April 20, 2009

What's up?

 
Wow. Has it really been over two months since my last post? Yikes. I must apologize to those who may have actually been interested in my blog. I did not mean to leave it hanging for so long. That works well for corpses, not blogs. I really don't mean to be so inconsistent with it, it's just that writing is not really my forte so it takes a little more effort on my part to get going. It also helps to actually have something to say. I promise though, I will pay more attention to it from now on. Pinky swear.

So what's been going on with the House?

Well, I've actually been fairly busy if not overwhelmingly productive. Over the last two months or so I've mostly been finishing up my 'social' pages. Not that big a deal, I know, but I'm picky. So those are done for now.

I also pretty much finished the 'facelift' of the Hauntcast website graphics and printed related stuff. I'm not a professional graphics or web designer by any stretch, but I am an enthusiastic hobbyist, so it was really cool of Chris Baker to give me an opportunity to play in the Hauntcast sandbox a little. It was fun too. Is it good work? Well, I suppose it's a little better than what was there before. I'll let others decide I guess. It did, however, lead to someone contacting me about another design project for a local/regional haunter's gathering here in Oregon. So that's encouraging. I will say this though, it kinda sucks having the skillset but not the toolset. I curse you, Adobe, and your outrageous prices. A Wacom tablet wouldn't suck either.

Additionally, I FINALLY got a web domain up for the House. While it's still freshly minted and pretty empty, it will be the new home and permanent hub of House Bloodthorn. It will mostly feature the House's haunt galleries and videos, but will also include this blog, some of my design projects and various artwork, the occasional story perhaps and maybe even the odd how-to, or rather, the odd 'how-I-did-it', as I'm no prop wiz. Of course, this is all subject to change, but that's the plan for now. It'll certainly be less time-consuming than updating 6 or 8 different 'social' pages. I'm hoping anyway.

New to the blog is the Flickr 'badge' on the right side of this page. This links to my Flickr gallery where there are images of the SkullAndBone version of THoMR and a few images of some of my older, store-bought props that I got by with pre-Rose. All staged and lit to approximate what they looked like in my windows. Most of the store-bought stuff will be cannibalized, retired or donated to neighbors.

And, finally, during this spate of good weather we've been having, I actually cleaned up and somewhat organized my garage/workshop so I can get going on some *gasp* ACTUAL haunt-related projects. Be still my thundering heart. Yes, I do actually intend to do some of that...

SOON!