Scary Haunted Tower

Don't be afraid!

First of all, Happy Birthday to my nephew Theo, who turns four today. When children turn four, they get a hand-made boardgame/playset from Aunty Philippa (whether they want it or not).

Here is the concept in my sketchbook. Unfortunately the “10X skeletons” didn’t make it.

I painted over a ‘Saturday Night Takeaway’ board game that I found in a charity shop to make this. The theme is haunted house, because Theo very much into everything scary and spooky.

The models are made of sculpey. I needle-felted the tree tops. The rest is an assortment of different shaped wooden blocks which I painted.

I used neon paint, and included a UV torch so that the full effect of them could be enjoyed. The important thing about neon paint (I learned) is that you need a few layers of white underneath.

(The effect is very strong but it is also a bit of a headache machine.)

Here’s the box, front and back:

and in UV mode:

Obviously I had to animate this thing as well.

The real star of the show is this vtech ‘toot toot animals’ cat, who provided some of the sounds. My children have grown out of this kind of toy, but I will keep this guy forever.

And here’s some clues about how I made the weird music to go with the video. I’m using something called “Chompi”, which is a sampler - in combination with that little red casio keyboard (SA-9 100 sound ToneBank). What a fun, and spooky, time.

The next boardgame/playset will be for my niece Sophie, who turns four in August. She’s really into caring for baby animals, so hers will probably be less nightmare inducing, but then again, I do personally have a recurring nightmare about hundreds of tiny, pink baby rabbits squirming around in my house, and I know I can’t pick them up or the mother rabbit will reject them and eat them alive.

Happy Friday 13th everyone, and happy birthday Theo! <3