I’m undeniably proud of the Cardboard Craze that I started at Dragon*Con back in 2005, especially of the guys who have been such dedicated cardboard costumers along with me since that time! After our great success as cardboard troopers last year, a lot of people have expressed their desire to join us in at the upcoming convention in September. Several folks have expressed that, while they have the desire, they just don’t have any good ideas on exactly how to build a good costume out of cardboard. So, as a service to those people, I’m going to begin a series of posts that will continue up until September, designed to provide you some design ideas and construction techniques. First out of the blocks is my design for Chewboxxa, a “Booxiee” from the planet BoxxaHarveyKorman.
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For the last month I’ve been teaching myself how to use Flash for a project at work and decided to put together a little Christmas card (click here to see it) to send out to my friends.
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I’m very happy to announce that my friend Joe Connolly’s product “Joe’s Sticky Stuff” is now available at a Restoration Hardware near you! (hint: look in the Stocking Stuffers section) Joe’s Sticky Stuff is most easily described as an aggressive, pressure-sensitive tape, but it’s almost entirely unlike any tape that you’ve ever used because it isn’t a strip of cloth imbibed with adhesive….
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While I was in Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, working on a project to design a Quaker Meeting House, I became fascinated with a poem by J.R.R.Tolkien entitled Kortirion among the Trees that spoke of a fading Elven town upon a hill, surrounded by trees. I explored that poem, using it as the literary springboard for my design that quarter. While the project faded quickly from memory, Tolkien’s poem did not. My personal ideas about Kortirion eventually led me to the creation of a city of my own that I began to call Neo Saltano. A few years later I tried to spark my fellow Tech graduates and some new acquaintances in the architecture world to participate in a competition to help sketch in some details about Neo Saltano, but work and a resounding lack of responses got in the way and I was forced to leave that city unexplored. But now the chance is returning. My friend Elliott has shown interest in making Neo Saltano into a January show at his Decatur gallery, one aspect of which will be an architectural design competition in various mediums. If you’re interested in participating contact the Boswell Gallery for more information and keep checking back here for the story of Neo Saltano.

Okay everybody, PiratePalooza 2006 is less than 10 days away. If you haven’t been planning your attire for that evening you’d best get started and if you didn’t even know about it then you haven’t been paying attention! Check the PP site for details about this year’s event.

Update: Now there are videos about us on YouTube! Take a look at us in the DragonCon Parade, here’s a closer angle and here’s the news report where Alfeo and I are interviewed. Track all the new photos of our costumes on Flickr! If you’ve missed earlier posts about my cardboard robots don’t miss reading about how it all started, our 2005 box costumes, the cardboard underwear I made for a friend, and the challenge that led to this year’s hijincks.

DAY ONE
Alfeo, Elliott and I suited up in the parking garage of the downtown Atlanta Hilton on Saturday morning and headed upstairs to begin walking down to Woodruff Park. I was bitching everyone out, telling them to hurry up. That went over famously.

Exiting the elevator, I figured that the first 20 people we ran into would provide us with a good idea of how we’d be received elsewhere for the rest of the day. We were particularly worried that the “real” stormtroopers would take demonstrable umbrage at our cardboard costumes, which was never my intent.
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Note: Due to schedule problems several of us have already built our box robots. Also Note that there has been a change from Sunday to Saturday.
It’s nearly that time again kids, Dragon*Con is only a fortnight away! If you’re planning to be in attendance at this year’s convention and you want to do something that’s indescribably fun then pay attention: I am hereby issuing my 2nd Annual Box Robot Flashmob Challenge, this time with a twist. This year I am challenging people to meet me on Sunday, September 3rd, strike that, on Saturday, September 2nd, at 1:30pm, on or near the exterior balcony of the Hyatt’s lobby bar, to build robot suits from cardboard boxes. To participate in this event you must provide your own cardboard boxes (if possible try to collect white boxes), enough of them to make a suit that will cover your torso, your head, your arms and legs. You are also going to need to bring a cardboard tube.
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Just before I left set to head home Alice Nisbet asked me something along the lines of “Are you going to mention this on your site?” to which I mumbled something kind of “no”-like. Of course on the way home, about four hours shy of being up for 24 hours straight I realized that of course I’d mention this on the site so, like, there’s a Continue Reading