.

I then found a Rotisserie motor at Walmart for $20:

Here it is with the "spit" cut off to about 5 inches and a makeshift crank attached!

I plan on cementing the rig together this weekend and adding eye hooks to hang it from the ceiling, as well as eye hooks to run the fishing line from the crank to the ghost.

Suzi will work on "Clara" the ghost--she's much more artistic than I. I'll post more pics and descriptions of the process as I make my progress. Wish me luck.

and Happy Halloween!