Icons of Fright

I want to thank the horror movie web site, "Icons of Fright" for mentioning my Bates House model release!

It's very cool to be recognized by a horror fan site along with news about Jason, Freddy and Rob Zombie!

The Bates House Paper Model Kit: Released!

Ironically, designing a PSYCHO HOUSE helped me keep my own sanity during these long months of unemployment!

If you have constructed any of my other mansion models, then this one is comparatively easy.

If you never constructed my other mansion models, and want to, this model would be good practice!

I am very happy with it! I hope you will be too!

And please help me out with a donation of a buck or two. :)

Please report any downloading (or other) problems. Since this is a new model, with new web pages it is liable to be buggy at first.

Here is the link to The Bates House Paper Model Kit download page!

http://www.haunteddimensions.raykeim.com/index660.html

A Few Last Tweaks

The Bates House model is nearly finished. I completed the construction diagrams and  just have to add the few written directions. Then I will save everything as a single PDF.

The entire model including the directions, will be 11 pages.

Ever since completing the prototype, I have been bothered by something that was not quite right.

The tower seemed wrong. I stared at it for days trying to figure out if there was something wrong with its proportions or angles. It just didn't have the same feel as the real house.

Then I suddenly realized that the little oval window on the tower roof was too large and placed too high. I fixed it and now it "feels" like the Bates House!

It is funny how something so small and subtle can make or break a design, and now it seems so obvious.

Below is the corrected tower roof with an inset of the way it looked before, along with a photo of the real tower window .

A Manor in Turkey

Ahmet, from Turkey, sent photos of his completed Phantom Manor.

Ahmet writes, " I have followed your works and I watch them with enjoyment".

Thank you, Ahmet! I enjoy knowing that my models are so international!

Wonderful job!

Bates House Diagram

Here is an exploded view of my Bates House model that I created as part

of the construction diagrams.

Bates House Prototype

I completed the prototype of my Bates House model.
I only needed to fix a few small problems. It took me about 4 hours to build (not including the troubleshooting). The ironwork and porch supports are printed on transparency film.
This model is 7 inches tall and 5 1/2 inches wide. Here are some shots where you can see my hand, for size comparison.
Now the tedious part, the construction diagrams and instructions.

Here it is next to my New Orleans Square haunted mansion model.

It is not as puny as I thought it would be!

Good Old Fred

I plan on adding a new item to my collection of Haunted Mansion tombstone paper models.
"Good Old Fred" has one of my favorite epitaphs!

Coming Soon!

I am finished creating the Bates House pieces and I am in the process of adding

the scoring lines in Illustrator. Then I will build the prototype and record the process

for the construction directions.

Psycho Music

I purchased some mood music to listen to while I continue to design my Bates House.

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra plays the full musical score of "Psycho"!

I bought it from iTunes, and look at the great album art.

I completed the textures and art for the model and have begun adding the tabs, slots and score lines.

I might have a prototype constructed before the end of the week!

Archiving News & Notes to blogger.com!

I just completed the process of transferring this "blog" (News & Notes) from Haunted Dimensions. 

It became tedious to manage this page in Dreamweaver since I had no automatic archiving capability, and it would require that I build a new web page every time I needed more space. In order to postpone creating new web pages for archives (due to my own laziness), I would simply delete most of my posts after a month or two. Of course, that is the opposite of archiving!

I will continue to post all new posts on the Haunted Dimensions News & Notes page as usual,

but instead of deleting old posts, I will transfer them here.

Haunteddimensions.blogspot.com will be used as the new archive .

I'm still in the process of learning how it all works, and I'm sure I'll be hacking it as soon as know how. Meanwhile, stay tuned.

The Disney Special That Started It All For Me

The year, 1970.

The show, Disneyland Showtime.

Little Donny Osmond and little Kurt Russell, along with the rest of the Osmond brother, and actress/singer E.J. Peaker, took me on a jaw-dropping tour of the brand new Haunted Mansion attraction at Disneyland.  It became my obsession!  It took me 23 years to finally get there for the first time!  As I watch this again, I still get the same thrill and sense of awe I felt when I first saw it (when I was 7)!

Bates House Model Update

Alfred Hitchcock and the Bates House 1960

I am nearly finished creating the art and textures for the Bates house model.

As you probably know, the "original" Bates House set is located at Universal Studios, Hollywood, and is one of the highlights of the backstage tram tour. Despite being an icon of movie history, the Bates House facade is still just a movie prop, and as such it has been altered, repainted, and reconfigured over the years for the many movies and TV shows in which it has appeared since "Psycho". In fact, the entire structure has even been moved to different areas of the backlot over the years!
Universal Studios, Orlando, constructed a Bates House for their tour but sadly it was later
torn down to make room for the "Kid Zone".

So one of my challenges was to decides what version of the Bates House to design.

Of course, my preference was to stay true to the house as it appears in "Psycho", but as is so often the case, Hitchcock's Bates House was not constructed as a fully completed house. It was just a facade consisting of the front and left faces of the house. There was no right side, rear, or even a roof! Since then, Universal has completed the structure, so I'm basing those unseen sides on what is there now.
I also chose to make the house appear aged and run down since many of you will probably use your models as Halloween decorations. It will be a relatively accurate model of the movie facade, but it will also serve your generic haunted house needs.

Another small obstacle I encountered was in not knowing the dimensions of the facade.
This information would be important in determining the scale of the model.
I could find no information on the height of the house, but a friend of mine who works
with Polar Lights, told me the dimensions of the Polar Lights plastic model kit, and I used those numbers to determine a height of approximately 31 feet from foundation to tower top.

Below is a rough comparison of the size differences between Liberty Square and the Bates facade.

I would like my Bates House to be the same scale as my other Disney haunted mansion models, but the Disney facades are much larger than the Bates House. To design the house at the same scale as the mansions would mean it would only be 6 inches tall. Personally, I want my Bates House to be larger, so I decided that I will design the house to be 8 or 9 inches tall, but I would figure out the percentage of reduction needed for those who want to print their Bates House to be the same scale as the others.