We began our project by looking up some foam projects on Google Images. We found a foam elephant, and since it is the favorite animal of one of our group members it seemed to be the perfect fit (plus it didn’t look TOO hard).

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So next we all met up and started designing the different pieces. Hayley created the legs, Andrew created the body, and Bri made the very important Batman Mask. Taylor was late because he had class (acts like other classes are important or something…) but he was able to make in time to help us draw stupid pictures on a whiteboard.

Well.. Looks like we didn’t make his leg connection pieces quite long enough… But, with a little editing and some longer leg connectors.. Look, a normal standing foam elephant!! (Have to admit though, the first one was pretty cute).

An elephant is an amazing creature and all, but when it comes to a foam mascot, an elephant alone just wasn’t gonna cut it. And since we are so awesome, we all obviously love Batman. So, with an adorably miniature Batman mask and a little bit of paint, Batman Elephant was born.

Oh, and we can’t forget those googly eyes.

We had a few problems with the initial design. At first there was only one elephant body which looked too 2D and boring, and it wouldn’t stand on its own without having the legs be at weird angles so we made a second elephant body and  connected it with second so he stood on his own. Another thing we changed from the beginning was his ears because they were a tad bit too small but then in the end they were way too big, but hey, it made him pretty dang cute. Another challenge we encountered was designing on separate computers and all of our scales were different so when we printed, the elephant was wonky. But, in the end, we think it all came together perfectly.

C:\Users\Owner\Documents\BATMAN ELEPHANT.svg

Okay, in the beginning we were struggling in what to create. We spend time throwing out ideas that would be better than any past designs created throughout the years. We’ve tried to do Wushock but it was really hard so we gave up and went with SpongeBob. We knew we wanted something simple yet mind blowing and having one of our childhood favorites come to life was perfect. We began by using a simple picture of SpongeBob to be our model and then we started off from there. Having his basic outline was fairly easy. But we didn’t stop there we added more detail into every physical characteristic. The most challenging part from this was SpongeBob’s sexy curves, we just couldn’t get them in the right spot and angle. We created three layers of SpongeBob so it can independently stand on its own. Also we added a long nose that interlocks with the fist layer. Then a tie that also interlocks with the first layer. Then we added a few strokes of paint and boom we got SpongeBob.

This was the model we decided to create. Also this is our SVG file.

When choosing our prototype design, a wide variety of ideas were suggested by the group members. We decided that each member would begin initial designs on their ideas over the weekend, and that we would pick the final project idea the following Wednesday. We decided to go with the animated character Pikachu from the popular cartoon series Pokemon.

We initially started with the body of the pikachu, basing it off of 3-D model we found on the internet. We quickly decided that our model would consist of just the Pikachu, and not the accompanied Pokeball.

After ironing out the design of the body, we then brainstormed on how we would attach the arms and legs, to ensure that it fulfilled the requirement being able to stand on its own. We were, however, unable to come up with a solution before the class period ended on Wednesday, so we decided to meet up in the lab on Friday morning to finish the design and print.

Tom was very instrumental in helping us figure out how to enable the Pikachu to stand, and Dom provided expert advice on how we should go about designing the ever so intricate tail.

We were finally ready to print and ensured that as little foam as possible was wasted in the process.

[INSERT SVG SOURCE FILE HERE]

In the wake of a brainstorming apocalypse, the concept for this project wound up being an alligator.  The alligator symbolizes cunning, power, and extreme primal instincts.  We felt as though the alligator would symbolize the traits of our group, and straightaway we began searching the vast abyssal internet search engine, Google. We started Inkscape up, and immediately began a trace after the founding of an alluring clip-art photo of the alligator.  Simple calculations were not taken account of, and after starting the foam cutter, we found out the unedited alligator would be over 30 inches long!  We fixed this simply by scaling the alligator outline down to a tolerable size on Inkscape.  Our group worked together well, and overcame simple miscalculations to achieve a final product that we are proud to present to this class.

Original Alligator

Foam Gator