Haunted Tiki Island

This is the End my Friends

2010-05-31T23:25:00.001-07:00

This is the last post to the Haunted Tiki Island Blog. We are still haunting. There will be more posts about Haunted Tiki Island, but you will be able to find it at our new site www.hellizondohaunt.com. We will be doing a new theme this year and we expect to do a new one every three years. Instead of making and promoting a new blogspot every three years, they will all be collected on one site at one url. The new site will also have news, galleries, directions, and other fun stuff.

The Haunt at Hellizondo crew hopes you will check us out. We are setting up the site this week and just waiting for our domain to propagate to DNS servers around the world so that you can visit.

Now for our last post here on blogspot.

Each year I have made a video compilataion of photos and movie clips for the haunt crew to watch and get excited for the new build season. This is the slideshow of the photographs from Halloween 2009. This version is different than the ones you will see on the Hauntforum or Home Haunters dvds. I hope you like it.

The Stragglers

2009-11-23T13:07:00.001-08:00

Lava Creep

There is one prop from this year that we all loved, and almost everyone had a hand in its creation, but for some reason it would not be photographed. Only one picture came out sharp and it doesn't have the fog machine going, which really brigs this prop to life. Even photoshopping in some fog doesn't quite cut it. However he came out great as a prop. So without further ado let introduce Lava Creep!

As you might imagine, Lava creep lives inside our volcano. He is about 8 feet tall and and bellows smoke from his mouth and slits in his ribcage. He stands in a stream of lava which you can see in the picture, but in real life looks very cool. It was rope lights laid out on the ground in a stream pattern, and then two layers of thin black ground cover cloth were laid over them. The criss-crossing patterns from the cloth made a weird effect where it looked like the lights were moving. The rope lights were also on a flicker circuit, so they had a cool smoldering ember look to them. Lava creep was surrounded by lost souls, who were emerging from the magma to wreck havoc on the world.

Here are some other shots of him. They show the smoke and light, but are blurry.

He used to be this guy from 2008:

HedgeBreaker

This guy was out on the hedge and got put away before I could photograph him on Halloween night. He was one of my first scratch built corpses of the year and now I hate him. I think I'll saw his arms off and cut a big section of his ribs and make then cavity smaller. I like his face though.

Walk through Video

2009-11-10T10:11:00.001-08:00

Here is a walk thru video at night of the haunt. This should give you an idea of what it was like, and see if you can spot the prop whose photo hasn't been posted yet. (he's 8 feet tall).

Haunt Photos 2009

2009-11-04T16:51:00.001-08:00

This is the bulk of images from Halloween Night. I need to photograph a few props that were taken down too hastily and sort thru the point &shoot pictures. Thanks for looking!

It's a Long, Hard Road...

2009-11-04T11:23:00.001-08:00

Here is one more picture of the yard. I am almost finished editing all of the pictures. They will be up tomorrow or friday hopefully. Good old MonTiki, one of my first props I ever made, a 6 ft tall sexy hunk of Dow Blue foam.

I was just looking at my google calendar for November. It's mostly empty now. A few bills here, a couple holidays there, and eye exam follow up. It was a big relief.

Just for fun, here are the last three months. I have removed all the personal events so this is just prop making things I needed to do. Dark orange is for weeknight tasks, bright orange is for working in the garage at Patty's house. Welcome to my nightmare! By the way, I had started way back in april but it was a casual thing. Those were easy days!

Editing is Hard Work

2009-11-03T16:24:00.001-08:00

I have been editing pictures for two days and I am almost done with the "Fancy" ones.

Here is one I like; a view of the yard from the street featuring FireBringer.

Next year I am going shot everything in sections and stitch it together into a giant high-res panorama. I would have done that this year, but I am not so sharp at 2:30am and I forgot.

Nov. 1st

2009-11-02T11:16:00.001-08:00

Yes I know, I know, we said 2009 was the final year for Haunted Tiki Island, but all we needed was some sleep and a look at the pictures from the night before and we were all like yeah, yeah yeah!! Let's do one more year!

However, by 11 am on November 1st we had all talked it out and decided we were just being nostalgic and we really were excited to do our haunted carnival theme for next year that we all agreed on two years ago.

So we spent yesterday cleaning it all up and throwing out stuff we aren't going to use or can't store.

Good bye paper mache bugs.

Good bye Lava Creep.

Good bye Volcano.

Sorry Cauldron Creep, we left you out overnight and the wind wrecked you.

Sorry Praying Mantis, but we need to put this prop away.

Sorry Moth, these webcaster webs actually work.

(Luckily this web has no spiders so he was still alive and got free and flew away when I pulled then webs down.)

Halloween 2009!!!

2009-11-01T20:05:00.001-08:00

Halloween 2009 was a great night!!! We had 500-600 hundred people come thru. Luckily we had enough candy and treats on hand to get thru the ravenous hordes of Trick R Treaters. Quick thanks to Tricia's Portland family who sent us a box full of halloween pencils, glow in the dark fangs, and spider rings to give out. That really helped spread out the fun.

As always thanks to Patty and Joe for letting us mess up their house again this year. Thanks to my fellow haunt builders and scare-actors. Thanks to all the Trick R Treaters who came by and had so many nice things to say. Thanks to Hauntforum.com for helping me to learn all this crazy stuff.

I am pouring thru hundreds of pictures and a lot of video. I will start posting those here in the next week so stay tuned. Haunted Tiki Island the yard haunt might be done, but Haunted Tiki Island the blog still has quite a bit more to see.

Teaser #4

2009-10-28T20:20:00.001-07:00

Should have worn a costume last year teenage Trick r Treaters. The mask might have protected your face. This year, you can be the mask.

Let me tell you a little story about a man named "Ed"....

Teaser #3

2009-10-22T10:37:00.001-07:00

1 piece of my most ambitious prop of the year.

Build Season Week 9

2009-10-22T10:33:00.001-07:00

Halloween is now 8 days away!!

This weekend we were putting the finishing touches on a lot of props. teeth for one guy, feet for another, repairing props from last year that were damaged in storage.

We got cauldron creep out and put him together.

I finished the wiring on firebringer which makes no sense from the pictures but runs of two separate tealight led flicker circuits.

I paper mached the last of my corpses, which took 6 hours! Man what a pain.

I built a stand for this very heavy bucky skeleton and a table.

Next week will have some building but will be most setting up and testing the black light tunnels and the volcano. I am scrambling to finish my projects at home and maintain my relationship, as this is the time of year when my GF hates me for making such a huge mess and ignoring her. Mostly it is the mess though.

Teaser #2

2009-10-21T10:38:00.001-07:00

Teaser

2009-10-20T12:16:00.001-07:00

It's coming. See a bit more at my other blog.

Build Season Week 8

2009-10-12T11:17:00.001-07:00

Another busy weekend, so busy in fact there are only a few pictures in comparison to how much got done. I did two 14 hour days to get as much done as I could. I am so tired and sore, and if I didn't have to earn a living I'd be back tonight.

We finished the Tower of Death:

And we finished the volcano:

I started the mache on my Sconce corpses:

Zac made a corpse for our man eating vines to attack:

Lava Creep got a head:

Other things that got done but not photographed:

scared corpse got mached
firebringer is mache ready
lantern corpse is mache ready
reed scarecrows made
carver creep got a stand and primed
candles got finished and painted
skulls cast
and probably some stuff I forgot!

I am so tired today. Think I might go sleep in my car for lunch.

Build Season Week 7

2009-10-06T16:13:00.001-07:00

Patty and I put in three whole days of work this weekend with everyone else doing full days on Saturday and Sunday. We got a lot of stuff done. Except for me, almost everybody's projects are done or almost done. Now everyone just has to pitch in to get everything done. I mean they have to help me finish my projects. Yay halloween?

Patty and Tricia weather some voodoo dolls:

Zac and Tricia prime and paint a giant cheetoh:

I adjusted the eyes on volcano to be more scary:

Zac, Tricia and Patty weather the wood on the tower of death:

Kendra touches up the paint of volcano:

and she made us a bunch of hands:

I built the frames for the tarp covered black light area:

Zac starts one more corpse:

I worked on my Sconce Corpses:

and Cappy took a nap:

Build Season Week 6

2009-09-29T12:19:00.001-07:00

Victory!!!

The volcano got done despite me being a prop nazi and waking up at 3am saturday morning for no reason and being unable to fall asleep again. I was grumpy, so I apologize once again to my fellow haunters.

Now to the volcano:

Courtney and Kendra help out on volcano (everyone helped BTW)

Next weekend I'll make his eyes and teeth a bit bigger, and paint him up. I'll try to test out the smoke and fire if there is time.

Some other shots of the weekend labors:

Joe finishes the bridge

Tricia re-works last years blue man into the Lava Creep

Zac makes some feet and paints his ground breaker

props that got finished or 95% done:

Kendra's Carnivorous Flower
Tricia's Venus Fly Traps
Patty's Peeping Ghoul and shield
Zac's Ground Breaker
Zac's Little butcher from last year got some feet
Joe's Tiki painted
Haunted Vines and Blacklight Flowers
Lava effect
Altar candles

I am quite confident that now we will finish everything. Yay Halloween!!!

Build Season Week 5

2009-09-24T17:30:00.001-07:00

Oh what a headache! Come on Volcano, be done already!!!

More guys and ghouls in the haunted garage this last weekend.

Man it doesn't look like much but we got a lot done. Zac made a ground breaker in a day and half. Tricia got started on voodoo dolls and candles and stemmed her venus flytraps. Patty's tiki mask from last week got painted and hooked up with a motor, but I forgot to photograph that. Joe got more work on the bridge done. I cast skulls and jaws all week end long and built the "Tower of Death" as we call it with the neighbors. You can see the Firebringer perched up top practicing his prayers.

This weekend coming up is the do or die build days. The Volcano must be done or all of halloween starts to slide in to failure and abandoned projects.

Build Season Week 4

2009-09-14T16:49:00.001-07:00

After a long holiday I got back to working in the haunted garage on Saturday. Due to work and camping, I was the only one there.

I got a lot done:

Then on sunday I Kendra and Patty didn't have to work and joined me, along with first time prop builder Joe.

Kendra attended to the flora of Haunted Tiki Island:

Patty made a Samoan style tiki mask:

Joe built his first prop, a tiki mask/shield, which was not too shabby:

and I started my first wood tiki ever:

Next week it's time to move some lumber big time with all hands on deck. Ahoy Halloween!!!

The Tonga Room

2009-09-11T16:13:00.001-07:00

The Tonga Room

On Labor Day K and I went to The Tonga Room, a tiki bar located in the basement of our hotel, The Fairmont, in San Fransisco. I'm not gonna rate the drinks or the price, but it was a fun tiki themed experience. Usual bar and grill fare with $20-$35 dinners and $10 cocktails. Some good some bad, but all in all a fun place.

Tikis:

It's a little sparse on tikis, and in the vein of the Tiki Room at Disneyland.

Drinks:

Good over all, fruity and full of booze, $10 each is the lowest price, up to $17.

Music:

It was a cover band when we went on a sunday night. It was a $5 cover and not too bad. They play on a boat that floats in the middle of the room in a pool of water(by the way the Tonga room used to be an indoor pool at the Fairmont, so thats where the water comes from.)

If you dine there you get to sit in the boat house. This has a thatched roof, and boats slung from the ceiling, but it is the least tiki-riffic area of the whole joint.

If you sit in the cocktail area, you get more tiki fun and decorations.

Last but not least, the dance floor is the deck of a pirate ship, with a giant tiki guarding it.

Check out the Tonga Room if your in San Fran, it's good.

The Last Vacation - No time lost

2009-09-08T10:22:00.001-07:00

This weekend K and I took off to San Fransicso for Labor Day weekend. We spent the weekend going to all the art and science museums. I had heard that the De Young Museum was having a display of African masks and statues and some photographs by some famous photographers, but I didn't really have an idea of what was going to be there. Well, King Tut was there on display, but sans a mummy, I wasn't interested in looking at gold stuff and old jars with a million other tourists and paying extra to do it. What I didn't know about the De Young Museum was that it is home to an awesome collection of tribal and ancient art and artifacts.

Here are some highlights:

Asmat Ancestor Skull

Asmat Ancestor Skull

Dayak Carving

Tiki from Samoan Islands

Skull Reliquary from New Guinea

Decorative Shields

While I didn't make anything for Halloween over the 3 day weekend, I got a whole bunch of ideas to try and squeeze in this years haunt.

Build Season Week 3

2009-08-31T11:28:00.001-07:00

Gosh dang it was hot in Simi this weekend! 103 degrees with no breeze. Luckily nothing in Simi is on fire, however EVERYWHERE around "the valley" where I live is on fire.

Have a great Labor Day weekend everyone!

Build Season Week 2

2009-08-24T12:20:00.001-07:00

I only have pictures from Saturday as I forgot my camera in the garage on sunday (your ghost host does not actually live in simi valley). However, you can see big things were happening over the weekend.

2009-08-17T21:28:00.000-07:00

This is the lovely Mourning Rose Manor yard display in Simi Valley. I just heard about it this last year. I am looking forward to going to see it, and since it runs every night thru October I won't have to miss it. They have a great set of animated props including a flying ghost, a rocking chair corpse, some pop up ghouls, and a very creepy grave digger.

Here are some great shots of the display:

Check out all of their pictures at Mourning Rose Manor's photo page.

Mourning Rose Manor runs every night of October and is located at 5250 Aurelia Street, Simi Valley, CA.

Big Plans

2009-08-13T17:22:00.001-07:00

I sat down with Google's free 3-d application Sketchup and started to layout the plans for our volcano we are making for this year's halloween.

I wanted this to be easy to setup and easy to take down, and be reusable next year. I built the model to scale and used standard building materials. One sheet 1/2' plywood, two sheets of luan, and a hand full of 2x4s. For the surface we are going to make rocks out of styrofoam blocks and use great stuff foam for lava.

The sides are made of luan because (1.) we're gonna chuck it on november 1st and (2.) we need to bend them to conform to the edge of the yard/grass. The reusable part is the doorway, the top par with the eye holes, and the walkway. You can almost see how it will be a robot in 4 years from now, and will give a good base for next years new Haunt theme.

This is the empty yard:

Here is the basic layout for the haunt with the volcano. Yes, I did measure the house out and the yard, so everything is to scale:

To aid in construction I made a grid in sketch up that I laid over the model. It is in 1 square foot units. This will help draw out the design and let you quickly figure how big each part is. This needs to be easy to understand since none of us are carpenters.

Here is a rough idea of what it will look like:

Here is a shot of the backside. You can see it will be very stable. I plan on using bolts for the connections between the bigger parts, so that it can be broken down quickly and to a small size for storage.

Can't wait to get started on it!

The Build Season has Begun

2009-08-10T16:02:00.001-07:00

We got started in earnest this last weekend on halloween props for 2009!

Can we? I dare say we can! More previews of 2009

2009-07-30T15:22:00.000-07:00

This is the interior of the volcano sketch in the last post.

I am a sucky drawler so I'll tell you what your looking at. A bridge going over hot lava. Crispy skeletons reaching out from said lava. A monster made of same lava coming around the corner of a cave that goes another direction.

This is the area between the yard where you walked through the mouth of the volcano and the bridge carries you over to the porch which will be the headshrinkers workshop.

Happy 4th of July!!!

2009-07-03T17:45:00.001-07:00

A preview of this summer's biggest project for Haunted Tiki Island 2009.

This will be a walk thru tunnel which takes you down into the volcano to the headshrinker's lair. there will be smoke, and lava, and scares inside so prepare yourselves!!!.

Meet the Cannibals

2009-06-05T14:11:00.000-07:00

Patty made these awesome cannibals. She says they suck, but it's quite obvious that they don't. They are just made from a huge block of packing styrofoam for the torso, pool noodle float toys for the arms, a foam skull, paper mache, and a touch of clay. They are one of my favorite parts of out haunt. If you look in the little kids bag, you'll see a bag full of bones and spiders, and other tasty insects.

Some have pointed out similarities to this guy:

The Zuni fetish doll from Trilogy of Terror

Here's his best scenes in the movie:

Come on by on Halloween, We promise the little guy wont bite you.

But she might.

Nothing like some field study for inspiration

2009-05-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Hawaii last week. I saw some cool tikis and got some new ideas for Haunted Tiki Island.

Here are some tikis from Pu'uhonua o Honaunau:

New Prop for 2009 - Bomoh the Shaman

2009-05-15T15:08:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post today. This is Bomoh, a new prop I built for an online contest at www.hauntforum.com. The rules were simple: It must cost less than $20 to build. He is made from PVC pipe and papermache with a few clay bits here and there.

You'll see him haunting some corner of the yard this year. Stop by and say hi!

Designing Haunted Tiki island (part 3)

2009-04-27T16:46:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post today. This is a sketch of our haunt sign from 2007. When I drew it out, I tried to make it to scale, and I'm not a technical drawer, but if I actually built this, then I would just need to scale up the drawing to get a very close copy in real life.

So this what it looked like in 2007 when it was finished:

I made this from DOW blue insulation foam, and carved wood texture into it with a wooden sculpting knife. I painted it and washed it in gray and black to look like really old wood. This is one of the projects I finished at 1 am the morning of Halloween. I embellished the skull to look more like an ancestral skull.(follow that link to some really cool stuff).

This year (2008) I decided to make a new look for the sign, because it is one of the mood setting pieces of the haunt. I thought last years sign was too much Haunted, and not enough Tiki Island. I added some tropical flowers I bought at Michael's and made a new skull based on a Palawan ancestor skull. I repainted the white lettering of the sign with Glow in the Dark paint to make it pop under the black lights. The skull is misted with black light hairspray.

The Palawan Skull orginal:

Designing Haunted Tiki island (part 2)

2009-04-24T12:13:00.000-07:00

Sometimes its good when props don't come out like they looked in your head. Whereas the last post featured a giant tiki mask that is almost a verbatim replica of the original drawing, sometimes it's good to just keep working till it looks good. This is one such case.

The final prop:

Let's jump forward a year to 2008. This is a prop or a scene setter that Patty and I came up with. Patty thought it would be cool to put some skulls up on the branches of a tree in the yard that had died of blight, and was mostly stripped bare of limbs, just waiting to be felled and diced up into fire wood. She said we could do anything we wanted since it was getting cut down right after Halloween.

This is how it looked in the first sketch. Some good ideas, some ho-hum:

Then a couple weeks later I drew this. It's getting closer:

and here's what I ended up with. Here is a daytime shot:

In the end we had to skip on the palm frond tiki masks because we couldn't find the right one, but instead used palm fans from Calleana's ranch and spattered them with red paint. The effect was better because it might have been too busy with tiki faces all over the tree, as the tree itself was surrounded with props already.

So if that prop doesn't look like you planned, just work on it till it looks cool. Don't get frustrated, don't give up. Just keep working!

Designing Haunted Tiki Island (part 1)

2009-04-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

I started making some sketches for props for Haunted Tiki Island in early 2007. While HTI was still a pipe dream for all of us, and probably forgotten by most of us, I was trying to figure out how to make a cool looking tiki theme that would be scary but not offensive to Polynesian neighbors. The look of Haunted Tiki Island is a conglomeration of all kinds of tribal design aesthetics and influences. It's Polynesian, Mayan, Aztec, Dayak, Palawan, Asmat, Ifugao, Naga, and even little bits of various African tribes. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I tried to diffuse the influence so it wouldn't seem I was picking on anyone group.

Here is an example:

This is our giant Tiki mask, whose main features are African and Polynesian, but if you look, you'll see Samoan and Aztec influences (the tongue sticking out on the glyph on his chin).

I made this tiki face from Dow blue insulation foam starting from a 2" by 8" piece. I had the drawing I made blowup at Kinkos, then I transfered the design to the foam. I used a dremel with a routing bit to draw out the features, then I used a small wire clay tool to chip out some areas to give a rougher chiseled stone look. I painted him with dark grey latex house paint, then washed him with black paint to fill in the cracks, and followed with a drybrushing of light gray.

The Natives are Restless

2009-04-14T21:31:00.000-07:00

(Halloween night 2008, and someones costume has improved)

It's Halloween night 2007, the first Year of Haunted Tiki Island and I am running around like crazy trying to put everything up. I took half a day off from work and sped over there. Everyone has been helping as they arrive from work through out the afternoon, but its coming down the wire. Just as the sun is setting we finally get it all up. I run into the house to shower and then get my costume on. While I have spent the last two weeks staying up till 1 am to finish props, something else has been going on under my nose. Costumes are coming together. Maybe I was too single minded to even hear what people were saying about their costumes during that time. I donned the costume that I had bought all online, and had not yet even tried on till now.

So Sad. I look stupid. Unscary.

Oh well the show must go on! I walk outside and I see this:

and this:

and this:

I am jump up and down happy again! I had the worst costume there, how awesome! I have feeling this Tiki Island thing is going to go well.

It Starts with a Dead Monkey (this is how it starts pt.2)

2009-04-09T13:34:00.000-07:00

(papertowel mache over wire armature with celluclay)

....unless your nuts.

I have a long history of obsessions. Whatever that thing is that people have to try and be cool and be carefree about life, well I don't have it. How could you only half love those things that are important to you? You must be passionate about something! What if your passionate about lots of things! There are some who say "You must only be passionate about one thing, lest you become a dilettante." (Yes, they say "lest" in my internal dialogue.) I am good at lots of things. That's what I like to do, learn new things and do them the best I can.

In 2006 I decided to make Halloween one of them.

I have always done something for Halloween. Made a painting to decorate the door for Trick or Treaters, thrown a party, or gone to some special Halloween event. It wasn't until I met my HunBun that I started going to Haunted mazes. I don't get scared at those things, but man I loved the sets and scare-actors and the fun of screaming people. I wanted a peice of that to call my own, and so it began in 2007.

But not without some pushback. I was told that "some people are gonna think your bullying them into Halloween, your gonna be too good at the prop making and make eveyone else feel like thier props suck, that your gonna be a control freak and a perfectionist, and your gonna make a mess of the house and intrude on people's space and property."

But that didn't happen. After working every night for a few weeks in September I showed what I had made at a family BBQ, and then everyone wanted to play. I showed them how to make a shrunken head out of paper mache and a cheap toy skull. Even though it was last minute it was fun, and everyone had a good time, and everyone wanted to do it next year.

All I needed was a dead monkey to get everyone on board.

This is how it starts

2009-03-26T00:49:00.001-07:00

(Some of the first props I made, foam casts of a bucky skull)

It all starts with Bullshit.

Your old now. Maybe not OLD old, but too old to Trick or Treat. It's the end of a fun Halloween night handing out candy and walking around the neighborhood. Now your sitting around with the family and some friends talking about your decorations and the neighbors decorations, and how it would be so cool to go all out next year with decorations.

BUT. but. But...

1. It's so expensive, and 2. We don't know how to do any of that stuff, and 3. People will steal it or vandalize it. We'll pack up our collection of decorations cobbled together from the previous years Halloween clearance sales and party decorations saying to each other "You what would be cool ...".

Those ideas might linger for a few days, but they soon disappear into the dead leaves, rain, and thanksgiving travel plans. Then it's Xmas before you know it and it gets away from you... and you forget. Unless...

(cont.)