March 7, 2006

Pepper's Ghost in the Ballroom

(SPOILER WARNING)
I received an email from Dustin asking,
"I am trying to figure out how the Imagineer’s got the ghosts in the ballroom to be reflected to
the balcony where guests look into the room. I was hoping you could send me a side view of the ballroom showing where the glass and animatronics are placed."

I am asked that question very often, so click the link below to get a simplified explanation.
If you do not wish to know the secrets of the ballroom effects, please DO NOT click the link below!

A Question of Model Scale

Recently I have received a number of email from model railroad enthusiasts who want to build my models for inclusion on their scale railroad layouts, and wanted to know to what scale I designed my models. For those who do not know w hat I am talking about, the scale of a model is the relation of it's size, to that of the origina l structure. For instance if you had a 12 inch tall model of a structure which is 12 feet tall in real life, then the scale would be 1 inch = one foot.

I do not design my models with any particular scale in mind, but rather, I design them to be as large as possible, while keeping the pieces within an 8x10 inch printable space. I also do not know the measurements of the mansion with 100% accuracy, however, I believe the Liberty Square haunted mansion paper model is approximately
1 inch = 5.5 feet.
In model train terms it is
1/66 (which means 1 inch equals 66 inches).

The large versions of the Crypts, and Entrance Pillar models are approximately
1 inch = 1.4 feet
or
1/16
With the proper math, you should be able to figure out at what percentage to print your models, in order for them to be the scale you require. But please don't ask me what the percentages should be! All of this has already overextended my primitive knowledge of math!
Click image to enlarge