Pirate ship in front yard Halloween decoration--some photos

GROG help my friend Peter Montgomery, who is a director and visual efx artist, build a pirate ship emerging from the ground in his front yard for Halloween. The front of the ship is coming out of theground and then behind that is an animatronic skeleton at the wheel talking to an animatronic crow sitting on the wheel and behind them is a broken mast emerging from the ground with tattered sails and a crows nest. The ship is made out of styrofoam with a steel frame understructure to support it and it is all carved and painted to look like beat up old weathered wood. All the big stuff is up and painted and now we're down to finishing up the details.

It is at 1665 Highland in Glendale (CA), so come by and take a look at it. It's very impressive. A photographer for a Glendale paper took photos yeterday of the work-in-progress and tomorrow night channel 7 is going to take some live shots of it for the news. GROG not have digital camera, so GROG see if he can get Peter to send him some photos so GROG can post for your enjoyment. But, if you're here in the LA area, swing by and you'll really get a kick out of it.

[ Edited by: GROG 2007-10-30 11:17 ]

[ Edited by: GROG 2007-11-01 19:00 ]

Jeez, I still have to carve my pumpkins!

Too funny....
I live around the corner and have been
watching you guys put this up.
It looks fantastic!

Link to Glendale News Press article:
http://www.glendalenewspress.com/articles/2007/10/31/news/gnp-halloween30.txt

[ Edited by: Murph 2007-10-31 15:29 ]

They had photos in the newspaper, but not online. Curious. Thanks for the link, Murph.

Peter will have the ship up for about a week, so swing by, it turned out great. It looks awesome in the daytime as well.

Peter sent me some making-of photos. Enjoy.
GROG post more photos with skeleton and night shots when GROG get them.

[ Edited by: GROG 2007-11-01 19:39 ]

Wow...what a transformation of materials. That looks awesome. ARGH!!!

Where did you get Raisin Bras and who needed a WHOLE BOX of them?!

The bras are for old ladies with droopy boobs. The bras are for "raisin them up" so they don't droop so much. Later on, they changed the name to support bras.

[ Edited by: grog 2007-11-02 11:14 ]

Here's a link to some videos on Peter's website of his past animatronic Halloween shows. This is his hobby.
http://www.socalhalloween.com

[ Edited by: grog 2008-10-27 23:09 ]

wow, grog those pictures are really cool!!! thanks for posting them (and the making of...) very informative!

Any chance your friend could make/sell parrots that sing the enchanted tiki room theme? I'd love to have a couple of those in the home bar.

Amazing work!

Grog done good! Ship = A1 work!!

Grog And Neighbor kick ass! Man, That looked incredible...I just wished I would have caught the topic sooner, so I could have taken my better half to go look at it in person!
A-1 studio prop building there!
Freakin awesome!
Thanks for the share!

Here's a link to James Lopez' blog. James worked with Peter to do the sketches of the concept art for the pirate ship and helped fabricate some of the ship and other pieces. He also decorates his yard lavishly for Halloween and has decorated his home studio to look like the Haunted Mansion from Disneyland. (Click on the pics to enlarge the photos)

http://hauntedmansion-northside.blogspot.com/

Your Ship looks great.

Here's a Ship I made for Mastodon's Sea Beast Video. Did all the costumes, Masks, Sets and the life size Ship. After we were done I left it in a field for 10 months and we drug it out and used it in our Halloween Parade as our pirate float. 10 months of weather did GREAT things to it.

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=15119511

Laffo

cool video and love the band and song.

Jeff(bigtikidude)

Thanks they're old friends and a blast to work with. My favorite one we've done is for "Blood and Thunder."
Ole Laffo's 15 Minutes.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=762700
Laffo

This year the skeleton has crashed a locomotive into a graveyard. So, if you're trick or treating in Glendale tonight, drive up to the end of Highland just before Mountain Street and take a look.
Animatronics, lighting and sound efx, big train locomotive. Fun eye candy.

I really enjoyed this post, GROG.

It brought back fond memories of when my sister and her husband used to go overboard at Halloween. This was from the year that they built the Titanic on to the front of their house. (The tree covered in plastic was the iceberg.)