Night of the Living Dead 40th Tribute
Time to start work on my next project, since this one has a time limitation to it. Oct 1st is the 40th anniversary of one of my favorite films - Night of the Living Dead.
As it's pretty much required viewing before they allow you to live in Pittsburgh, and as a fan of the roots of horror, it has long been a favorite of mine. For my next project, I'm planning to put together a tribute case for this movie.
You may have seen the case I'm using in the background of pictures in my other worklogs:
It's going to require some fairly extensive internal re-working since it is not an ATX form-factor case. Why am I using it? That's a good question. I'm using it because A.) it has a nice flat, smooth shape to work with, B.) it's got a lot of internal space for it's size and C.) I like the bottom border. It looks like exaggerated wood-grain, which will factor in to my project.
I am still pulling together supplies and doing my final planning and intend to start construction at the beginning of the month. In the meantime, I have put together a bit of concept art with Sketchup.
First off, you can see that I plan to go with a black body, "wood" trim, a window and some red LED fans. Also, because the case is not designed for a full ATX board, I will need to make a bottom addition to it to house the PSU. Finally, I plan to put an optical drive down front as well (why not? I have the space.)
This is all preliminary construction and shaping. Here is the concept of what the mod itself will be:
This should give you a better idea of where I'm going with this idea. I plan to have something along the lines of this for the hand coming through the side, but I may tone that back, considering the special effects level of the original movie. Basically, this part of the case is going to call back to one of the main visuals of the movie - that of the undead horde reaching through the hastily boarded windows.
Here is a better view of the side. There will be glass in the window, but it will be worked around the hand. I'm thinking of making it double-layered, with a hole busted in one piece. This way, it will look like the window is broken, but still be able to keep the case closed to ward of dust and debris.
Also note the graveyard scene. This will be done with HO scale train props and regular scenery-type grass.
Here is a close up of the front fan. The plan is to fashion/buy a miniature wrought-iron cemetery fence to use as a front grill.
Finally, this side will either have "Night of the Living Dead 40th Anniversary" cut in to the case with a red CFFL to back light it, or be painted like a tombstone to read, "Night of the Living Dead, Oct 1968 - Oct 2008." I'm still up in the air on that.
I have a few more ideas I'm kicking around in my head, but I'm not sure if they'll make the case too "busy."
So, there it is. That's the general idea. Now, the next step is to see if I can create something at all close to these sketches...
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Originally Posted by dfigravity
