Something Wicked This Way Comes…
A Halloween Journey into Colour, Light & Illusion
The carnival arrived without warning.
By morning, striped tents stood at the edge of town.
There were no posters announcing its arrival. No tickets at the gate. Just a painted sign moving gently in the October wind.
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES…
Inside, colours vanished beneath warm fingers.
Blank surfaces revealed hidden pictures when touched by water.
Secret messages appeared beneath ultraviolet light.
Colours emerged from almost nowhere in the autumn sun.
And everywhere you looked, things changed.
Welcome to the strange world of SFXC | Special Effects Creative.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Our inspiration this Halloween comes from Ray Bradbury’s wonderfully unsettling 1962 novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes.
The story begins when a mysterious travelling carnival arrives in an Illinois town in October. Among its strange attractions is a carousel capable of changing a person’s age depending upon the direction in which it travels.
Bradbury, in turn, took his title from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when one of the witches senses Macbeth approaching:
“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”
Transformation. Illusion. Light and darkness. Things which are not quite what they first appear to be.
We thought it sounded strangely familiar.
So, this Halloween, step inside the SFXC Carnival of Curious Colours…
The Carousel of Changing Colours
The carousel is turning.
But these horses don’t need to travel backwards through time to transform.
They only need a change in temperature.
Thermochromic materials respond to temperature.
Our standard reversible Thermochromic pigments are coloured below their activation temperature and become lighter or translucent as they warm. Allow them to cool and the colour returns.
This allows a printed design to react to the warmth of a hand, an object to change appearance as its temperature rises and falls, or an image concealed beneath a Thermochromic layer to emerge as the surface warms.
Different activation temperatures allow the effect to be explored in very different ways.
Nothing supernatural here.
Just some rather wonderful chemistry.
The Hall of Hidden Images
The next attraction appears disappointingly empty.
A white surface.
Nothing more.
Then it begins to rain.
Slowly, something appears beneath the white.
Letters.
An image.
Perhaps something you weren’t supposed to see.
Welcome to the world of Hydrochromic Wet & Reveal.
Our reversible Hydrochromic coating appears white when dry. Apply clean water and the coating becomes translucent, revealing colours or artwork underneath.
As the water evaporates, the coating returns to white and the secret disappears again.
The effect can transform printed materials, packaging, displays and interactive artwork into surfaces which invite curiosity and interaction.
Sometimes the most interesting image is the one you can’t see.
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The Midnight Pavilion
At the end of the midway stands another tent.
Inside, everything appears perfectly ordinary.
Then the lights go out.
Ultraviolet light flickers into life.
And suddenly the room isn’t ordinary at all.
UV Fluorescent materials react dramatically under ultraviolet illumination, allowing fluorescent colours and effects to become visible under UV light.
Some specialist UV-responsive materials can even appear virtually invisible under normal lighting before revealing themselves beneath ultraviolet light.
That makes UV fluorescence particularly interesting for theatrical effects, artwork, events, identification, security applications and — naturally — Halloween.
Imagine a message apparently written on an empty wall:
KEEP OUT.
Naturally, we’d go in.
The Sunlight Sorcerer
Not every transformation requires darkness.
Some need precisely the opposite.
Photochromic pigments respond to ultraviolet light.
Indoors, the colour may appear very pale or almost colourless. Take the material outside into strong sunlight and colour develops.
Remove the UV source and the colour gradually retreats again.
It means that sunlight itself can become part of a design.
An object can have one appearance indoors and another outside.
A seemingly pale image can suddenly develop colour in the sun.
A surface can change simply because somebody carried it through a doorway.
Rather like certain members of our carnival, photochromic materials behave very differently once they step into the light.
The Chamber of Shifting Light
Finally, there is the attraction that refuses to remain the same even while you’re staring directly at it.
Move to the left.
It changes.
Move to the right.
It changes again.
Holographic, pearlescent and interference effects interact with light to produce shifting appearances according to illumination and viewing angle.
Unlike Thermochromic, Hydrochromic or Photochromic materials, the effect does not necessarily require temperature, water or another external trigger.
Sometimes all that needs to move…
is you.
Change the angle of observation and the surface reveals another side of itself.
Sometimes the observer is part of the special effect.
The Science Behind the Magic
Of course, none of this is actually witchcraft.
At SFXC | Special Effects Creative, we specialise in colour-changing, responsive and special-effect materials that interact with their surroundings.
Temperature can change them.
Water can reveal them.
Ultraviolet light can awaken them.
Light and viewing angle can completely alter their appearance.
And that, perhaps, explains why these materials continue to fascinate artists, designers, printers, product developers, students and experimenters.
A conventional colour simply sits there.
A responsive colour does something.
Touch it.
Wet it.
Take it outside.
Turn out the lights.
Move around it.
And something happens.
For a moment, an otherwise ordinary surface appears to know that the world around it has changed.
Something Wicked?
Perhaps.
Something curious?
Definitely.
This Halloween, take another look at the materials around you.
Because the most interesting surface may not be the one that immediately shows you everything it knows.
With a tip of the carnival hat to Ray Bradbury (1920–2012), whose extraordinary 1962 novel Something Wicked This Way Comes inspired our Halloween journey into transformation, illusion, light and darkness. And our very own Miss Cat for remembering those words!
Happy Halloween from all of us at SFXC.
SFXC | Special Effects Creative
Colour-Changing, Responsive & Special-Effect Materials