The Original Idea:

Ideas:

We had numerous ideas when we first heard we'd have to do a project. Some of them included creating:

-a playable piano/keyboard

-a magic 8-ball

-a bank scene where someone picks up a big bag of coins and police cars come shooting out; a robbery scene

-Goldilocks and the Three Bears and numerous other kid stories

Thinking it Over:

When we thought it over more, and listened to what Lyn and Robbie had to say in class, we decided that we would make a project that catered to children. We ruled out all of our ideas except for the last one listed--illustrating a story for children. "What story should we use?". we asked each other. A princess story! A bedtime story! THE OLD LADY IN THE SHOE!!! Nahhh... How could we make a shoe, anyway? A shoe out of Legos! Hah, what a laugh (and later, another group made an elephant out of Legos!) How about a Disney movie? Definitely not Snow White--she was so annoying. Something new... Maybe Aladdin? Yes, and a magic carpet! Cool!! Hmm... Well we could do a really new movie, like Toy Story. Or.. SHREK!!!

Eureka!:

Shrek. Now, that's an idea worth pondering. When we thought of Shrek (actually, Willa originally said, "Shrek??!?") we both immediately fell in love with the idea. Not only do both of us think that the film is fantastic, but we know kids agree--who hasn't fallen in love with that crusty-on-the-outside, soft-and-fuzzy-on-the-inside example-of-good-character ogre? How can we illustrate Shrek? Our original plan was to make a board similar to the one we ended up with (okay, exactly like it) and do a follow-black procedure, like the sciborgs. We'd put a black line on the board and set Shrek off on his perilous adventure through spooky cat-infested woods, over a creaky wooden bridge to a fire-breathing (well, not really fire--we had to be safe!) dragon. Really, our idea was very similar to what actually ended up happening. We intended to have the motion sensors on the catapult, as well as on the dragon. We also wanted to incorporate Donkey, though we were unsure how to do so, without the use of an additional cricket. We took our basic idea to Lyn, along with a drawing of the course we wanted to use for Shrek's Magical Adventure (the same course as Shrek ended up using). Lyn said the adventure was just not magical enough: it provided no participation from the audience, and he also thought it would be cute to incorporate the relationship between Donkey and Dragon. Hmm...

Back to the Drawing Board:

We decided to attempt to make a remote control, though we weren't excited about it. But, at least this would make the project more interactive. A good solution for Donkey was to use magnets on both his vehicle and Shrek's, and to have Shrek tow Donkey. Robbie confirmed this idea, and supplied us with magnets. We also wanted to take Lyn's advice about the Dragon/Donkey situation, so we planned to make a device that would set off a tape recorded which would, in turn, play Donkey's voice as he's telling Dragon how beautiful she is (see here for a crappy version). When the tape was done playing, we'd have Dragon's heart light up, and Fiona would dance around. We brought this basic idea to Lyn and Robbie, and they seemed to like it much more. And so we went with it, and so began a legend...