Making Toys

As part of our mid-term projects, we were tasked with creating three creatures that could live in our houses and fit into our lives. They had to use a sensor (including at least one photoresistor), and they had to encapsulate at least some aspects of what defines a living creature. Here are the three I’m came up with.

Hey Tony!

The idea came to me after thinking about having a creature around the house that could help me find stuff that I occasionally lose. Things like keys and remotes were obvious examples. When I saw there was an IR sensor that could be paired with remote controls, it seemed a natural fit, until I realized that you need to use the remote in order to trigger the sensor. From there, I thought, maybe he could just let you know when you’ve already found it, which seemed kind of comical and fun.

Tony sits by the TV, and if you lose the remote, you tell him. He’ll let you know he hasn’t seen it. However, the next time a remote is used again in his directly, he’ll kindly let you know that you’ve found your remote!

Grumps

Grumps is a little critter that lives in your medicine cabinet. He lives there because he is a neurotic hypochondriac, and he likes to be close to his meds. However, locked away in his little apartment, he often falls asleep and forgets that what he is living in is essentially a cantilevered cliff dwelling, and that everyday when you open the medicine cabinet, he gets startled and freaks out, since he is also afraid of heights. For a few seconds, he proceeds to thrash about wildly, trying to grab onto anything that would keep him from falling to his death, until he finally calms down and remembers that he is still alive and in his home.

At first, I just wanted to make a creature that threw temper tantrums when you woke him up, but his story quickly evolved when I realized what kind of guy he would have to be to live in the medicine cabinet, and how traumatic that could be if you were woken that way.

CopyCat

I have a dog at home, and a big part of having a roommate that I would actually enjoy having around the house, can basically be summed up in a lot of ways by my dog. He basically just wants to be involved in everything going on in home, but he doesn’t require all the effort of keeping up conversation or any social pressure. CopyCat will basically follow you around, speak when people are talking, and get drunk when you are (alcohol sensor), but he never really requires your attention. If you ignore him, he’ll still do his thing, and when he does, it just reinforces how important your actions are. It feels comforting.