Rorschach's Halloween Journal x Elevenlabs x Vercel

1. Designing a voice nobody has heard

I designed Rorschach's voice from a text prompt in ElevenLabs Voice Design instead of copying an actor. Imitating a real person's voice without consent breaks ElevenLabs' rules. It's also boring. I wanted my own Rorschach.

• The prompt I landed on: "Low, gravelly male voice in his 50s. Cold, deadpan and clipped, like a noir detective dictating into a journal late at night."

• The surprise: the preview was perfect, but in text to speech it sounded like a regular guy. A saved voice keeps its sound. The delivery lives in the settings.

• The fix: stability down to 44%, similarity at 100%, and two delivery tags before every line: [deadpan] [low, raspy]. The detective came back.

2. The journal

The aesthetic of the journal was inspired by the vibrant color pallette the watchmen comic series is known to have. However, given my time contraint, the functionality was given priority over the look - so I wanted to spend more time on the journal's interconnectivity with the different technologies and people's interaction.

Each scan turns into a spoken entry in a few seconds, with no app and no sign-up. I built the site with Claude as my coding partner, and it does four jobs.

• The test: the QR code opens a living inkblot that shifts like wet ink. Visitors type a first name and what they see.

• The roast: Claude writes a one-line noir entry about that specific answer, with a New York twist. It also screens out slurs, other people's names and attempts to hijack it.

• The voice: ElevenLabs reads the entry aloud on the visitor's phone. It joins a public archive anyone can replay.

• The speaker: a phone on my coat looped the newest entries through a Bluetooth speaker. New ones jumped the queue, so people heard their own entry come out of my costume.

The map was the trickiest choice. I didn't want strangers to grant location access to a QR code they found on a costume. So my phone shared its location instead, and each entry is pinned where I was when it arrived. The archive shows my route up Sixth Avenue, with entries dropped along it. Only my phone shares a location, so visitors never have to share theirs.

Below are some images of the website. Feel free to skip to the 'Actual Journal' subsection to preview it action.

Also, here is a schematic of the system architecture.

3. The actual costume

I used simple cardboard I scaneged from Amazon boxes for the sign board, printed a QR code, and used a black sharpie for the messaging. It needed to look amateurish like an actual protest sign board. Everything was taped together with scotch tape.

For the wardrobe I already owned a trench coat, so half the work was done. The more challenging bit was designing Rorschach's mask. In the movie, Rorschach has an animated ink blot mask. I attempted to animate my own mask by using thermo-reactive crystals mixed with glue to create a paste that reacts to my breath.

The only thing missing from my getup was a fedora. Local thrift stores had none, so after bouncing between multiple stores in LES, I decided to go into a costume store and pick it up. I figured it shouldn't take long. Then I saw the line outside 'Halloween Adventure Shop'…

Secured the fedora. But I'm never visiting a costume store the night before Halloween again.

Everything was ready. Now it was time for the big day.