Night of the Living Dead 40th Tribute

[The_Crippler]

Short update: I was about to order the prop hand for the side window, when I gasped at the shipping costs from the small webstore I was buying from. This prompted me to try to find the prop else-where – which I was able to. The thing is, the next website had a much closer picture of it.

I’m sorry, but that looks down-right comical. Not as cool as it looked in a smaller pic. I’m going to source another hand instead. Between the Sketchup pics I have earlier in and the fact that the original movie did not have much of the “rotting flesh” zombie…I’m leaning back towards a more realistic hand. In particular, perhaps this one:

We shall see. This is one part of the project that will not get scrapped, come hell or high water.

[Acey]

Mate whered u get that lip from? Looks tidy and cool. Hm for the hands, I'd go for the second prop, first one looks kinda uh... futuristic? Lol.

[TheGreatSatan]

I think a starry night over the cemetary would be cool

[The_Crippler]

Mate whered u get that lip from? Looks tidy and cool. Hm for the hands, I'd go for the second prop, first one looks kinda uh... futuristic? Lol.

Well, that would be the point, wouldn't it. Once I saw a better picture of them, I eliminated them from consideration. Never fear...I have ordered one, and I think it will work much better.

Also - sorry, buddy, but I'm not sure what your lip comment made.

I think a starry night over the cemetary would be cool

A fantastic idea! I might steal that if my plan below doesn't work out. Wow – three updates in one day! I'm on a roll.


As we left off, I cut out the window from the inner part of the case:

Fun with the old Dremel and lots of discs.

There it is. It needs a date with the file, but it is cut.

Clamping it to the outer, plastic part to the metal, I used a razor to score around the opening, and then finished it off with a Dremel.

And that's that. The window is cut.

Now, for the next thing. I've been trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to do with the blank side of the case. Assuming I can suss out exactly how to arrange some white CCFLs around the mobo tray, I am going to cut the other panel, and then sandwich a transparency between to pieces of plexi. What is the transparency, you ask? Why, this:

(I had this printed this afternoon, and it looks pretty darn good.)

[DonT-FeaR]

3 updates!!! thats sweet nice window mate nicely done

[DarthBeavis]

Get the moving hand which will be battery powered so you can run it off either your 5 v or 12 v line from the PSU . . .anything you can do to animate your mod improves it!

[The_Crippler]

Get the moving hand which will be battery powered so you can run it off either your 5 v or 12 v line from the PSU . . .anything you can do to animate your mod improves it!

I'm going to pass on that one. Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I worked in a Halloween store...Besides the fact that those hands look bad, I can't tell you the failure rate on them after just a few hours of use. I've seen them in the stores since, and they're still the same cheap model.

[DonT-FeaR]

lol thats a pitty that would of been cool

im sure whatever you do will be good

[The_Crippler]

Hey everyone – I'm back again.

Here's the update for this weekend. To pick up where we left off, I fiddled around with the transparency a bit on the existing window to see how it might look on the other side.

Obviously, I needed to add the plexi to the window, which you can see that I've done. It is held in place with 3M 4010 double-sided tape. Easy to mount, but removable if need be.

I mounted some white CCFL lights on the inside of the case to see how it would look shining through the plexi and the transparency.

The good news is that it looks great. The bad news is that playing around all evening that night, I couldn't for the life of me figure out a way to mount the CCFLs on the other side of the case (with the mobo tray in the way) to get the light to shine through as well. However, I was able to come up with some other options:

1.)Masking off the transparency and the window just what is in front of the drive cage, I was able to make a space that I have on either side of case (meaning that it is doable.)

This would allow me to use an image like this:

2.)The other option is bright LEDs. These take up much less room, and could probably fit behind the mobo tray, lighting the side not taken care of by the CCFL. I'm going order some and give that a try.

In which case, this part will be set aside for a little bit, while I get some other stuff done. Namely, the zombie hand busting through the boarded up window.

Here, I laid things out to get an idea of where things are going to go in the final project. I drilled and tapped holes through the wood, plastic and metal.

The screws are inserted from the inside to hide the screw heads. Also, I intend to affix nail heads to the outside once the boards are stained/painted to facilitate the hastily boarded up look.

Ta-dah!

The next step is to cut holes to mount the hand through.

This was a simple matter of using a hole saw to cut a few holes. One is for the wrist and one for the thumb (to allow it to “grasp”the board.

Now that this is set up, I moved on to the front bays. Since I will only be using one of them at this point, I will need to block up the other two. As shown in earlier illustrations, I intended to board these up the same way that I did the side window.

Not very easy to see in this picture, but I have cut a piece of plexi to fit the top two bays. To this, I added a few pieces of the 3M tape (shown here with the backing still on for visibility.)

This will hold the “boards” to the pelxi. Tape on these boards will hold it to the case.

The final step for today was to swap the white CCFLs for red and fire it up.

Final note: Looking at it now, I might leave the black fan on the front. It looks good backed by the CCFLs, and an LED one might be too much.

As always, thanks for stopping by again!

[Acey]

Cool hand. As pale as the dead.