Oh yeah. It's a habit that I picked up from working in 3D animation and the video game industry. Before you design any characters, props, or environments, you should have tons of photos, videos, and other related reference materials to help with its creation. I found that a lot of the things that I've learned from the v/fx and game industry easily translates to the haunt industry. Doesn't matter if it's for a prop concept, room design, or a visual effect, I've got tons of reference materials relating to it to reference to make it as perfect as possible. I've got right now on my NAS about 20GB of photos and videos just relating to zombies because of a project that I was recently working on. Also having that material helps to get the creative juices flowing if you wanting to create a prop based on an concept and not just trying to recreate something. But as for where to go to find what you need, you go where you have too. For the Zombie project, we had to research all kinds of stuff on cadavers and other really unpleasant things, but it helps to the realism of the characters. When ever I try designing something like that, I try to make sure that I've got all the reference materials I need in order to pass the Grandmother test.

when I was a kid...

The very male , macho barbershop had numerous magazines to look through, Police Gazette, Crime mags. but the one that fascinated and horrified me was Argosy a mens general magazine, one issue had a probably larger than life-size photo of a dead face after grave robbers extracted some gold teeth. Mouth wide open, eyes closed, skin wrinkled into leather with veiny looking lines all through it, all in black & white, thankfully.
I couldn't stop seeking out that issue everytime I went there and staring at that image.
Of course we should all know that you displaying all those death pictures all over your wall will get you an immeadiate conviction as the serial killer as soon as the Police break down your door. (Just like in the movies!!)
But without witnesses or evidence the judge might lower it to making you out just to be the local grave robber/fetish person he was seeking to invite to his Halloween party as entertainment.
Remember the Doctor Lector giveaway by having that book on "War Wounds" on his shelf in his office?

so what web site do you go to some times???



some of the sites are ok but a little over the top on some things that i don't need to see at the time. what sites do you look up mostly? get asking..

I don't think that I have really any specific sites. Rotten.com is pretty common for most people, but usually when I'm researching something, it's just where ever Google takes me with the "Safe Search" turned off and a few hours of digging around the web. The internet has a ton of really dark and scary places......

No, I do not do research by looking at dead people pictures. Just not a fan. I prefer monsters to gore for gores sake anyway.