What's new this year?  Working on anything new?  Are you building anything?

Well there, inquisitive mortal,  perhaps the answer to those oft-asked questions can be found in this riddle:

I'm old and built for one

I have four walls but no hall

Getting inside is easier said than done

When near a haunted spirit may call

While a life-size static picture of a Ghost Zombie Horse was cool, it wasn't cool enough - enter Adobe After Effects!  This program is used by television people to create those annoying animated overlays that interrupt your favorite TV show.  I do not know my way around this program but having used other Adobe products I think I can figure this out.  My first objective was to make the horse seem more alive.  Using an image distortion effect called 'Bulge' I was able to make the chest cavity look like it was expanding and contracting to simulate breathing.  This looked pretty good but it's cold outside during Halloween.. we should be able to see the breath vapor.  Using the program's particle effects I cobbled up a vapor effect timed to when the chest bulge effect collapses.   Breathing - Check.  At this point we could have called it good but let's keep going.  

While breathing makes the horse look more convincing, it's also not moving anywhere.  We can't get too carried away with movement since we need to stay inside a confined projection space, which in this case is a garage door.  Horse rearing effects and the like are out of the question.  Care also has to be given to make sure a ovular black 'mask' is maintained around the horse such that there are no hard rectangular edges making it obvious that a screen is being projected.  Using a 'Bend' effect we can make the horse rock back and forth like it would be doing to adjust it's balance.  Only problem now is that the head isn't moving and the whole thing just looks like more of a rocking horse.. ugh this is getting complicated.  Using another program effect called 'Bend It' we can actually fake articulation of the head, and we can time that effect with the exhaling and.. actually that's good enough.  Last step is to add some pulsing glow effects and a glowing red eye to sell it as more ethereal.  All done.

..

Actually.. not done.  Since we are playing with video wouldn't it be cool, since it's a 'Ghost' Zombie Horse and all if it were to disappear randomly?  Yes, yes it would.  We could just fade out the horse.. or make it disappear into a cloud of fog.  Using two effects called 'Fractal Noise' and 'Turbulent Displace' fog was added.  Boom.  

Last touches were to add sound.  Using Apple's Garage Band and sound effects sourced from freesound.org we've got some audio to go with the horse video.  Here's an excerpt from the final video, hope you like it.

Hearse

The roof now has some bolts to secure it to the rest of the carriage to avoid flying off in a freak wind storm.  

The whole of the carriage was fairly unstable due to how the rear box and the front seat are two pieces that were joined together with only two bolts and there was also a gap between the pieces caused by the front box panel trim.  This was retooled such that the frame member of both the box and the seat assembly now join directly together to remove the sagging and make the whole thing more rigid.  The seat box received a padded fabric seat and also the front of the box was replaced from wood with fabric.  This now allows a speaker to be concealed inside the seat!  

The axles were replaced with threaded black iron pipes that screw into floor flanges bolted to the wheels.  This has taken out the side to side wobble and makes the hearse a bit easier to setup.

On to the rear box.  I didn't like how the polyvinyl fabric used for the windows was shiny and reflected a lot of light.  To make the coffin more visible it's been raised up on blocks and the 'back' side curtain has been lowered to accentuate the lighting.  The window fabric from the 'front' viewing side has been removed.  A skull hand was also added to the coffin along with some lighting tweaks.  Finally some various mini skull accoutrements and rivets were added - can never have enough of those.

What's new this year?  Working on anything new?  Are you building anything?

I've been thinking about doing a Monster in a Box prop for sometime.  With a bunch of scrap wood laying around I've put together a toe pincher coffin.  Intentionally, there are several holes and cracks between the pieces of wood to add an aged vintage to it.  Inside the coffin will be a fog machine, some  lighting and a windshield wiper motor powering a wooden cam to raise and drop the lid on hinges.

Expanding spray foam is applied around the top.  Almost before it is fully cured and still pliable, I squished it down and shaped it to my liking.  For paint, I used some flat black, flourescent green and orange layers.  Finally, some gold Rub'n'Buff is applied to the skeleton and banding.  The cauldron is now done!  Now to move on to construct a base for the cauldron to sit on and the creep itself.  

The cauldron will rest on some 'logs' made from 2-liter bottles.  Again using spray foam and paint to give the texture.  Some red string lights will be placed into the 2 liters to make the logs glow as though they were red-hot.