Winter media dump

1 Nov 2013

Well, it has obviously been a while since I've posted and a lot has happened! The decompression and halloween seasons gave LightWalker a lot of exposure. One of the highlights was landing on the front page of the Santa Cruz Sentinel after a fantastic halloween night. There were also some fellow stilt folk out that night that were amazeballs!

Halloween 2013 - stilts & more

The 2013 SF decompression party was a great time and LightWalker made enough of an appearance to catch the eye of Curious Josh for a great shot with a little girl who just couldn't quite deal with what she was looking at. Great work capturing the moment!

SF Decom Awe courtesy of Curious Josh

I also added some lit up horns that I think turned out pretty well. Fairly simple to add another couple LEDs to the strand and I think it really rounds out the costume. In fact, it looks so good that I'm thinking of adding a line of lights up my back too... We'll see.

LightWalker & Griffin @ the Santa Cruz Glow Festival

Halloween 2013 - Harlequin Mandy, Death, and LightWalker!

birth of the playa creature

LightWalker's true birth happened this past week in Black Rock City, Nevada on the playa of Burning Man 2013. I won't bother you with words...

Wiring almost complete and one arm lit!

LightWalker

Have been able to spend a fair amount of time on the ol' LightWalker project lately. Pretty happy with how it's progressing...

• Main unit is completely wired up at this point. All I gotta do is figure out where to mount the mic and how to insulate it a bit and that piece is done!
• Both legs are completely done... frames, lights, wiring, and fabric covers.
• Both arms have their frames built.
• One of the arms has lights installed.
• All wiring for accelerometers is complete.

First stroll!

A couple weeks ago, I actually wired the legs up, threw the battery and controller in a backpack, and hopped on the leg stilts to see how they worked. Definitely found some things that need polishing, but overall, the first walk went fantastic!

first arm

Here's the arm I got wired up with lights today. Now I just gotta get the lights on the other arm, finish wiring it, and it's on to my actual costume! I think I'm going to need to make an all white stilt outfit with 50 or so pixels in the legs to really make the whole thing work. Might even get a bunch of white fabric to hang off of me so I look more flow-ey.

The man burns in 47 days. At this rate, I might even have time to pack and get some food before I have to head out.

Cheers. Minty.

Motivation Vitamins: Maker Faire

400 total control lighting pixels!

Wow, have you guys ever been to the maker faire?! It is amazing! Highlights include stilting around with the Stilt Factory crew, watching the life size mousetrap, listening to Arduino founder Massimo Banzi talk about what Arduino's working on, and chatting it up with Cool Neon.

Stilt frame sketches

And check out the little self-Santa'd Christmas present I got from Cool Neon this week! Oh yeah. I've completed the design for my stilt frames (check it out below) and will be building them out over the long weekend. And these bad boys are gonna be set into the stilt frames about every inch and a half. Thing's gonna light up like Vegas!

Arm stilts. Engaged.

tall shadow walking

Took a break from the electronics today to turn the wooden crutches I found at the second hand store into arm stilts. Kinda nice to see that piece come together and be able to walk around on all four limbs three feet off of the ground.

The construction is super simple. I literally just unbolted the bottom of the wooden stilts and bolted in a five foot 2" x 2" with some homemade rubber feet on them. Spent about 30 minutes cruising around the park to check it all out. Overall I'm psyched. But, I'm definitely gonna have to put in some practice time as the arm stilts are fairly heavy and it's definitely a chore to keep them lifted most of the time. Will have to re-think whether or not wood's the right material for this.

bought crutches w/ custom stilt leg