Darkvale's shop dresses up for Halloween...

A year ago versus today - most of the filth is fake, anyway.

A year ago versus today - most of the filth is fake, anyway.

Darkvale Studios' production shop, which to the untrained eye may look like a common two car garage in the heart of suburbia, has hosted some colorful projects in years past.  Props for film and television, theme park and haunted house projects, even a human powered flying(ish) machine have passed through its doors and under the puzzled gazes of concerned neighbors.  But this Halloween, the shop itself will get to participate in the Hallow's Eve hijinks as it transforms into a single scene mad science lab experience for the local trick or treaters, their parents, and even smug neighborhood teenagers to enjoy.  Our humble shop will come alive with bubbling lab equipment, flying sparks, humming Tesla coils (okay, just one Tesla coil, but it's a big one), and even a 24" tall Van de Graaf generator (Google it.  Makes your hair go all Jackson Five if you use it right).   Film and pics will be made available here as it all comes together, and for those in Southwestern Orlando during October weekends, it will become available for visitation in the next couple of weeks.   Here at Darkvale Studios, we pull out all the stops for Halloween, but make no mistake, we plan to totally phone it in for Christmas.

Plight of the Phoenix - part one

This time last year, I was caught up in a project that was strange even by my standards.  Hopped up on overhyped energy drink and a dash of mid life crisis fervor, a few friends and I entered a flying machine contest to see how badly we could endanger our dignity, bank accounts, and physical health.  One of the mini-challenges along the way was to produce a short comedic film about our team's efforts, which I am proud to say won the film competition.   The one minute film below took several hours to produce, was filmed on two separate days in two distant locations, and caused a certain amount of trauma to a family of local ducks.  On the upside, you get to watch me dress in trash and land on my face in a lake.

Enjoy.

Arty Facts

Look at all this stuff!  Isn't it neat?

Look at all this stuff!  Isn't it neat?

Here at Darkvale Studios, we bring together artists, inventors, and world travellers under one roof to create products and artwork that speak to the adventurer in everyone.  Between climbing jungle pyramids in the Yucatan, being paid to spend an evening in a coffin as dinner party entertainment, sipping champagne atop the Eiffel tower, peering into the empty eyesockets of Irish peat bog mummies, or piloting a homemade flying machine into the Atlantic ocean in front of ninety thousand spectators*, we have risked our necks and dignity time and again to accumulate a unique creative background to draw from.  We try to bring a welcome touch of happy madness to all our projects, and a touch of distance and destiny to our artwork.  Failing that, we just try to make pretty things, and maybe people will buy them if we distract them with enough genital and flatulence based humor.  Mahalo.

 

* while exaggeration does happen a lot on these blogs, all of the items listed here are true, and just a tiny whiff of a lifetime of unbridled wierdness.  Seriously, building robotics for giant mutant bugs is among the more normal stuff I do.  

Still alive....

After a brief technological hiatus, Darkvale Studios is putting on its spiky goth boots and reentering the mosh pit of social media.   The clouds of sawdust and unpleasant music still fill the air in our production shop, and the strange projects are growing ever stranger, but it feels good to leave the shop floor to fire up the computer and check back in on the modern world with all its Beibers and Kardashians and HuffPos.  We will soon be entering the worlds of Twitter, Instagram, and Etsy, as well as a few other silly words the marketing department rattled off at me before I outran them.  I did successfully load some images into Pinterest, so feel free to look us up when you wish to take a break from whimsical baby and kitten pictures, and feel free to follow us on Facebook and share us with your friends, enemies, acquaintances, awkward romantic partners, unbearable coworkers, etc.  Stay tuned for more news and more uncomfortable humor in weeks ahead.

So long for now... 

Our army of robotic supermen hellbent on planetary domination, currently on hold due to budgetary restrictions.

Our army of robotic supermen hellbent on planetary domination, currently on hold due to budgetary restrictions.

Full steam ahead....

As Orlando summer begins to rear its fiery head, the Darkvale production shop is going full steam as we build and gather inventory for the Emporium.  A certain amount of creative clutter is inevitable in these circumstances, but tools and tempers are being lost in the shuffle, and unsavory language is beginning to fill the air.  Rest assured, however; we plan to open our online Emporium doors in just a few short weeks, and we look forward to making all manner of strangeness available to those who wish to adorn their homes or offices with adventurous whimsy from mysterious corners of the globe, some of which we may have made up.  Expect to be impressed, or at the very least puzzled and maybe slightly amused.  Our next frontier is just around the corner and beyond this cloud of sawdust.

So long for now.

Which one of these did I put my sandwich in?  I need to stop doing this...

Which one of these did I put my sandwich in?  I need to stop doing this...

We've suffered for our art, now it's your turn...

Here at Darkvale, we endeavor to create high quality work.  Occasionally, this means we must purge the creative valves and turn out something truly wretched.  Perhaps it is best that we subject you now with no further warning to one of the worst poems we could string together without actually injuring ourselves.  Our apologies.

 

My soul is an overstuffed burrito

Bursting with the refried beans of angry virtue. 

I wield my chainsaw of righteousness

Against the rabid otters of ineptitude

And wrangle the thrashing electric eels of retarded fury

With the rubber gloves of wisdom. 

The windswept mountaintop of greatness beckons me

Like some great beckoning thing. 

After long fruitless years of searching  

Thru the dusty bulk food bins of my soul

At long last my hunt has been rewarded

With the tasty milk dud of oneness. 

Now, having exploded my soul burrito

In Nirvana's white hot microwave

I collapse, exhausted. 

For that was a hell of a thing.

 

Again, our apologies for this unwelcome splash of literary sewage.  We find that these cathartic exercises help us to clear the path for fine quality creative endeavors.  Thank you for riding out this bit of procedural ugliness with us, and we hope to turn out much more pleasant works in the weeks ahead.  Namaste.

Darkvale Labs - Where Science meets Art, then maybe explodes.

Which do you fear most - high voltage or tetanus?

Which do you fear most - high voltage or tetanus?

When Darkvale Studios set out to create a new effects laboratory, we sought out the finest scientific minds Central Florida has to offer.  Unfortunately, none of them would return our phone calls (or lavish gift baskets), but we pressed on and built a humble but well-equipped 400 square foot facility, in which we manage to endanger ourselves on a nearly daily basis.  While tending towards visual effects for magicians and haunted attractions, our lab also dabbles in pyrotechnics, robotics, and finding what devices are most mind altering for the common house cat.  As a result, we have created some striking pieces of automated showmanship, as well as some extremely jaded house cats.  Amongst the smoke of electrical fires and the roar of the air compressors, mad dreams are being forged, even as first aid kits are being rapidly depleted.  We will also soon be in the market for new and more easily impressed house cats.

Mortimer,  whose mind has been blown too many times to count.

Mortimer,  whose mind has been blown too many times to count.

Darkvale Emporium Preview

While our new website offers its visitors much to look at, its greatest asset is yet to come: the glorious Darkvale Emporium, an online mercantile of strange and beautiful artifacts from the artisans and adventurers that comprise our staff.  We do apologize for the delays that have gone into launching this part of our site.  As it turns out, our vendors are more used to trading their goods for illegal pyrotechnics and exotic animals than online credit card payments, so a vigorous learning curve is now underway for all involved.  There has been a great deal of profanity and fist shaking, as well as an unexpected ocelot attack, but we believe we will be joining the modern world as a viable marketplace in the very near future.  Until our selection of hand-picked goods are available online, I would like to take this opportunity to preview one of our more popularly sold items thus far - human skulls.  I assume you realized we wouldn't be selling Hello Kitty backpacks anytime soon.

"Lost Adventurers" - starting at $50

By the very definition of Adventure, not all who partake in it are guaranteed to return.  These unlucky devils at least survived intact enough to serve as lovely conversation pieces for your next book club gathering.  For a few extra shillings, we'll send you one whose eye sockets still flicker and glow with the embers of eternal madness from some unspeakable curse.  Also makes a delightful paperweight.

You must admit this is more interesting than any box you've ever received from Overstock.com.

You must admit this is more interesting than any box you've ever received from Overstock.com.

So, there you have it - more preview samples will be made available in the days and weeks ahead, and we hope to have the Darkvale Emporium online and ready to serve all of your more strange and adventurous shopping tastes by this summer.   Stay tuned, spread the word, and so long for now...

Alas, poor... Yorick?  Reginald?  Larry?  They all look alike after a few months.

Alas, poor... Yorick?  Reginald?  Larry?  They all look alike after a few months.

Bride of Frankenstein

While we are happy to build nearly anything for nearly anyone, our passions here at Darkvale definitely tend toward the dark and bizarre, so we were greatly honored to participate once again in the It's Alive Project for Mucklebones, LLC.   The good folks at Mucklebones are among the finest monster makers in Central Florida (a surprisingly large population), and it is no small salute to be invited to join some very large industry talents as they each come up with their own colorful interpretations of the Bride of Frankenstein to be showcased in the months ahead.  For the moment, I cannot divulge much about the concept art or finished piece, but I can release a teaser image or two of the early works in progress.  More news will come in the days ahead, but for now, we must return to the shop to put more work into Ms. Lanchester's eccentric tribute.

So long for now....



Tesla coil vs. OSHA

Some years ago, Darkvale Labs acquired a Tesla coil from a Tampa Bay gentleman of questionable motives.  This, we find, is the only kind of gentleman that Tampa Bay has to offer, but we made our bargain anyway, and to this day are proud owners of one of the more beautiful and dramatic scientific devices that one can use to destroy themselves instantly in a cloud of screams and smoke.   If you wish to endanger all that you love with 4 to 6 foot bolts of intense high voltage electricity, accept no substitutes for Mr. Tesla's magnificent coil.

As it turns out, however, modern American safety standards are somewhat unenthusiastic about the ownership of these devices, and the skittish fellow that OSHA sent to inspect our labs and production floors had very few kind things to say about our dear Sparky Widowmaker.   With every new encounter, I find myself less and less impressed with OSHA's sense of adventure, and only by distracting him with our display of Jehovah's Witness traps were we able to quietly smuggle our beloved Tesla coil back into her crate and away from his steely gaze.  Thank heavens he didn't stumble onto our combination moonshine still and fission reactor.

Highly recommended: rubber soled shoes, thick insulated gloves, and being several miles away when she lights up.

Highly recommended: rubber soled shoes, thick insulated gloves, and being several miles away when she lights up.

Two weeks later....

Sawdust, paint fumes, chicken feathers, and colorful profanity fill the air in the Darkvale production facilities, as we begrudgingly grind our way towards the modern world.  Fancy electric lights now replace our firefly jars and uranium rod chandeliers, our employees are being taught the mysterious ways of OSHA, ANSI, and "Better Business", and management even plugged in a stereo system to replace our opera singing shop hobo, claiming that Klaus no longer appealed to our "younger demographic".  How chilling - I suspect they disliked his recent forays into seventies disco classics. 

At any rate, I was given a nudge here at my wheezing computer and informed that it has been two weeks since my last "blog", and that I need to be more timely with these little digital outbursts unless I wish to "perform duets with Klaus under that overpass from now on."   These new business folk do have a flair for dramatic wording, even if I question their musical tastes.

As cameras are being wired into our shop and tomes about "Modern Web Entrepreneurs" are being thrown on top of my dusty desktop clutter, it becomes more and more clear that these changes are permanent and should be embraced, and maybe not sworn at quite as much.  And so, dear weary internet voyageur, I suppose that it pleases me greatly to march into this brightly lit utopia of safety and cultural awareness, where Darkvale Studios can proudly take its place in the Modern Digital Marketplace.  So help me God, if they ask us to write a mission statement, Klaus will have a whole choir to back him up inside an hour. 

Calling it "Creative Clutter" makes people forgive the horrible safety violations portrayed here.

Calling it "Creative Clutter" makes people forgive the horrible safety violations portrayed here.

It begins....

After years of building nefarious contraptions, the staff of Darkvale Studios realized that we did not have a website.  The daunting task of building one was assigned to me, because of my genius with digital gadgetry, and the fact that I was not in the room during this meeting.  After finding and blowing the cobwebs off our computer, I wandered onto the internet, eager to look this new digital frontier in the eye.  Many hours of whimsical cats, overly bearded duck hunters, and expanding Kardashian posteriors later, I had the knowledge I would need to build the website you now look upon.  Welcome, weary internet voyager, to our humble new kingdom of ones and zeroes!  Explore, enjoy, and spread the word to those you care about.

In days and weeks ahead, more will be added to this site.  We have a lovely emporium under construction, and look forward to selling our trinkets to an eager public, once we have figured out how to remove all those sharp edges that seem to upset the authorities so badly.  I have also been informed by management that I shall have to learn the ways of "YouTube", "Twitter", and "FaceBook", if I ever expect these chains to be removed, so look forward to those developments as well.  God help me, they even told me to practice my duckface.

Look to this "blog" (which I always thought was a digestive mishap, but have recently been taught otherwise) for regular updates and random bits of whimsy.  We here at Darkvale Studios look forward to this bold new era of World Wide Web participation, and hope to become quite wealthy with the right kinds of public relations.  I am even trying to get in touch with this Mister Google, who I hear has quite the website of his own.  If anyone knows his number, kindly send it my way.

Thank you my friends, and so long for now...