Rushed Project: Makey the Robot

For the past few years now, the folks at Make Magazine have been asking me if I'd be willing to build a wearable mascot suit based on their "Makey the Robot" logo:


This year, they finally gave me the go-ahead to begin work so they can have this guy walking around at the Maker Faire.

The main challenge is, as you can see, the thing isn't at all proportioned like a person.  It's a problem, but I've had worse things to overcome in previous costume projects.

In order to get an idea for how the thing would move and fit, we started by building a cardboard mockup:


Here's a video detailing the scaling process:


After that, it was time to get started cranking out all of the pieces.  Most of them were made out of MDF with expanding foam used to create any necessary contoured edges:


You can see more about that process in this video:


Here's a quick snapshot of some of the pieces shaping up:


The whole thing will be done in no time at all, complete with more photos and video updates.

Stay tuned...