Inflatable Moai

Show Time!

2006-08-06T08:10:00.000-07:00

Well the Moai were inflated for 12 hours while bands played and dancers danced. Only two reports of deflation most likely caused by kicking the breaker on the powerstrip one of the heads was plugged into. By the time I was called to the stage the nodding off head was wide awake. Two of the light guage reusable zip-ties gave out in the wind but I had anticipated much worse. I will replace the ties with heavy guage ones before their next public appearance. We only used one of the sdie D-rings to tie the heads down, with all three used I doubt the 2 zip-ties would have failed.

As we were packing the heads up somebody asked if we rent them for parties. I told her we hadn't had time to even think about it as they were just finished. We'll see if she contacts us anytime soon.

Deadline!

2006-08-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

We're running out of time!

Again I spent the last few days working on the other stuff for the Tiki Invasion so Elvis still needs his rings and both need bases to keep them from blowing way!

Luckily Joe stepped up yesterday to start work on the bases - until the batteries in my saw gave out.

Joe returned today to continue -yes, I plugged in the batteries- and soon Stick arrived as well. Irk was working overtime and would be out of commission. Maya was still lovely and organizing all of our Fez-o-rama product.

Me, I have a 9-foot inflatable moai named Elvis to disassemble.

I get the D-rings installed and even fix the lean he had. Then I moved out to the messy area to help with the bases.

The bases are simply plywood octagons with a circle cutout for airflow. The feet are made from the scrap plywood and the whole thing is covered in purple fabric I had on hand. Stick felt that the purple would be more appropriate with the metallic gold. I had to agree.

I stapled reusable zip-ties -Harbor Freight!- in a circle to attach to the D-rings on the bottom edge of the heads. This is just a desperate last minute effort and I'm sure they will be replaced with something better in the future.

There you go. They are now much more stable and the airflow is greatly improved for inflation.

Time to pack, the show is in less than 10 hours!

2006-07-31T08:03:00.000-07:00

Well Elvis is standing tall but at a bit of an angle I must admit. The air pressure inside is much grater than I had anticipated and the base is actually lifting him off the ground. The heads will need to be tethered if there is going to be any wind.

I will add D-rings to the back and cheeks as well as a series around the bottom edge to anchor them to the yet to be made bases. Oh joy more work... I'll have to get Joe to do it!

Moai number two goes together after a few false starts. I took the D-rigs off of the pumpkins and found some more small ones in my leather kit. I covered the cotton tape in strips of gold nylon to help them blend in and reinforce the D-ring placements.

Moai #2 inflates even better than #1! We'll call him Chris.

Now I just need to rebuild Elvis to add the D-rings to him.

Productivity!

2006-07-30T07:51:00.000-07:00

Since I spent the last few days focused on other projects I really needed to get something done today. Luckily I had lots of help! Irk, Smokin'Joe and the Stickmann joined my lovely wife Maya and me for the big push.

Our pile of supplies:

Note the roll of nylon and the roll of paper that will make up the marker. Along with this is the box of the lawn pumpkin that is giving its life for art... much like all of the real pumpkins that have been sacrificed to my artistic whims over the years.

First I will need to clean up and finish the marker.

Then the plan is to roll out 4 layers of fabric to reduce the number of cuts we need to make.

The fabric proved to be a bit of a hassle. The edges refused to lie flat. To remedy this I had to rough cut each piece before smoothing out the next one.

We used pins and staples along the edges to control the fabric.

Then they were handed off to Irk for finish cutting on the cutting table.

Meanwhile Joe showed the lawn ornaments who was boss.

We plan to reuse the base section of orange fabric as the actual screws that held the base together were rusted. It would just be easier to sew the new fabric to the existing bits. We will also use the zippers because there was no one to stop us! We're crazy mad like that.

Stickmann was assembling our paper reference model

and wrangling fabric and tools, which saved me from a lot of moving about.

Here you can see all of the pieces cut and ready for sewing:

Piece by piece the head was formed.

I started with the nose because I knew this would be the focus. The nose would need to have its edge defined to prevent it from looking like it got into a fight. To accomplish this we added a nose gore behind the actual nose.

Sickmann and Irk cut diamond shapes into to allow airflow but retain strength. Ultimately this piece would define the shape of the nose and eye... at least that was the idea.

At first I did the same seam twice, once for each head but for some strange reason I kept making mistakes on the second head and needed Irk to remove those seems.

Soon I decided to get one Moai finished and debugged before completing his brother.

When I finished the face I realized that I messed up on the shape for the Nose gore. Luckily Irk and Stick failed to follow my directions and somehow managed to leave me with just the right amount of space to correct my mistake. The gods were smiling on us! -or at least they would be as soon as I got these things finished.

I installed the zipper in the back seam before sewing the base to the Moai. After that was done I pulled the top thru the zipper and sewed the cap on.

It is time for the first test:

Success!

I give you Elvis!

Fabric

2006-07-27T07:48:00.000-07:00

Now I'm really under the gun!

I needed to acquire fabric quickly and get home to work on this stuff. Since I have a rather small window to shop I would go where the selection is and not worry about finding the best deal. -assuming I could even find this fabric elsewhere

I had a number of choices in the color department but I was a little worried that rip stop nylon wouldn't hold the air well enough so I went with the only coated rip stop they had... Metallic Gold! This will be the Elvis of Moai!

Actually the gold should work out well. There is a concern that the more sensible colors would fade into the stage, as it is all black and gray with a blue sky behind it.

I also grabbed a few yards of a brown rip stop to act as shadowing for the nose and eyes.

I was out the door in record time -for me- and spent under $80 for 18 yards.

Pattern Part 2

2006-07-26T07:48:00.000-07:00

Before I slapped down cash for fabric I want to know how much I actually need. Time is the big issue at this point so I'm willing to spend a bit of money to save a bit of time.

I couldn't find any silicon coated nylon but I do know of a place that has a selection of rip-stop. Michael Levine's in Downtown LA (near work) has a pile at $4 a yard. I don't have time to go on safari so this will have to do.

To save money I spend a bit of time on the computer laying out potential cut patterns. These are known as markers in the fashion industry and I figure I saved a few yards and lots of potential stress by working this out in advance. 18 yards would give me plenty of fabric to build two Moai.

The Pattern

2006-07-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

Now that the pattern was secured it was time for the next hurdle. The sculpt was done in 1:12 scale. Each inch equaled a foot. This needed to get much larger.

I had a few options:
Manually scale the pattern up -yeah right
Use a computer to do the heavy lifting. Bingo!

Now the question is: Do I use a home scanner and a graphics program to scale the pattern or capitalize on some free time at work? I went with the work option as my students were taking tests. I digitized the patterns into the computer and scaled them up 200% in the pattern design software before truing the seams.

This took a few trail runs to finesse the pattern but once the corners were square and the seams matched I printed out a paper model to test the look. After the first paper model I realized I need more definition in the mouth and patterned a larger lower lip. All of the angles were set to be very sharp. This was to compensate for the drastically swelled look of the future inflatable.

The second pass was created in paper. At this point the model is in 1:6 scale. You can also see the lines drawn for additional seams in the full-scale model.

The Sculpt

2006-07-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

As with all things... you gotta start somewhere. For this project there were a couple of sketches but I realized that the illustrations were more complex than what I needed. This design was going to need to be quite simple if I wanted any hope of success. So I turned to the massive pile of oil based sculpting clay I've had for years.

Since I knew this design would be symmetrical I could skip the detail on one side.

From here I had a decision to make. I needed to turn this into a paper pattern. Traditionally one just wraps the form in masking tape and then slice the tape on the potential seams. However I had a problem. I used clay because I didn't want to sculpt in plaster. Tape doesn't stick to clay. I could try wrapping the clay in a plastic bag and tape that but we were in a massive heat wave and the clay was less than firm.

My solution: shove the sculpt into the freezer and take a break. This proved to be mostly pointless. When I took the clay out it immediately started to condense moisture. Damn humidity! When I wrapped it in plastic the plastic immediately began to sweat. I called it quits for the night.

After rolling about in the sweltering heat for a few hours I realized sleep was not on the menu. Despite needing to be up early for work I crawled out of bed with a new plan. I'll take tracing paper and pin it to the clay form. Bit by bit I worked the paper around the clay and created my pattern.

I took the small pieces of tracing paper and taped them to a piece of pattern paper. With the pattern secured I was ready to get it on the computer.

The Plan

2006-07-02T07:45:00.000-07:00

So here we go...

Make two inflatable Moai -Easter Island style heads- using nylon fabric and the two fan basses I already have sitting in storage.
Create a pattern in small scale from paper trying to anticipate what will happen when we fill it with air and make it look like it suffered from a peanut allergy. -sorry G$-
Get the pattern into a computer to scale up to about 8ft tall
Find usable fabric and start cutting
Sew...sew like the wind!
Cross fingers and hope it doesn't look totally lame.

Actually I should mention that step one is actually procrastinate for as long as possible until panic sets in. Panic is a great motivator and is often overlooked in most DIY books. Deadlines are essential for this... well partially essential. The 'line' part isn't as important as the 'dead' is.

Parts cost:

$35.00 - can be found much cheaper now.

$4.00 per yard 18yds total

-for each Moai

The paper for the patterns was recycled from work.

The Inflatable Moai

2006-07-01T07:44:00.000-07:00

How do these things get started?

Years ago I purchased two inflatable lawn ornaments with the intention of modding them to my whim. Needless to say nothing happened for some time. When I bought them they were on seasonal clearance but the concept was so new that they were far more expensive than they are now. Ah well, what are you going to do?

So earlier this year we were contacted by the fine folks at the Mission Tiki Drive-in. They wanted something to dress up the stage for their massive Tiki Invasion event.

As with most things I attempt, packing and moving are a big issue. I like to make large things that can fit into small spaces. I wanted to fill a big space but needed to keep the packing down to a minimum. I still had to get our Fez-o-rama vending booth out there with all of our product. I couldn't focus much cargo space -or time for that matter- on the stage decorations.

Inflatable was the way to go!