October 31, 2007 Boo!

October 28, 2007 First spooks of the season!

October 27, 2007 My mom's Halloween party... Kat and myself.

October 26, 2007 Fang test...

October 17, 2007 Gah! 2 weeks! Probably won't get much else built at this point :(

October 11, 2007 20 days to go! That's just under 3 weeks left. I've run so short on time, but realistically, even if I don't complete anything else, I have two new props this year (Mr Crispy and the ghost), so I'm reasonably satisfied.

September 22, 2007 The ghost lives! Err, unlives... whatever.

September 13, 2007 Spencer's has $20 sets of talking skulls. They have pretty crappy built-in audio, but for $20 it's worth the attempt to hack them to take other input. Add these to the nicer pair of skulls I got last year, and I'm having visions of barber-shop quartets and other such ideas that I won't have time for. :)

September 12, 2007 Gah! No Spirit Halloween store at the mall this year! Wonder why. Actually, I can guess. They used to have a spot in the middle of the mall and the place would be picked clean a week before Halloween. These last two years they've had a spot around a corner at an end of the mall, with little foot traffic. The store was still well stocked when it closed last year.

August 31, 2007 Halloween just wouldn't be the same without my peanut-butter chewy candies. I'm treating myself early this year.

August 24, 2007 I have a crank ghost!

August 12, 2007 Now it's been 5 days. The eyes are barely on. It's so dim, you have to cup your hands over it to see it at all even in a dimly lit room. Still enough voltage to start them up again if I disconnect and reconnect the battery, though. So the battery is probably not able to supply enough current (milliamps) at this point, rather than voltage. It looks to me like the batteries will give about a day of full brightness, another of reduced brightness, and a third of fairly dim light, and a few more that are glowing but nearly useless. Maybe I'll try a pair of AA batteries next time and test that. But now I have some good metrics on the 9v battery method. I don't run the eyes continuously anyway, just during the evenings, so a battery will easily last more than a week during my typical usage. Can you see the glow? Even with the lights out, it's almost non-existent.

August 10, 2007 Now 3 days, and the eyes are quite dim.

August 9, 2007 48 hours later, the eyes are still going but have dimmed quite a bit.

August 7, 2007 Started a test-run of the battery life on the eyes.

August 6, 2007 More ash-like painting. He's starting to look like an angry crematorium-escapee.

August 3, 2007 Eyes! Two red LEDs connected in series with a 270 Ohm resistor to a 9v battery. By my estimates, assuming roughly 2 volts and 20 millamps each, and assuming the battery can supply 500 mAh at 9v, the eyes can probably run for days before needing to change the battery, but I think a test will be in order.

August 2, 2007 Some old relics from my Haunted House back in the 80's. Mummy wrappings, inflatable skeleton, blown plastic skull, and the crappy rules sign for the front door... ... And also some corpsing progress. So far he's coming out as a good little crispy critter. I originally planned for the black to be an undercoat, but I'm liking the crispy burnt look. Might keep it. We'll see. 90 days to go. Officially three months? Seems like a long time, but I know if I let things go til October, I don't get it all done.

July 30, 2007 Pumpkin-scented candles. Boy, do they stink.

July 23, 2007 100 days til Halloween! I got my web-gun and air compressor! Yes, the compressor is total overkill for this, but I want to use other tools too, including paint sprayers.

April 29, 2007 Got my hands on fxHome's EffectsLab software. Great little east to use program for special effects in videos. Might have to try it this year. Gaining some experience with it ahead of time by doing lightsaber videos.

March 25, 2007 Corpsing and gravestones are underway. The skeleton is getting a healthy dose of Great Stuff. Gravestone is my first attempt at using my new foam tools. Letters were mostly freehand, and added some distressing details around the edges. I may leave this one as is and go ahead and paint it.

March 21, 2007 I have foamboard! Also, it turns out there are several other FCG kits out there. I like the ones from XtremeCreators.com. Maybe one is in my near future. :)

March 7, 2007 I just visited Phantasmechanics website for the first time in a while, with the intention to grab a FCG kit. I've been planning since the middle of last year to work on it this spring. Just my luck, the timing is such that I've waiting too long... they've stopped selling kits. Since I don't have the desire to build it from scratch, this likely means I won't have a flying crank ghost this year. DOH!

March 6, 2007 Happy Michaelangelo's birthday... (don't ask why I know that) Planning has begun. Got a new set of Hot Wire foam sculpting tools, and plan to make custom gravestones soon.