Dear internet,

I realized I’ve been talking about my digital fabrication project without posting any sort of in progress shots or sketches! That is simply not decent blog etiquette, so without further ado, here’s an image-heavy explaination of what I’ve been up to.

so

I’m making a wall-mounted, motor driven kinetic sculpture of a rat king

+

in the form of a (sort of) mandala,

inspired in part by The Rat King two-player flash game I made with Timothy Sherman last semester in Paolo Pedercini’s experimental game design class - if you collect enough rats, you end up with these wriggling little rat-mandalas that I thought were too cool. I’ve had a running fascination with rats & the lore around them since keeping them as pets back in high school, so… this was really just another excuse to make something ratty (and a break from the recent bout of batty, heehee). Why are all my favorite animals so spooky? (Although I like aardvarks and big fluffy dogs too, and those aren’t all that spook-tastic.)

I’m in the process of making a small(er) scale version right now in an attempt to figure out the mechanics of the piece - the final work will be roughly 3 feet in diameter. The sculpture features nine small rats rotating slowly right, and nine larger rats rotating slowly left; all the while, their 18 little pairs of legs run in place- all of the parts, both sculptural and mechanical, are cut out of 1/8th hardboard, since it’s cheap and takes paint nicely.

In a perfect world, this would be made out of acrylic plastic, but that’s pricey and I am a student who likes to be able to go grocery shopping. Maybe in the future I’ll make a shiny plastic version, like my Wild Family Dog .

Last night I cleared off my big studio work table and put all my currently known pieces into piles, before beginning the assembly process.

that guy on the far right is a screw up, the back of the board had some etching on it. whooooops.

and I know the driving gears behind the turning mechanism- a set of planetary gears inside of an internal gear;

kinda like

but I think I’m going to have to get everything put together and working before I can wrap my brain around what I need to add to get the legs moving. I know each rat is going to need it’s own-something or other- to get this running, which means more layers, which means figuring out how to get it both mechanically stable and aesthetically pleasing… and also have the ability to stay on the damn wall.

I’ve currently got little to no idea how to do this.

So… that’ll be fun.

And that’s what I’ve been working on.

(completely unrelated but I have to share)

I will leave you with a picture of a Mountain Goat with a wombat.

If that doesn’t give you warm fuzzies then you are broken inside. I bid you adieu, internet.

<3