That Don Post mask is well cool James  Great work man 

TICK TOCK... TICK TOCK, James!

Nice Grandpa, man! Only question is... with all your cool nods to the classics, do the kids get it or are you out to scare the crap out of the parents! haha

Nicely done man... video! video! haha.... I really can't wrap my mind around the scope of your setup man.
As a kid I'd either avoid or run towards it... depending on my precise age of course

cheers!

Grandpa Sawyer rocks  Kudos for making his body from scratch! I actually thought it was a mannequin at first. Can't imagine how much work you put into all that, including hunting down his costume and the mask re-design!
You should really take him for a stroll in his chair down the street  (and ask Mrs Chickenshack to video it!)

Excellent work James. Things are looking great. Hopefully the weather stays good for you!

The weather forecast for Southern Ontario for the trick or treater's on Halloween night is snow fluries. What can be scarier than that?
Nothing like putting snow suits under the costumes.

James you are a true Haloween prop master. Some skills, dude!

So cool to see Norma Bates showing up in your inventory, next year you should transform your whole house into the Bates Motel!

Have fun this year. I am sure you will!

BTW: If you can do squirrels, can you do Eowks as well?

I was up at the family farm this afternoon to help with some maintenance, and my sister was there visiting as well.
She made some lovely cookies and sent them home with me. I think they are short bread. My kids wouldn't eat them. More for me.

Happy Haloween guys

Sorry for the delay in updates , I was so busy wrapping up last minute stuff that I just couldn't find enough time for everything

Here are a few more things I did ...


a bucket o' guts to sit next to Grandpa ...




a couple more tiki torch ...






a candy / poison cart ...




(the orange thing was one of 6 little strobe lights that I used Velcro to stick underneath each level to light up the stuff on the trays)



I made all the poison bottles by taking random bottles (some old , some not) and adding labels that I printed of ones I found online , colored and stained them , roughed them up to make them look older etc ...

no frogs breath , eye of newt or any other ridiculous shit ... only real poisons would do for me - arsenic , strychnine and so forth



The 2 candles on top are battery powered and the knife fits in the slot on top of the skull in the rear (by the bone push handle I added) .

The skull on the front is a animated one that sings "I ain't got no body" - I hid the trigger inside the mouth of the "knife skull" so that it could be triggered secretly to scare the kids .


Since my wife was planning to dress as the Joker , I was inspired to make the cart as a prop for her ...

Awesome work James. I hope the weather held out for you. Everything looks great this year. Hopefully you got to scare a lot of people with your props.

Commander Clint wrote:

Awesome work James.  I hope the weather held out for you.  Everything looks great this year.  Hopefully you got to scare a lot of people with your props.

Thank you Clint

The weather was very good , it cooled down quite a bit Halloween morning and was quite windy . I was worried that it was going to be too windy to light torches but luckily by late afternoon the wind died down

We were worried for awhile though because the trick or treaters were slow to come at 1st but at about 7 pm they started rolling in - several people posted about our display on facebook , twitter etc and we finally had a lot of folks come by  Definitely ended up being our biggest year so far


The highlight to my evening (besides scaring the hell out of people) was when these 2 little boys showed up (probably 7 to 8 years old) . They have come for 4 years straight - the 1st year we scared them really bad but , apparently they became fans shortly thereafter . They had moved across town the 2nd year they came but insisted that their mom bring them to Michael Myers house  several years later now and they still make their mom bring them ...

This year one of them decided he wanted a high five at 1st from Jason (me) but then said he wanted a hug - so he hugged me around my knees and I bent down and gave him a big hug

It made us feel good that we have been able to turn 2 little frightened boys into diehard Halloween fans after a couple years

Great work James, glad it was a success. Keep up this momentum and it'll be even bigger next year You should ask the local news / newspaper to do a feature next year.
Mrs Chickenshack's costume and makeup is really cool btw. And did people like the CPR dummy?

Nice to read that you and Julie had a great time at Halloween this year.  
Great story about the little boys too, that must have been quite a view, a small boy hugging Jason.

Kudos to the Missus, the make-up must have taken her a while.

And maybe follow Paul's advice to try to involve some local media for your fantastic props, next year.

Cheers bro

Artoo_Detour wrote:

Great work James, glad it was a success. Keep up this momentum and it'll be even bigger next year You should ask the local news / newspaper to do a feature next year.
Mrs Chickenshack's costume and makeup is really cool btw. And did people like the CPR dummy?  

Thank You Paul


The cpr dummy went over well but I didn't get as much done to it as I wanted to unfortunately . I want to make it a bit more anatomically correct and add a moving "chest burster" for a additional scare








here's what he looked like after dark with my Halloween lighting ...

Marco J wrote:

Nice to read that you and Julie had a great time at Halloween this year.  
Great story about the little boys too, that must have been quite a view, a small boy hugging Jason.

Kudos to the Missus, the make-up must have taken her a while.

And maybe follow Paul's advice to try to involve some local media for your fantastic props, next year.

Cheers bro

Thanks Marco

yes , we had a blast   It's cool that my wife enjoys it as much as I do (almost ) .

Here are some dolls she made this year :







They all started out as regular old baby dolls

BTW I did shoot some videos and will post them as soon as I figure out how to post a personal video . All I know how to do at this point is post youtube videos here at TIG .

Would I need to put my videos on youtube to post here :scratch:


I wasn't real crazy about my videos anyway - spent most of the day after Halloween trying to shoot them and still wasn't happy .

I also took some photos that show the layout as good as a video does ...

Daytime :






Nighttime :






As you can see we don't have much room to work with , basically our front yard , driveway and carport / porch area . The layout should be easy to see now (I hope)

Left side of driveway :













Right side of driveway :

Awesome James, just Awesome man 

Great to hear about to two young fans as well bro 

It's a pleasure to see your completed display James.

I'm glad you had a great time and all your hard work was well received!

Thank you Andy and Steve


here's a little more of what stuff looks like at night ...

Left side of Carport / Porch :





















Right side of Carport / Porch :







Under the CPR dummy ...




I just threw a couple last minute displays under the table but I have a couple slightly more elaborate ideas for displays in mind for next year

Does next years idea's include the Rancor?

Commander Clint wrote:

Does next years idea's include the Rancor?

yes

Awesome stuff.... I'd shudder to think what our neighbours would say if anyone went to that extent round these parts LOL. Theyd probably call the cops saying there is a madman around. Quality set up tho.

Hey James,
I thought your wife's Joker make up and green wig was excellent as well mate
She really looks the part

Looking forward to next years Halloween already bro

Thanks Andy

The hair is actually hers and not a wig - she just used green hairspray to color her hair




We both loved Heath Ledger as the Joker - he stole the movie

In general I am not a huge Batman fan (or any DC comic) - I am more of a Marvel comics and independent comic fanboy

Julie did look awesome as the Joker though

Julie certainly did look great as the Joker James 

And I totally agree man, Heath Ledger made that film with his performance    Superb actor