Halloween 2022 – Robot Costume Shop

porch scene with shelves of masks based on classic movie and television robots. In the foreground are five robots wearing costumes: taxi, spam, fire hydrant, traffic light, and "not a robot" written on a bag.

This involved the most amount of research I have done yet for a scene. First week, shelves of robot masks hang in the back of the porch. Each shelf a different era or genre of robots in the media (not a comprehensive list, they all come from movies and shows I watched at some point.) After the first week, other robots began to appear in the foreground, all of a particular retro style. In the final scene, the robots in the foreground are wearing costumes that reference everyday elements from bot-blocking captcha challenges.

Halloween 2021 – Trick or Treating in a Dragon’s Cave

Porch with a scene in a cave of a dragon confused by a small child in a sheet carrying a jack-o-lantern goodie bag.

Spent a lot of time researching caves and dragons for this display. This year benefitted from a new source of large sheets of cardboard (no more skulking around the back of Sears hoping someone bought a new fridge.) The scene emerged over a few weeks: first the cave, then the dragon, then the trick or treating ghost. Despite finding themselves deep in a cave, facing a dragon, this kid seems unperturbed in their search for chocolate.

Updating Halloweens 2018-22

Programming note: Updates to this blog fell off during a stint in a graduate program.I managed to decorate the porch each year, but documentation of the process and the final result was just one step too far. Starting to post images of those intervening years over the next few weeks.