It looks as though concepts rarely seen or heard of and that we never suspected had gone very far in fact almost made it into the ride. Now, with the publication of the Van Eaton catalog, more previously unknown artwork has come to light. (We've updated the previous post since the present post was written, so check it out.) Before the ride opened, of course, it shrunk to two, a mere fragment of Davis's original concept. In contrast, the Dutchman started out as four images and was expanded to six by Davis himself, so the six Kohn paintings were little more than a reproduction of Davis's set. It was expanded somewhat artificially and unconvincingly to six, and then it returned to two before the ride opened. The Prince was created by Marc Davis as a two-image concept. They show us that the history of each painting must be considered separately. In the previous post, we discussed the Black Prince and the Flying Dutchman six-panel sets. Whatever the case may be, it seems that the Imagineers came very close to actually using the six-panel concept and did not drop the idea until possibly as late as 1969. It's possible that the Imagineers had plans to switch them out, keeping the hallway fresh by changing the changing portraits every so often. Glass slides were produced featuring a large number of six-panel changing portraits, far more than were needed. The complex projectors needed for these morphing portraits were built and ready to go. We don't know whether Davis produced additional concept art for this development or if the expansion was done entirely at the Kohn stage (perhaps under Marc's supervision). We know that Ed Kohn (and possibly other artists?) were tasked with translating Davis's concept art to finished paintings, and these in turn were transferred to slides for the projectors, but the fact that Kohn had produced six-panel sets was known to very few, let alone that actual slides of these had been made. It was only at a later point that some of these were shrunk back down again to two panels and used in the ride. Three- and four-image sets that made the final cut were also padded out to six before slimming down to two for the finished attraction. Rather than condensing the longer concepts to two images, the two-image concepts were expanded to six. In a number of cases, it was the opposite of what we thought. We all assumed this decision came early in the game rather than late. We have all been under the impression that the longer series were either scrapped entirely or abbreviated to two when the Imagineers recognized that there would not be enough time for guests to watch a sequence of changes longer than a back-and-forth between two images. Some of them consisted of only two pictures (back and forth), but others had three, four, and even six panels. How so? Well, we've always known that one of the first things Marc Davis worked on after Walt assigned him to the Haunted Mansion project in 1964 was concept art for the changing portraits. Wherever they came from, they're forcing us to re-write the history of that part of the attraction. Cozart thinks that the multiple sets of glass slides currently going up for auction and featured in Van Eaton's Disneyland catalog likely came from that stash. According to LF reader Mike Cozart, Mumford once told him that a large trove of negatives and slides for use in the parks came to light many years ago when the Disney Studio was clearing out buildings, including full final sets for the Haunted Mansion changing portraits. The late David Mumford of WDI was a great source of information for Disney park historians. The build itself is self-explanatory (spray-paint frame, stick mirror plastic inside frame, mount over screen, hang on wall) but Brandon has a useful parts list in PDF form, where he also links to some video looping software, and the source video itself.Lights out, nobody home, in this old photo Why travel, though, when Brandon Etto has demonstrated that you can have your very own Master Gracey portrait in your own undead living room, courtesy of a Raspberry Pi, some plywood, an LCD screen, an IKEA picture frame and some magic plastic to make the frame into a two-way mirror? I shan’t spoil it for you apart from one tiny detail: the portrait of Master Gracey which does a Dorian Gray in front of your eyes, aging from insouciant youth to horrible decrepitude over the course of a minute or so. (So much so that I own a gargoyle candlestick.) The queue is one of the best parts of the ride. It’s a close-run fight with the Tower of Terror, but for me, the Haunted Mansion comes out on top every time. I’m with Cory Doctorow on this one: the Haunted Mansion is the best thing at the Disney parks.
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