Season of Shadows Blog » Halloween Props

Little Grim – Update 4

John Wolfe — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:24:12 +0000

Givin’ Little Grim the old shredded treatment on the torso:

Little Grim – Update 3

John Wolfe — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 15:51:32 +0000

Took some video of Little Grim and the recent additions I’ve made to him in the last few days:

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Little Grim – Update 2

ScareFactory’s 2011 Halloween Lineup

John Wolfe — Mon, 02 May 2011 14:37:38 +0000

With the Transworld Haunt Show wrapping up a few weeks ago, YT is now jam-packed with vids showcasing what the industry has in store for the 2011 Halloween season. And while there’s a ton of awesomeness out there in the world of professional prop building, I always find myself going back to ScareFactory’s amazing work time and again. These are the same guys who created the animated Angel of Death prop, which inspired me to make my own static version last Halloween.

As I watched their vids and checked out their site, it’s obvious ScareFactory worked liked fiends to prepare for 2011. Their catalog appears to be loaded with more props making a debut this year than ever before.

This first vid is a quick teaser of some of their best of 2011… makes me wanna get out in the shop and get to work (even with stitches in my gut).

Up next is a more detailed vid shot in the “Dark Zone” as it’s called at Transworld. Gotta love the oversized prop with the little corpses riding his back! SF is calling him “The Necromancer.”

Source for both vids: YT user, ScareFactory1

Little Grim – Update 2

John Wolfe — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:49:56 +0000

Scaling the Angel of Death prop down has been a nice little challenge, but I always enjoy a good challenge when it comes to doing something creative. I started working on his left wing over the weekend, but had to scrap the initial design because it just didn’t look in proportion with the body. I’ve since redone the wing structure and I’m liking the current version a lot better.

Here’s the second vid update showing his progress:

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John Wolfe — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 18:43:58 +0000

…of Death that is. Here’s my first prop update vid for the 2011 offseason. This one isn’t following the building of my typical yard haunt type prop, though. Rather this series of vids will be following my progress on a build for the Angel of Death in miniature.

Halloween Haunt 2010 Video

John Wolfe — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 23:47:44 +0000

Hope you enjoy the vid. It took a little longer to post this year because I was working out the means for how and where to shoot the intro portion. The introduction actually came from a scene I’ve wanted to create since I was around eight-years old. As a kid I always used to toy with ideas for different yard haunt scenarios and this particular idea stuck with me. It was very cool and a little surreal to finally have the opportunity to act it out many years later.

A HUGE thanks to Nox Arcana for allowing me to use their incredible tracks in this vid.

Underground

John Wolfe — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 18:14:51 +0000

Took this image during a shoot last night for the 2010 Halloween Haunt vid. Though I already filmed the yard haunt on Halloween night, I decided to capture some additional footage to add as an intro. It was a little like creating a mini version of Halloween all over again, except the location was different and the Angel of Death didn’t make a return appearance. In the process of doing the shoot, I also grabbed a few stills along the way. This pic (taken from above, looking into the “grave”) represents the first time one my groundbreaker corpses has been placed below ground. Click image if you’d like to see a much larger view.

I’m hoping to have the 2010 Haunt vid posted this weekend.

Halloween 2010 – Update 15

John Wolfe — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:05:53 +0000

The Angel of Death’s almost ready to coax my corpses from their graves! A touch of paint here and there, combined with a few hours of cloak work, and very soon he’ll be set to take his place as the haunt’s latest overseer.

Here’s the last installment in the Angel of Death’s video series:

If you’d like to see other installments, the Halloween 2010 Preview Page archives all previous Angel updates.

Aside from my annual Happy Halloween post on October 30th, this will probably be my only entry for the week. Also, due to setup and cleanup taking such a good deal of time, the blog will be pretty quite for the next eight or ten days. But as soon as cleanup wraps, I’ll start working on the Halloween 2010 photo page and I’ll be posting a haunt image or two in an upcoming entry.

The Halloween Arms Race

John Wolfe — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 17:55:44 +0000

I built and attached both arms to the Angel of Death in the last two nights. I was a little concerned about adding arms because this part of the project was another one of those unknowns. I’ve never actually built arms that are somewhat outstretched on a very large prop before. I’ve built lightweight newspaper and paper mache arms, reaching out on my small groundbreakers but never anything of this size. It’s always a concern because there’s so much weight for the hardware to support, but thankfully everything’s doing great and staying in place.

I used dowels for the upper and lower arms, then I attached bucky skeleton hands and wrists, after doing some modifications to their radius and ulna bones. The hands and wrists will be mached and the entire arm structure will be padded (to break up the straight lines of the dowels) prior to attaching the cloak or shroud.

For a while now, I’ve been toying with building an entire, upright zombie corpse that appears to be walking through the cemetery of my haunt. This experience of working on the Angel of Death has given me some additional ideas for pulling that off next year. I’ve already got a name in mind for the prop, too: “Skinwalker.”

In many Native American traditions and tales, a skinwalker is typically a person or entity who shapeshifts into an animal or creature, but I thought it sounded cool. And since this will be my first rotten-skin, walking zombie, I thought the name was fitting.

So, I guess my 2011 prep will be The Year of the Skinwalker.

Halloween 2010 – Update 14

John Wolfe — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 17:50:31 +0000

The Angel of Death is just about finished, at least where the paper mache is concerned. Several weeks ago, I made the comment in one of my update vids that there wasn’t a lot of mache to do since so much of his face and body would be covered with the shroud. Well, I should know better than to make statements like that, ’cause once I get going on texture, I keep going and going and going! Still, everything feels like it’s right on track and I’m confident he will be ready a day or two prior to Halloween.

If you’d like to see other installments, the Halloween 2010 Preview Page archives all previous Angel updates.