The boy came home from school on Friday with a plan. Specifically, the plans he had drawn during centers (read: self-directed activity) time in class. We were going to build one of the “dog robots” from Jurassic World Park: Camp Cretaceous.
I am no Tony Stark, so the materials I had on hand for a robot were limited. First step was to look up some of the robot images and confirm with the boy that the BRAD (Bio Robotic Assistance Droid) was the one he wanted. The 3-D render from deviant artist junior3dsymas was a great reference tool. I had originally planned to make three small BRAD units, about the length of one clothespin each. This got tossed when the boy saw my first attempt at creating the head piece. He declared he needed a single larger unit (the size of the paper) in order to properly fight his bigger dinosaurs.
The boy is fairly obsessed with toys that have articulating jaws. So to make the head, I doubled up some clothespins, colored them black, and covered them with white craft foam. By sewing the corners of the top piece with red embroidery thread, I was able to both make the squarish shape of the head and include the eyes for the robot.
Making the legs articulate was a little bit trickier. My small-scale plan was to use pipe cleaners. With the change in project parameters, there was no way the pipe cleaners would hold up. The answer? Swivel straws. By linking three together, I was able to create the double-jointed legs needed for the dog-like robots. I covered these with black craft foam panels to fill out the shapes of the legs and feet.
The legs were attached to the paper-towel roll body with miniature brads (the pokey metal kind). The head I attached by lacing a pipe cleaner through a combination of straw remnants and the clothespin hinge (this allows the neck to articulate). I used white craft foam to create the outer storm-trooper-style armor plating. This also allowed me to cover up the metal brads which attached the legs to the body.
The boy is very pleased with his robot. He has already submitted a request for a BRAD-X build. I let him know that further builds would be dependent on material supply (e.g. I am out of empty paper towel rolls).
Jess Boctor 