Are you ready for the spookiest time of the year? It’s a full moon, the wolves are howling on the roof of Miranda Castle, and the witches are putting a spell on you! Let’s properly welcome Halloween with this fun vector illustration and 2D animation project inspired by the stunning architecture of Miranda Castle in Belgium and Halloween magic creatures!

Besides the Hocus Pocus film, my main inspiration for this project was the stunning architecture of Miranda Castle (Château Miranda also known as Château de Noisy), a Belgian neo-Gothic masterpiece designed by English architect Edward Milner and built between 1866 and 1907 when the clock tower was erected. Miranda Castle had a tumultuous history, being occupied by the German troops during World War II, and being used afterward as an orphanage and a holiday camp for sickly children. In 1991 the castle was abandoned by the owner because the costs to maintain it were too great. Unfortunately, as expected, time and fire affected the structure of this neo-Gothic architectural masterpiece, which was demolished in 2017.

The project was illustrated in Adobe Illustrator, on Wacom Cintiq, and animated in Adobe After Effects, mixing modern and vintage aesthetics: flat colours, block shading, elegant inking, grain textures, and stylized shapes.