This has been a busy week, but we have finally made it to the third and final post of Project Wolfie, one of the new signature props for last year’s Halloween Haunted Trail (link here). If you missed the previous posts, feel free to get caught up on the first phase, The Shell (link here) and The Shaping (link here) before tackling this final phase, The Polishing.
Last we left, the Wolf shell was finally patched, smoothed and ready for paint.
Of note, it took until September 22nd to get to this point – a long journey having started in the middle of November! Unfortunately, I was now in full panic mode. There was still plenty to do to make the prop ready for the trail and there were only 8 days left before the event. It is hard enough to get everything done on the trail for the props that were already completed and any precious spare cycles were going to be vacuumed up getting this monster good enough for our guests to view. Spending a year on a project and not making it out for the night of haunt would be very disappointing.
Hit the jump to see if Wolfie was able to make fright night!
Welcome to the second part of Project Wolfie, one of last year’s signature props built for our annual Halloween Haunted Trail (link here). If you missed the first post of the 3 part series, you can take a look at that here. In that initial phase I built the shell of the wolf out of foam board around and inner PVC core. Now it was time to take the 2D template below and refine the blocky 3D shell.
This phase was the most exciting and absolutely terrifying at the same time. There was a significant amount of time invested just to get to this point and now I was getting ready to start cutting it up so to speak. Art and especially the field of sculpting is one of those skills that was always just a bit out of reach – unable to fit it into my curriculums and aftwards never found the time with work and other activities. I have drawn since I was a kid and once this project popped in my head, started spending my spare time watching sculpting YouTube videos. Most of those tutorials were what I call additive – starting from a blank and building up material to the final product. Wolfie was the opposite scenario in that the material needed to be removed. In hindsight, I probably should have spent more time on “carving” tutorials. No glory for the timid, time to jump in.
I have been procrastinating on this series of posts for far too long and time to “bite” into it and get this off the to-do list. I worked on this particular Halloween prop for over 12 months and a bit disappointed I didn’t get it completely done before the big reveal at our 2023 Haunted Trail (link here). This isn’t the first time I didn’t get all the finishing touches on a prop in time – quite frankly, I am surprised it doesn’t happen more than it does. When an idea hits me, I rarely know what is completely involved. In the corporate world I had to know the ins and outs of a project before I ever stepped in front of management asking for the big bucks. On the Halloween front it’s pretty much dig in and figure it out as you go. Dream it and then iterate through the design and build phases until it looks like the vision. In this particular case, it all started when I looked over and saw this figurine sitting on a shelf in my den. If you are curious, it is part of an X-Men Wolverine scene.
That vision put me on a long journey to bring an entire new class of prop for the trail. With big projects come lots of design trade offs, execution mishaps, head scratching and compromise. I’ll try to keep you moving and gloss over some of the dead end roads, but it is still going to take some time – like three posts worth of time. As all my projects go, they are primarily meant for fellow haunters to learn what went right and hopefully accelerate their own projects.
Strap in and hit the jump, this is going to be fun!
Welcome to the Halloween Season — well, technically we here at Intrigued are haunt focused 364 days a year (we take the day after our annual Halloween Haunted Trail event to rest up before starting on next year’s new additions. Speaking of the trail, this year’s extravaganza was held last weekend and based on the feedback we are getting – another complete success! As usual, we learned a few things, have a few things to tweak and more importantly, a bunch of new ideas to make next year even better. Taking a break from putting everything back in storage to give you a behind the scenes look at one of our signature props we added for our guest’s enjoyment this year. Definitely one of our larger projects and will likely take several posts to get you all the pertinent details. Let’s get to it shall we?!
I have always wanted an elaborate entrance to the trail. A defining start vs just pointing them into the woods and telling them to have fun. Depending on the moon, it can also get rather dark in the woods making it even harder to locate the right path to the trail. Unable to remember the exact video, but one of the haunt centric YouTubers I follow – GrimmLifeCollective – (link here) showcased a place that had a stacked pumpkin arch in one of their scenes. That got the juices flowing and started investigating ways to produce one of our own. I do not have the budgets of some of these large production scare factories, so cost was a key element – that and the ability to store it. A big shout out to Allen at Stiltbeast Studios (link here). for getting the ball rolling. His video on making a foam pumpkin (link here) was the basis for what became our signature piece.
Clearly I would need BIGGER pumpkins to use in our entry arch and I wanted to be able to carve and light them up like real pumpkins. Allen’s approach did have a hollow core, but also required you to essentially have a beach ball buried inside each pumpkin. When I saw the cost of beach balls that were the size I wanted to use, that approach had to be improved. Noodled on it for a couple of weeks and then it hit me – I don’t have to create the entire pumpkin at once. With a working plan, materials were ordered and set to work.
The first ingredient was the beach ball. The initial vision was to have three different sized pumpkins that got smaller as they were stacked up – smallest being the size of the standard ball you see kids playing with or bouncing around concert venues. From there, found two more offerings each significantly bigger than that. A bit shocked at the prices – the largest (42″) was $30, the medium (36″) was $23 and a pack of 3 standard (20″) were $13. Per comment above, needing one for each pumpkin was cost prohibitive. Note, a quick look at Amazon revealed that they are heavily discounted now that the swim season is coming to a close. Now with the pumpkin forms procured, there needed to be a method to help hold the foam and still be able to reuse the ball.
Hit the jump to see how these everyday beach accessories evolved into our latest Haunted Trail of Tears signature addition.
Hopefully with this latest barrage of non-wildlife posts, I am putting to rest all those false accusations Intrigued has completely gone to the birds. A quick count puts this at the 5th consecutive post featuring non-living topics. Some would say this is getting out of “hand”! Speaking of which…
Yep, we are bringing another Halloween prop project that was first introduced in last year’s Haunted Trail of Tears. Halloween may only be a day in most people’s standard year, but around Intrigued it is 363 days a year (we have to take two days off from prop building in order to hold the actual two day event ha). Today’s feature was in the works for probably 3 years and the pieces were just not coming together very well. Made the head first, wasn’t really happy with it as there were issues during the foam filling process. Fixed that issue the next year, got the iconic Freddy hat and then ran out of time to build the Posey frame (link here and earlier versions here). It wasn’t until Covid (more accurately the Covid “response”) that it finally provided the spark …err needle to get me going.
Hit the jump to read about how the key element of this prop came to fruition.
Hitting the non-wildlife side of Intrigued hard this month. I have way too many projects waiting in the queue and need to keep pressing if I ever want to see above the waterline this year. Priority one is to at least get through the Halloween related posts before we get deep into setting up this year’s Haunted Trail of Tears. There are always at least two haunt projects in the works here which always draws one or two strange looks from the service people that come into the house for one reason or another. The regulars are used to it by now and some have even started giving me feedback on the finished props positioned around the basement. The new ones have a very worried look and waste no time getting their tasks done ha! Today I thought I would bring you the latest addition to the collection.
I call him Toxic Spidey and is an elaboration on a store bought skeleton spider my nephew and niece gave me for Christmas this year. They know my sickness, I mean affinity for all things scary. I am really fond of this new wave of props that have been coming out that focus on skeletal structures of smaller animals and insects. Note, they do give us quite the chuckle when they keep the cartilage features like ears – this spider is slightly truer to reality although thankfully larger than the ones we see out in our woods.
Hit the jump to see how this lifeless prop gets a brighter life.
Life Intrigued 