Tag: Artistic

Latest Master of the Automaton

 

These are brilliant works, very much in the same line as the works of Tim Hunkin (a personal hero of mine).

… he started researching kinetics and developed his own system for animating wood-carved figures with the turn of a crank. One of the results was a small body of work featuring important modern artists acting out some of their more eccentric or unfavorable characteristics. In “Picasso and Barbie,” the famously promiscuous Spaniard paints a portrait from a model, in this case a scantily clad blond doll in a suggestive pose. A crank on the piece powers a network of exposed gears that move the artist’s arm up and down, as if painting, and turn his head back and forth from the model to the canvas.

[via suicidebots] 

Man in motion

Cardboard Robot Halloween Costume of Doom

Robot costume

In 2004 I ended up having some time on my hands about three days before a big Halloween party. I did what anyone would do, I built robot costume out of cardboard boxes and dryer hose.

Sorry the photos aren’t better, for some weird reason I had set my camera on super low file size. I wish I had taken more shots of the build but I was trying to meet a deadline.

Robot costume - arms The whole thing was bonded together with tape (clear packing and gaffers), hot glue, and lots of brass paper brads. I used dryer hose for the arms and as it had to fit up to my shoulders I clipped the wires in them for about eight inches on the inside at the tops and covered them with some gaffers tape so I wouldn’t get poked. I tied them together with two short sections of rope,one across my chest and the other on my back. This kept the sleeves from coming off and falling to my wrists. I added some cardboard cuffs to hide the claw interface.

Robot costume - grippers getting some paint The claws were made from heavy tag board and regular corrugated cardboard. I wore them like mittens and my fingers ran through some cardboard loops on the inside so I could operate them. The hinges were paper brads.
I wanted rivets on my robot so I used about two boxes of brads all over the thing. They worked real well as surface detail and as actual mechanical reinforcements. I ran tape on the backside to avoid the sharp ends.
The name badge was simply an old LED chaser badge that I had built in the late 80’s. I mounted it to the costume with hot glue. I added some details like the chest logo and the static bag eyes after I slathered on a few coats of this water based gray paint I found at Home Depot.

Robot costume - the costume at rest

The costume was a success, after the party I went trick or treating with my kids and I can’t tell you how many comments I got from kids and parents alike. 

For more photos of my costume, got have a look at the photos on Flickr.

 

Running low on ideas for Halloween costumes this year? Costume Super Center is the place to go for your costume ideas and supplies. If you’re looking of kids costumes and can’t find what you need at the store, order them online. If you’re looking for a costume for a college or office party, we’ve got a great supply of adult costumes as well!

Logan’s Run Gun Memories

 DS Pistol from Logans Run

One of the first props that I ever made was a DS pistol from the movie Logan’s Run. This was around 1986, way before the Internet was popular and prop makers had the crisp clarity of DVDs (I didn’t have a laser disc player, I didn’t even see one until the 87’s), that makes it easier to freeze frame images of props. I worked from plans a friend of mine had, I think they came from some sort of Logan’s Run guide book. Never having built a prop let alone a replica of one used in a movie, the materials used were a little sketchy. I remember using a few pill bottles for the tubes, Legos for spaces, and stacked sheets of ABS plastic that I ground down on a bench grinder for the grips. Other than falling apart once due to super glue failure it worked pretty well. Later in life I ended up owning a resin copy of one that had a light bulb in the end. that was pretty cool, not as cool as the ones that fired real flame but still… I can’t remember what happened to these, I think I sold them or traded them years ago but they were fun while I had them. It sure is nice to see that not everyone has forgotten this movie, the film was cool (read the book, way better) but the gun was the coolest.

Memory jogged via Props and Costumes form Logans Run

Lightning Activated Shutter Release

lightning trigger

 

 

 

Today I saw that both MAKE and Ohgizmo are talking about a lightning activated shutter release. An expensive but cool device if you want to trip your camera once a lightning bolt flashes in front of the camera. It works because most lightning strikes are more than one arc of energy. As the bolt strikes a few times in a tiny moment the sensor commands the camera to trip it’s shutter. Bingo, you have a photo. That’s cool and everything but I prefer to do things the old fashioned way. For most of my lightning photos I use a pinhole camera and just let it sit there for up to an hour. Do I get some good shots? I think so.

Lightning Strikes (thin)

All of my pinhole lightning photos