Environments

I've recently become involved with creating fun physical environments for people to enjoy. I've always been interested in this, but haven't really had a venue to do it in. Below are some instances of things that I have done in this realm.

Walk-through Egyptian Tomb (museum exhibit)

When I heard that the local Virginia Children's Discovery Museum was making an exhibit about ancient Egypt called "Secrets of the Nile", I just had to volunteer. I was part of a team of six designers - three staff and three volunteers - that designed the exhibit. As I hoped, I scored the task of designing the tomb!

The budget for the exhibit was very small, so we knew that the exhibit would have to entail a lot of creativity. We could not afford to buy props - we would have to build practically everything.

After brainstorming some construction possibilities with the exhibit manager, I set to work designing what the tomb was going to look like. My wife, who also volunteered, laid out the shape of the maze and the size of the walls, and I designed all the artwork to go on the walls.

The artwork was all done in Flash, based on existing artwork on real tomb walls. Since we were going to paint the designs on the walls, I simplified the designs quite a bit, and reduced the color palette down to about six colors.

To go with the tomb, I made a 'Rosetta Stone' that translates hieroglyphics into English. Using the stone, industrious kids can translate all of the hieroglyphics on the walls, which I think is really cool, even if only a fraction of the kids actually do it. (Hieroglyphics in Egyptian tombs are actually a lot like comic strips - the glyphs represent speech by the people in the image, such as "Heart, do not betray me in the Hall of Judgement!") For the kids who didn't feel like becoming junior lingiusts, we had small plaques around the tomb with shorter things for them to translate - little phrases that only have one or two words written in hieroglyphics.

Due to safety limitations, we could not build the tomb out of, say, wood. Instead, we built the tomb out of hanging fabric. In order for parents to quickly locate their children, we couldn't even have the fabric come all the way to the ground. We used huge rolls of canvas which were fireproofed and dried. They then received a coat of brown paint as a primer. When they dried, we hung them up, one at a time, on the wall of the gallery, and projected the artwork onto the canvas so we could sketch the artwork onto the canvas in pencil.

Once the design was transferred onto the canvas, they were laid out on the floor of the back gallery, and painted by a corps of volunteers over the course of three weeks. Once the painting was complete, the design was outlined with thick black magic markers. The result was strikingly good - better than I thought it was going to be.

It was great to finally walk through the tomb. The kids who were visiting the exhibit absolutely loved it, and it was the first exhibit in a long time that had prompted the local TV station to come do a story about the museum. I'm very happy with how it turned out.

ImaginEERIEing (amateur house haunting)

Most likely, it started with that first trip into Disney's Haunted Mansion in Anaheim. I was rather young, and scared out of my gourd, but I went in. I remember it was raining, and the line was not long. The creepy-looking doorman glared at me ominously. Spookiness rolled off of the place in waves, and yet, I went in.

The sights I saw (between my fingers) turned me into the insatiable fan of dark rides, horror movies, and Halloween decorations that I am today. As an adult, I can still appreciate the ambition of the Disney Imagineers when they created a two-level Pepper's Ghost illusion, but the kid in me still remembers the haunting scene of ghosts waltzing in a decaying ballroom. (Apparently, I am not alone.)

From what I have seen, no one has topped the Haunted Mansion for sheer 'dark ride' fun. It's the perfect balance of humor and horror that makes it accessible to the hardened horror fan and wide-eyed child alike. I know I can't top it, but I can carry on the haunting tradition by sending chills up the neighbor kids' spines.

Millions of people decorate their houses for Halloween. Now that I have a house, I can participate. I started modestly, with some lights, a pumpkin, and some homemade props.

At the clearance sales after Halloween, I've picked up a lot of great stuff. Fog machines, thunder and lightning generators, flame cauldrons, etc. I still don't have a house that is fit for entertaining - or for haunting - but the yard will be a much bigger production this time around.

But first, I've got a Halloween party to help throw at the Virginia Discovery Museum. (The same place I did the Egyptian tomb for.) They're doing a fundraiser, so I'm lending my props and my time to ensure it's a success. I'll post information on it after the party, but in the mean time, check out the instructions of how I built last year's props.

One thing you can look at now, however, is the game I made for a kiosk at the party for the kiddos. In it, you can carve a pumpkin or make a monster. It was created in an evening, and isn't all that exciting technically, but from what I've seen, this sort of thing goes over like gangbusters with kids. I guess we'll see at the party!