Breaking in My LOR for This Halloween

[smjosephrn]

I don't usually decorate much for Halloween but for this one, I am using it as a test run for my new LOR. I decided to turn the frontyard into a graveyard. I'll light it using two blue spot lamps attached to one channel. I've been collecting cheap styrofoam gravestones whenever I find them and I have also been buying these small plastic wrought iron look garden fences that have an eerie look to them. They run $1 a peice at Wal-Mart.

[smjosephrn]

Here's what I did to my lamppost last year. I'll be repeating it this year.

[smjosephrn]

I had some old wood laying around and I bought some styrofoam at Home Depot. that with a some adhesive, old paint and my trusty dremel, I created these gravestones. (I really didn't want to sit around a think of clever things to put on the stones so I lifted some of them from Disneyland and some others from websites that I have seen.)

[smjosephrn]

Had some left over Styrofoam so I made a few extras.

[FDWhitey]

smjosephrn,

I love the Jack lamp post!!! I am doing som NBC coro's this year... will post soon. My wife is a HUGE NBC fan ad she loved your display!



Whitey

[smjosephrn]

Thanks. I got this idea one year when it was too late to do it. So the next year (2006) I tried it out and I was very happy with it. The construction is PVC pipe bolted to the post were the crossbar is supposed to be. I take off the top of the lamp and the mask fits perfectly over the lamp base which because of the roundness, makes for a great head. I stitched all of the clothing together with fishing line and zip ties. Partly to keep it together and partly to deter theft.

[NWSanta]

Hey SMjosephrn,

Love the Zero. That is one awesome dog. Well done well done...

My Wife was pretty impressed with your props as well. Nicely done!
Cheers
Evan

[smjosephrn]

Thanks. Zero was more of a challenge than Jack was. I used white shower curtain glued to a metal mesh. I then Hot glued the lights under him. I wish that I had taken pictures every step of the construction. But I didn't even think of it. With the lights, I started with the two in the ping pong ball and then wrapped the wire mesh around about 20 more lights into the shape of a head, then glued the shower curtain to that. Then I cut a hole through the "sheet" shape that I made for the body and ran the remaining lights through to the underside. I hid the hole at the neck with a dog collar. The I Hot glued the lights to the underside. The picture makes the lights to appear a bit hotter than they really are. I still would have liked a more glowing appearance than I got.

[NWSanta]

Yeah Hard to get that "Glowing" appearance when your trying to replicate a Ghost!

Pretty cool though. Can't wait to see pictures from this year.

-Evan

[tsrail]

smjosephrn wrote:

I don't usually decorate much for Halloween but for this one, I am using it as a test run for my new LOR. I decided to turn the frontyard into a graveyard. I'll light it using two blue spot lamps attached to one channel. I've been collecting cheap styrofoam gravestones whenever I find them and I have also been buying these small plastic wrought iron look garden fences that have an eerie look to them. They run $1 a peice at Wal-Mart.

I've been trying to find something reasonable to outline the Halloween display & keep folks off of the lawn, and this is perfect. Just cleaned out Walmart - heading to another to get more. $1.00 for a 2" section is pretty good. They also have a "white picket fence" style for the same price.



Thanks for the heads up!

[smjosephrn]

No prob. I thought that these were a great deal!

[smjosephrn]

I just finished setting up my LOR for the first time. I'm using Evan's (NWSanta) idea for the 10 singing pumpkins. The effect is even more impressive IRL than on Evan's video. I really like these.

Lessons that I've learned with the setup of my LOR:

Don't use LOR 1.6.3 if you have an older computer. It just doesn't work well. I'm using 1.6.1

I perused the tutorials from the LOR support site. The were not much help. The Quick start guides however helped a lot.

[TomD]

Don't use LOR 1.6.3 if you have an older computer. It just doesn't work well. I'm using 1.6.1

Define what you mean by older computer. Are you refering to the hardware or are you referring to using an older version of window?

[smjosephrn]

It's Kinda the same. The LOR 1.6.3 is really designed for Vista but will work with XP (and even ME to a certain extent) But if you take it as a Vista program, then you need a computer beefy enough to run Vista which excludes the "older" hardware. With my experience with Vista, you need a pretty hardcore system otherwise you are in for problems just with the OS. My personal computer is a dual core, with 2 gig RAM and a Geforce 8800 and I still have problems with Vista.

What I was saying is, in my experience, if you want to use older hardware or an older OS, then stick with the LOR 1.6.1. You'll have less headaches.

[Dale W]

TomD wrote:

Don't use LOR 1.6.3 if you have an older computer. It just doesn't work well. I'm using 1.6.1

Define what you mean by older computer. Are you refering to the hardware or are you referring to using an older version of window?

1.6.3 is for Vista. You do not need to run it if you are on XP or earlier. It will cause problems.