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We bought some paints, trying super hard not to go over our spending limit, and a very large (too large for even Willa to carry comfortably) poster board, as well as some popsicle sticks, two wooden wedges, and some of those felt squares, since we didn't have access to fabrics. Meagan had paint brushes of her own, and we were going to share what we could with other groups, and scrounge up the rest, to get a full list of supplies for the project. TopThe first step was to paint the board, which we did late one night as custodians looked on in dismay at how close our paint was to the carpet. We did keep it over one of the follow-line maps, though, since we wanted to attempt to be responsible adults. We painted the board. It looked b-e-a-u-t-iful. Really. So nice. Then...... The next day it was bent about 45 degrees upward--it had warped. Oh no!!! We put weights on it, including some of the random equiptment waiting to be repaired by the elevators. After 24 hours the board was okay again. Not perfect, but usable. The next step was to but black (we'd also painted those) cardboard edges on it so that it wasn't just a board, but a contained area (which served the dual purpose of enabling us to hide the backs of things, etc.) This was difficult, because, first of all, it was dark when we were assembling it because of a power outage, and second of all, because it's just difficult to attach a thin board to another thin board at 90 degrees with only duct tape. But we succeeded! Later, we hot-glued the cracks to add more stability. The Bridge (aka Meagan's Pride and Joy): This was accomplished by gluing the two wedges together, flat end to flat end, and gluing popsicle sticks to the wedges, in a scattered fashion. What you may not know is that, after hours, Meagan burned the popsicle sticks with her Zippo to add a more... bridge-over-lava look. No fire alarms were set off. (Which we are thankful for.) The bridge was the easy part. The hard part was the rope part of the bridge, which required cutting popsicle sticks and numbering them, 1 to 19, so that they progressively when up and down in size, to match the up-and-down size of the bridge. Then, notches were cut in the sticks so that twine could be wrapped around the sticks, to make it a rope bridge. These sticks were also burned. Finally, these were hot glued, one at a time, to the board.
This was originally a cube of styrofoam. After toiling into the night, watching Cider House Rules, carving the styrofoam out with a spoon and, sometimes, a butter knife, the castle was completed. The castle was painted gray, and holes were put in the bottom of it later so that wires could go through.
Okay, we admit it... We bought them. TopDonkey's vehicle, which was just legos on wheels, was covered with green felt, as was Shrek's, though Shrek's vehicle was not as pretty. Magnets were attached to each.
The box that held the remote took sooo long. Why? Because Meagan is a crappy painter and gets impatient, paints a new layer before the previous layer is dry, and then ends up with a gloopy mess. It was made from popsicle sticks glued together, and painted, with one end left open so the IR could get through. Later, when the paint finally dried, directions were written on the top of the box where the potentiometer would go. The clarity of these directions were tested on Lyn's daughters, both of whom figured out what the sketchy stop sign meant (see picture below for explanation.)
This patchwork of felt was a joint effort, and maybe a crappy one, compared to other pieces of the project. We cut out wings and a mouth and feet from hard, darker purple, glittery material, and used pink felt for the rest of the body. It was incredibly difficult to make the dragon look cool, since it was made of numerous lego motion modules (see The Process-Code and Mechanics) and the felt disrupted things... We added googly eyes, and fake eyelashes that seemed more like bushy eyebrows. We also cut out a red heart and glued it onto Dragon with a red light inside it.
These were made with the wonderful laser printer. They were simple to make, though less simple to actually print! They were also burned, like the rest of the wood in this project, and then painted, based on the signs from the original Shrek movie. These are probably Meagan's favorite part of the project, because they are so small and adorable, those cute mini signs. The signs were hot-glued to the board, and reinforced with bushy material that was glued to the board and then glued to the signs.
This baad putty cat was simply covered in felt, as were the shafts of the catapult. To get Puss to stay on his axle on his motion module (see The Process--Code and Mechanics) we had to cut a hole in his bottom and stick hot glue and then an axle up there. We felt pretty bad and let him sleep on the bed that night rather than in the laundry room. Poor kitty.
Insipred by past projects, this scenery, which may be dead already, as it rots in the robotics lab, was taken from live trees. (Don't tell the environmental group!) It added a pine scent to our project, and provided necessary trees and shrubbery to cover things up, and spruce (no pun intended) things up. We had trees on Shrek's forest area, and rocks on Dragon's side. Trees were held up with rocks, because hot-gluing them to the board yielded poor results, including but not limited to the trees falling over and hot glue getting everywhere. Top |
