MHC 2014 - Part 3
Saturday morning we ended up sleeping late after getting to bed around 3AM and missed the morning classes. That was a bummer as I missed the Haunt Animatronics class I was looking forward to taking. We hit the tradeshow floor around mid day and picked up some props from Slaughterhouse Studios before getting lunch. They were a great group as well as Tombstone Factory and Hauntiques who we talked with for a little while the night before at the party and remembered us (so guess the party wasn't that bad - but still left a sour taste). Overall same level and quality of vendors as the year before, many the same as previous year. Was happy to see From Art 2 Zombies were getting bigger and very popular with the crowd.
About the biggest name vendor there this year that wasn't in the past (pretty sure Ghost Ride and Pale Night Produtions were both there last year?) was Distortions Unlimited. Ed and Marsha Edmunds were both in the booth - but this felt more like a celebrity publicity event than tradeshow vendor as they only brought a couple small animitronics that were within the MHC budget range.
Later Saturday I took the following seminars:
Head Towards the Light: Using Lights to “Paint” Your Haunt Walls
Realistic Haunt Painting and Distressing
Creepy and Effective Haunted Attraction Lighting
Introduction to 3D Floor and Set Design
After class, got the notice on BEERS that Garage of Evil was having beer and pizza in their suite and heading up for a little while to partake. Then went down to our room to get dressed for the costume ball. Costumes were insane this year. Way out of our league (though to be fair we recylced past years costumes and spent and hour doing makeup - some of these costumes must've taken months). Didn't get any good pictures given the gloves I had on made it hard to work a camera phone but will share some from other sources on Facebook. The Body Art airbrush competition had weaker entries compared to last year, but the Miss Scary and MHC 2014 best character contestants were great. After a while of checking out costumes - it was getting too crowded so we went back to the hotel bar and ran into Justin who we had met the night before and hung out with him for a while before calling it a night. Was good to see Carl Cleaver riding the escalator in his classic pose for hours on end, its not MHC without a Carl Cleaver escalator sighting!
Sunday I finished up the morning classes with a 3 hour course with Tim "Timmer" Gavinski called How to Create Insanely Detailed Portable Haunted Houses. Then hit the tradeshow floor to find any last minute bargains that usually happen when vendors are getting ready to shutdown. Ended up grabbing a couple items from Pumpkin Pulp as I like their style, the necessary fog juice from Froggys (a given) and a couple higher powered fog machines to replace the budget models I've had for the past couple years that weren't working to well outdoors. Finally a stop back by Tombstone Factory and ended up buying their booth display, which after some changes should make a great addition to part of our cemetery.
We hit the hotel bar up for free food and drink happy hour and ended up talking to the couple that owns Dark Imaginings. Very nice people (hey - if you like Dresden Files and werewolves are your favorite monsters then you are A-OK in my book).
Dinner and a couple drinks that evening to relax and reflect on the weekend and that was it...another year in the books that came and went way too quickly. Now time to stop writing and get to building some awesome scares for 2014!
