Animated Halloween Cake

Step 2 Flying Crank Pepper's Ghost

The best part of the cake is the Flying Crank Pepper's Ghost in the haunted house window. The worst part of the cake, no one could see the awesome ghost in the window due to my bad design. Not many people were tall enough to lean over the cake to see in the window and those that were tall enough were too shy to do so. Doh. Ah next time. Have to give credit to the FCG's creator Doug Ferguson. I've also included the Pepper's Ghost effect to this. If you want to ruin the fun look it up. It's the same effect the Haunted Mansion uses at Disneyland. So if you want to ruin your vacation to Disney, look it up. The most difficult part of the FCG was finding a material that was light enough to bend on such a tiny ghost. I never did find one but I think the outcome was good enough. I tried shredded paper mache, feathers and a few materials. I finally settled on one white material that was the most heavy but still flexible. It didn't allow the elbows to bend like the other stuff but overall it looked better.We ended up adding fishing weights to the arms to pull them down when the string had slack. They could not be seen in the end product. The motor runs at 12 rpm which is a bit faster than I wanted but all I had to use. Gearing it added too much work. Once it was buried in the house you couldn't hear it at all. The reflective glass is a trimmed CD case slitted into the foamcore. I added a toy makeup desk behind the plastic so that the ghost had something to appear before. The green light fades in out out to make the ghost appear and disappear.

Here is my initial test before adjustment:
http://www.willyliliana.com/Cakes/October%202006%20508.mpg

Here I've adjusted before adding the material to test:
http://www.willyliliana.com/Cakes/October%202006%20509.mpg