Project idea: animating ordinary objects

Dan Swearingen | July 14, 2010

This is a really cool movie made by Patrick Boivin and this kind of movie would be an excellent project for one of our students.

Here’s the Making-Of reel showing some of the techniques used.

Note that the studio has acquired the Hasbro’s latest release of the “Star Wars 3.75″ Super Deluxe Vehicle: AT-AT.” Just one [...]

Project ideas: Robots and Robot sculpture

Dan Swearingen | March 29, 2010

I have an RSS news feed from Dark Roasted Blend going and they often have great project inspirations.
This morning’s was Utterly Irresistible Robot Sculptures –pictures of really amazing robot sculptures.

Project idea: CycleKarts!

Dan Swearingen | January 1, 2010

A CycleKart is a small four wheeled car made to look like one of the classic racing sports cars of the 1920’s or 1930’s.

Power is specified as a 200 cc Honda one-cylider engine. Wheels are based on 17″ x 2″ motorcycle rims. Total car weight must be under 250 lbs.
I love the look and these [...]

A more perfect world (or globe)

Dan Swearingen | November 16, 2009

Lots of trial and error learning goes on in our workshops. Sometimes the emphasis is on “error.”
One of our students from an early workshop, Reggie, wanted to make a globe. We said “sure.” Our strategy was to build it out of layers of pine — and that was REALLY hard.

We all took turns rasping and [...]

Project idea: Shelf diorama of Indiana Jones

Dan Swearingen | November 13, 2009

I tripped across this beautiful diorama project posted and built by Maxime Pécourt who lives in Paris, France.

What a fun idea.

Project inspiration: MUSE video “Uprising”

Dan Swearingen | November 7, 2009

This is a beautifully done video made by filming art miniatures with the band masked in. Love the killer teddy bears. The song is okay too.

Star Trek communicator bluetooth “headset”

Dan Swearingen | November 6, 2009

Wow, are there some serious nerds out there! They make me happy.

Diana Eng over at Make presents an awesome project taking a toy Star Trek original series communicator and making it into a bluetooth headset for your cell phone.

I actually own one of these toy communicators and this would be a great project to encourage [...]

Project idea: great stop-action Lego movie

Dan Swearingen | August 24, 2009

It’s also a great tribute to 8-bit video games.
Sorry Steven, I think you’re pwned. Awesome. The comment says “1500 hours of moving legobricks and taking photos of them.”

Project idea: The Tumbler go-kart

Dan Swearingen | August 18, 2009

Project idea: Rubber band machine gun

Dan Swearingen | August 9, 2009

Carissa mentioned that she was thinking of making some sort of rubber band gun next.
I found this great video at YouTube blogged about at Japanator.