A new Voice from Hell

While we were at HAuNTcon in Houston back in May we met a really great guy named Dick Terhune from Connecticut. Dick provides voice-talent services to the haunt industry. We asked him if he wouldn't mind being the voice of our new talking hearse driver. After working out a script and a few takes this is what he created.

We created a funeral scene for a short film

We were contacted by a independant film maker who asked us if we could setup a funeral scene with our props for her movie. We knew we would have a mausoleum completed and setup in the backyard this summer along with some other new props this year so we said yes. It turned out pretty nice.

We received a Grant!

We were awarded a grant from the Clackamas County Cultural Coalition and the Oregon Cultrual Trust. As some of you may know we have always done our annual hallween display using our own money and have never taken donations or done any fund raising for ourselves. This year we were planning on spending some additional money on our events and thought we'd try appling for some grant money to help offset the expenses.

We were one of 9 awardees out of 14 applicants and the only artist team. The funds will go towards profesional custom costumes for the dancers and airbrush makeup supplies. It will also help pay for the rental of a PA/Sound system for our events too.

Tombstone Workshop was a big hit!

It was a long day Saturday but everyone had a great time. Our morning session started at 9am but people arrived as instructed a little earlier. We had 12 people show up and carve out their own custom epitaphs. Everyone got right to work taping their epitaphs together and gluing them to their tombstone blanks. It took a while for people to get their tombstones carved but once that was done they cut out their shapes and added any details. Then they painted their lettering and the tombstone black. When things were dry (which took a while with the cloudy morning) they added a coat of dark grey and after that dried they added the light grey with a sponge roller. The final step was to age the tombstone with some watered down black paint with a brush and rag or a sponge. The morning session wrapped up by 2pm while the afternoon session arrived. We repeated the same process with the afternoon group of 11. The afternoon session was done and we cleaned up just after 7pm.

There were some great tombstones created during both sessions. Some great ideas for shapes and layout. Some good painting techniques too. Here are just of few examples of our wonderful students!