Banner – An Unorthodox Halloween

Announcing Project Nightfall.

I have spoken before about Guild Wars, and it’s influence on some of my designs for Halloween.

Well, turns out Guild Wars also runs an annual Halloween Art Contest. I have decided to go ahead and enter it this year.

I had considered keeping this decision, and some of the stuff I’ll be making for this contest private. But, that’s not a lot of fun, now, is it. And, if just one more person decides to deck out their house and enter as well because of this, I’ll be most happy. Time to get a few yard haunts into that contest with all the costumes, drawings, and other art, to be recognized as art in and of itself.

The rules state:
Create a concept and bring it to life:

Carve a pumpkin—real or not—and take a photograph.

Create a blueprint for other pumpkin carvers.

Sketch a costume by hand or on the computer. If you’re extra creative, stitch up that costume, add some makeup or temporary tattoos, and model it in a photograph.

Design a desktop image to share the joy in your home, school, or office.

Decorate a cake, bake some cookies, compose a menu, build an edible haunted house—put your culinary skills to the task.

Spruce up your homestead and send a photograph.

If there is one thing yard haunting does, it’s create a concept and bring it to life. And, thus far, the 3 years of contest has been devoid of yard haunters.

I wasn’t actually planning on entering this year. But, in making The Bloodcloth, it was one of the Guild Emblems that ultimately inspired the handprint design. Sure, I modified it a fair bit, but it was a Guild Emblem to originate the idea.

That got me thinking of the contest. Which in turn got me going through screenshots. Thus, Project Nightfall has been born.

An opportunity to do that one Halloween oriented theme I’ve always KINDA wanted to do, but could never bring myself to do something so ordinary.

A cemetery.

Guild Wars. Specifically Nightfall, offered me a glimpse of how to make one, most uniquely. And as I began work on my first ‘tombstone’ last night, Kyle gave me a befuddled look. “But Tombstones are supposed to be straight.”

Not anymore.

Stay tuned for plenty of how-to’s to create your own Guild Wars Graveyard, with a few special Halloween twists I’m planning to toss into the mix as well, as I shall keep you all up to date with Project Nightfall:

No rest for the weary.

After the fun movie night late into Saturday, I was struggling to fall back to sleep after my initial waking at 5AM, and forego the swap meet trip. See, I’ve woken at 4-5 most/all my life, and I don’t even need an alarm clock anymore. I was just getting back down into that state on the verge of sleep when Indy decided it would be most fun to use my toes as a chewtoy.

My cats are used to me being up by 5 as well (after showering), and he wanted to play. So, after dragging me out of bed, and playing fetch with the cat for an hour, I figured I may as well head off to the swap meet as long as I was awake.

It was fortunate I did.

It’s 5 ft ‘wide’. I got no idea how much is left on this roll, other than to say “a lot”.

One can never have enough black cloth laying around, anyway.

Alec also bought a remote control car. This has some history here. Santa brought both the kids remote control cars. However, Alec’s never worked. I think it’s our direct TV receiver jamming the actual remote, because it works sometimes in some places. Anyway, it’s always been a problem that Kyle’s works, and is faster, and etc.

Most kids might think of a remote car and relate it to toy story, or maybe stewart little. Something like that…

Alec? Riding home, he exclaims “Now it will be just like Gizmo!”

“Huh?”

“You remember on Gremlins, when he gets in that car and goes grrrrrr! Rrrrrrrrrr!” driving with is air steering wheel.

I didn’t even know Alec had ever paid attention to Gremlins. But certainly a proud moment.

In other news, we’ve put some work into the banner.

I was considering keeping this under wraps as it will be going to part of a project I’m working on to enter a contest. But, may as well get many enteries into the contest and show them us house decorators deserve more attention. But, more on that later.

The symbol was agreed on by the entire house. I had a small ‘monster handprint’. I always have said, I CAN’T DRAW. But, I copied it to be as large as my own hand. Then, covered my hand in ketchup (hey, it’s what I had, and cleans easier than paint), and slapped it right over top. This gave me a ‘real’ handprint over the monster one.

I then TOTALLY FREEHANDED the result into this larger print on a piece of paper. Taking plenty of measurements to ensure relative scale. Cut out the shapes from the paper, and use it as a template onto what the kids have dubbed “The Bloodcloth”.

The result being this massive print that measures more than 2 ft tall, over 18″ wide.

Then, we had to get it up and flying.

The upright is actually 2 bamboo poles, the top section removable so that I can fiddle with things and throw it back up. It is quite tall…

Adding a skull and some firelight.

I actually left this up today. Just to mess with neighbors a bit.

Banner troubles, and a present.

So, we got the lovely banner all made and stained…but what insignia should I put on it?

There are my classics. “The Faces”. Pick one, and run with it. I made these faces years ago, and they’ve hung around ever since to where I see them more or less as something of a personal signature in reguards to all things halloween.

Couple skull designs I was kicking around. While superficially fitting, they all tended to scream ‘pirates’.

And, in my mind, I keep seeing a white handprint. Something akin to the Uruk-Hais. Yet, I do not feel this alone to be enough.

Several tribal inspired knot designs similarly do not feel ‘right’.

Well, it will come when the time is right.

And, in other news, I finally found me a Mola Ram!!!

See, Lego. Hasbro is not afraid of the burning heart. It works fine. Now, go make me a lego set that features the scene!

Never happen. Lego couldn’t even manage to get the proper heart-ripping into their video game.

This on a game that features hearts bouncing around on the floor anytime someone/something is killed anyway.

This was a fairly big deal in our house, actually. Alec got this game for his birthday. And, while I was busy remodeling, I got a couple excited children hollering for me to come see, they had finally made it to the heart-ripping scene. Such disappointment…

The thing is a SUPERB scene. I understand it nearly gave Temple of Doom an R rating, instead created the PG-13 rating, and had to be editted in europe to be shown.

Great headdress, wierd chanting, fire, creepy statues, necklaces made of human skulls, hearts being ripped out, catching on fire, drums seemingly made from heads, maniacal laughter…not sure I quite agree with the clown makeup on the lesser priests there. Even makes their ‘evil’ face while pushing the lever to drop the poor sap into the pit look odd. Still, one could watch this endlessly for inspiration…

Banners and bones.

Earlier I had spoken of a randome photo album who had inspired me to think on something new with a rather interesting picture.

I wanted a banner of my own. Such a simple design, and so fitting, and intimidating, it was perfect for our yard. Now, while bulap is fine and all, it really doesn’t have that special level of foreboding that I personally wanted for my own banner. No, we needed something just a tad more…tribal.

So, taking the lessons of Fred into account, we covered the bulap in a layer of latex. The result come out looking something like a tanned piece of hide. Looking over my stock of wood stains, we began with a “Red Sedona”. Now, originally, this stuff gave a nice reddish tan look.

Even in darker patches, it was only faintly ‘red’ in nature. Something about sitting in the heat of the garage for a few years had tempered it to show RED. So it was, I may as well have been bathing my new banner in blood out in the back yard.

More red than I planned on, but let’s run with it, and make it look like it’s been stained in blood while we’re at it. The “Red Sedona” was followed up by some “Red Mahogany” and finally, the whole thing highlighted with some “Ebony”. The results of which very well could be mistaken for drying blood. Especially under the firelight…

Now we’ve got to make the pole, and find a nice paint to form an insignia to emblazen this thing with. I’m thinking white will look best, with how dark it turned out.

Also, we took a trip out to my parents to visit Fred. There in the driveway testing him out and trying to come up with the perfect height for him.

There I am, his kneecaps at my eye level, craning my neck to look up at his decayed visage that it struck me. What in the hell was I thinking? What’s worse, we have the ability to put him to where his feet are over my head!

Kyle wants him taller, Alec wants him shorter, Jen thinks he’s about right where he’s at. I’m at a point I want to do some tests to see how much pollution of lighting we’ll get from the torches with differing height and lighting arrangements.

Finally, I’ve started to work on a special necklace to add to my costume. Making a cast to make some beads out of my Squirrel Monkey skull.