House Bloodthorn 2010

Don't know how I missed these photos.
They've been up on Flickr for a month.






Tons more here.

Candlelight

Was going through some old pics on Skullandbone.com.
Man, I miss Rob's haunt. And what might have been.

Was looking at his amazing pvc candles from his last year of Haunting. They've become such a staple in other haunts now.


Here's to a Halloween Giant.

skullandbone.com

House Bloodthorn 2009

Re-featuring the Haunt of House Bloodthorn, winner of the Haunters Video Vanguard Award for Best Yard Haunt 2009. Very comforting to know that the props of SkullandBone.com found such a beautiful resting place.

Stunning work by Guy. This is such an incredible haunt.

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Many more images here.

House Bloodthorn

Nifty seeing some of Skull and Bone's props at their new home - House Bloodthorn.
The haunt looks terrific.


House Bloodthorn blog.

The Holy Grail

A while back I had a conversation with Rob at SkullandBone about what our holy grail of Halloween props would be. I hadn't ever really thought about it - the quest for the prop of all props. As in, what's the one prop you've always dreamt of making, but technical challenges or practical limitations have kept you from it.

His was very impressive and intriguing and exciting.

Mine was... well, I couldn't think of anything.

After a while, I had an image of an excavated grave. A six-foot hole with a mound of dirt, a flame lantern nearby, and an old open coffin at the bottom of the grave, with a nasty [dead] corpse looking up. Trick-or-treaters would have to walk by and peer down into the ground.

My grail is boring, I admit, but that's what popped into my head. Digging a six-foot hole in the ground is out of the question, so this'll [thankfully] never come to pass.

Note: This is a little different than the pie in the sky lottery win post.

Skull And Bone And Robots

I remember a long time ago emailing Rob at SkullandBone.com with an effusive email. I told him how much I dug his style and haunt and photography and everything. You could say we became good buds since then. Keeping tabs on what we're working on or what we'd like to be working on. Discussing our haunting approaches. Sharing plans or concepts, or the sort of bourbon I'm going to bring with me when/if I ever get out to the West coast to visit. Fun fun stuff.

Rob's a concept artist. And an amazing one. The sort of guy I've bragged to people about. He's worked on video games and done CG matte paintings for television and film. Most recently his team worked on TERMINATOR SALVATION, designing the character Marcus' face. He also did the concept work for the open chest cavity of Marcus, a charred head of a T600, and several matte paintings of a burned and devastated Los Angeles.


Nicest guy in the world. Humble too. I do believe I begged him to let me share this with the Halloween community.

Can't WAIT to see what's next.


SkullandBone.com

Haunt Theory: Lighting

Got a question about my lighting techniques. The insanely-talented Rob at SkullandBone.com has the finest lighting tutorial around. I agree with his approach as it front-lights your props and creates some beautiful shadows and accents the most important part of your hard work - the front.

My yard haunt has two main issues that forced me to light the haunt from the above tree branches:

1. A super bright and super close street lamp (that provides a lot of ambient front-lighting).
2. A horrible family that walks through the lawn of the yard haunt, between the props, and under the tree.

One experience comes to mind. I use two strings of flickering flame bulbs for under my witches' iron cauldron. I love that effect and take a crazy amount of time to perfect it. Placing the twigs and sticks of the fire carefully as to hide the bulbs and wires, but to allow enough orange light through. A member of my family walked across the lawn and got tangled in the extension cord running to those lights. I watched those flickering bulbs go flying quite a few times over the years. Pushing the lights and sticks back under the cauldron quickly before more trick or treaters arrive is another sickening ritual I could do without. I can only imagine if I ran cords to the front of my display to feed flood lamps placed there. It's surprising how many people actually cut through the small lawn of my yard haunt.

So it's actually a practical use of lighting, and I'm surprised my family doesn't climb the tree at some point during the night, tangling my wires and breaking my bulbs while they fish around in the branches.

That said, I think tree lighting from above can work if you keep in mind the importance of shadows. I always make sure some pine needles and branches of the tree are in front of the flood lamps. And I try not to go overboard with making the haunt too bright. I think of it as moonlight. Smaller bulbs stuffed into the bushes or cornstalks on each side of the porch add a lot of atmosphere. In the case of my witches' smoking cauldron, I had a green spotlight shining straight down into the cauldron. The fog appeared to be giving off a ghostly green glow.


Every year, I venture back to where I grew up and haunt my folks' lawn. I won't be doing that forever and I'm looking forward to a change of scenery and a new environment. And you can bet I'll be using some of SkullandBone's techniques for lighting it.

Bloodthorn

The future home of SkullandBones' Miss Rose Haunt.

I enjoyed reading about the transition. I think Miss Rose is in really good hands.

Skull And Bone

A message from my personal favorite yard haunter of all time.

Atmosphere Atmosphere Atmosphere

SkullAndBone.com

Ideas From A Master

Rob from SkullAndBone.com, in addition to being my favorite haunter, happens to be a fantastic artist as well. Check out some of his design sketches.


We joked a couple times about combining our efforts into one haunt. Man, I'd love to do that one year before I die. Skull and Bone and Pumpkinrot...

Skull And Bone

Flipping through the pics on SkullandBone.com today and wanted to post a few more. Pure art.

SkullandBone.com

Scarecrows Abound

Looking through these pics was very nostalgic. It brought back feelings of what it's like to win second place to a bunch of cutsie scarecrows.


It was nice to see that the winner in the "Scariest" category was based on SkullandBone's Kreep design.

The Scarecrows.

Dothan Area Botanical Garden

Kreepy

Aside from having the coolest name, SkullandBone's Kreep is an angry, vile, pumpkin-headed creature that looks quite alive. Almost as if it has just spotted someone it intends to harm...or kill....or eat (or all of the above in that order).

Was looking at their site tonight and wanted to slap up an entry on The Kreep.
Such an original Halloween creation. It's truly a classic.

Skull and Bone 2007

Skull and Bone recently updated their 2007 image gallery. Stunning as always. LOOK at the detail in this photograph. Fantastic!



More pics can be viewed here:
SkullandBone.com

Bones and Skulls and Halloween

I'll be posting some haunts that I really dig.
The best place to start is SkullandBone.com, my personal favorite. The atmosphere that this guy creates is always stunning. His attention to detail is something I've never been able to achieve in my own haunt. Bravo, my friend.