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 It is now time to attach a head to the fan body. In this case I used a
talking head with eyes that light up that is motion activated. At the time it
was the best I could do. However, I will be retrofitting the Keeper with a Boris
talking head that will be able to sync. to the words he is speaking. For now we
will attach a simple skull. As you can see in the photo there is a
"neck" on this head, so I simply slip a 3/4" PVC pipe into one
end and attach with a screw through both sides of the neck into the pipe. The
other end I split in half back about 5". I then use a heat gun to soften
the PVC sides so I can wrap each around the sides of the fan body. Once molded
and pulled down snug to the fan I screw this down tightly with about 5 screws
each side (3/8" x #8 pan head zinc).
This photo here shows our Keeper with clothes on. Let's mention here quickly
that before we dressed him we attained an auto-reversing cassette player that
runs off 110V and inserted an authentic Crypt Keeper cassette that I attained
from Spencer Gifts a few years ago. This is a hard commodity to come by, so you
may have a tough time attaining one. Try the internet to get a copy of one. Then
I zip-tied the player to the post of the fan just below the chest. Adjusted to
high you can hear him cackling through the night even over the extreme sounds of
the haunt around him. Then I laid a white velour sheet over the box seat and the
table, all in one continuous piece then frayed the edges all around at floor
level.
For his clothes I used a very thick corduroy shirt to soften the sharp points of
the framework then covered with an additional thick sweater vest over that. If
you look close you will see the neck of the shirt remains open enough to fully
ventilate the fan body so it does not overheat and cause a fire. Be careful with
this. Since fans are built to draw air from behind and past the motor
continuously, the manufacturers of them count on this element to help keep their
moving parts cooled. So their motors sometimes generate more heat than a typical
motor might. So it is a fair argument that the fan motor you use may possibly
generate more heat than this one did and could pose a fire danger. You will need
to run him under continuous supervision for a couple of hours to determine if he
will run all night long or not and stay cool. I am not U.L.
and offer no guarantee on my
projects without the payment of
$250,000.00 U.S. dollars in advance
to your undertaking the project so
I can get the proper insurance in
place! :) Black pants and black
shoes complete the clothing effect.
Then I attached two animated hands
(the fingers move when motion
activated) to each hand bone with
zip ties. I couldn't find one right
and one left hand so I simply
painted the palm of one hand and
painted on fingernails and it made
a fine right hand.
I wanted the Keeper to look a
little like the MC on Tales from
the Crypt, so I needed to give him
a rotting skeleton color. You could
make him look a lot better with
adding some rotting flesh element
if you wanted to spend the time. I
mixed up a few paints and sprayed
him with a pin striping sprayer and
was careful to cover the neck and
his arms up his sleeves where the
arm bones could be seen. Then I
added the hair from a witch's hat
and little sections of the hair
strand for eye brows as well. Next
white paint was used for the teeth
and red paint for the nose and
gums. I outlined the red with black
paint that added the curdled blood
effect as well.
I needed to make his nice shirt and
vest look a bit rotten as well as
the face, so I cut out holes here
and there and added a couple of
spiders to his shoulder. But that
wasn't quite enough. It looked like
he was missing sections of clothing
but not like he had been rotting
away. After a little experimenting
I learned that a wire brush made
his clothes rot in seconds! The
edges frayed and look really
convincing.
In fine tuning his animation I
wound up setting the skull head to
flash the red eyes and move his
mouth but not to laugh as he can be
set to make sound or remain silent.
Then I leave the cassette tape
playing all night, rather than hook
it up to a motion detector. I hope
to add the feature of making this
motion activated some day as well,
but so far have not had the time to
dedicate to it. And the truth is I
like hearing the Crypt Keeper
talking in the background of the
haunt all night anyway. Sometimes I
leave him talking while I am
setting up the haunt. Just for the
HELL of it.
When he is actually set up in the
haunt I place the Ouija board on
the table and place his
motion-activated hand on the
pointer, so it looks like he is
moving it around the table. It is a
subtle feature and one that is lost
on nearly every TOT, but I like it.
When set up in the haunt I usually
place him in front of the spider
candelabra you see faintly on the
left of the pic.
I hope you enjoyed
your project and had excellent
success. If you build one of these
for your next Halloween, be sure to
take a picture of him to send to
me. I will post it here under
reader's props! |
