Moms Christmas Present - Hardware Prototype Complete!

Another update to Moms Late Christmas present :)  As usual, MOM! STAY OUT!

Moms Christmas Present - Software started

Another update on the late Christmas present for my mom.   MOM! STAY OUT!

This is Bat Country

 Here are a couple little projects we did for Halloween.

I was going to try to do the Haunted Mansion, but the kids just kept going on and on about wanting more "paper dolls" so here we are!

After I made the first bat, everybody wanted one!  Before I knew it, there were four of those things lying about the table! 

The pattern is from Paper Box World

The zombies were the same...  You make one, and before you know it, everybody else wants one as well!  I wouldn't mind so much if they'd build their own, but nope, that's left for me. :)

Zombie Pattern

World of Warcraft Papercraft

I found this little statue sitting around in Booty Bay and decided I must have him. I figure he was a monument to some powerful goblin mage of some sort, now he's a 200mm statue sitting on the entertainment center.  Once I finally grow bored with him, he'll probably end up crushed under one of the kids beds.  :)

Tools:
World of Warcraft - The model and textures came from the full install of the game.

WoW Model Viewer - Used to find and export the models from WoW into something we can actually use.

Pepakura Designer -  This little program makes unwrapping your model a breeze.

Honestly, he only took a few hours to put together, but the head and hands felt like they took forever with all of those tiny folds and flaps.  Eventually I made it and the final results turned out much nicer than expected.

You can download the pattern, and view it with the Pepakura Viewer

Mostly Naked Animals

 I was sifting through my papercraft collection this morning looking for something to do with the kids when I stumbled across these guys.

They are perfect.  Simple designs, all straight cuts, just a few tabs and all mountain folds!

Download them at http://www.almostnakedanimals.com/INTL/download.html.

 Connor was able to help a lot.  He folded and glued quite a bit, but he wasn't quite as good with the cutting.  Hopefully he'll get better :)  All Meghan wanted to do was play with the bunny...

I'm Just the Glue

What do you do for a living?

Me, I'm glue.  Whenever there's the need for data to be Created, Retrieved, Updated, or Deleted (from here out, that's CRUD), I'm the guy you call.

Don't get me wrong, I love my job.  Sometimes I want to create something on the computer that ends up as (or interacts with) something physical.

That's what this project is all about.  Right now we're working on papercraft stuff.  I've got some pictures and stuff just about ready to go up, but we were busy trying to figure out how to have the kids involved... 

We're also going to work on the skull project again.  This time we're hoping to build a facial tracking training system so we can record someone singing the song and *POOF* training done. (At least almost done)

I've also got some ideas for having the Kinect control the magic mirror as well as some changes to the trailer-selection plugin for the HTPC to make it more creative as well as more accurate.

Don't worry if you don't know what I'm talking about.  It'll all make sense in the end...  (I hope)