Personal Project

The Mimic is a fictional monster which pretends to be various objects (usually valuable ones) to lure in unsuspecting victims. This Mimic Treasure Chest was a bit of a rushed project, taking up less than a month. 

This project was brought to Shanghai for the 2017 Shanghai Maker Carnival. 

Work in progress: I made a smaller prototype to test out whether I could make the curved lid shape rather than just making a rectangular chest. The main body of the treasure chest is made of plywood, cut using a laser cutter.The 'wooden' overlay for the mimic was created by first sculpting a few molds in paper clay, and filling in those molds with hot glue. This created a surface which was slightly soft to the touch, almost feeling like skin.

The eyelids and teeth were sculpted from a type of plastic with a very low melting point. I only needed to put the little plastic pellets into hot water and could sculpt them to various shapes after it cooled down slightly. The eyeballs are made of glass, and were ordered online. Each eyelid is connected to a piece of wire, and these are connected to a series of servos, helping the eyelids move. 

The internal guts of the monster. An Arduino Uno was used to run the programmes, which controlled the movements of the jaws and the eyes. The tape was added during the exhibition, to prevent the aluminium chocolate coin wrappers from affecting the wiring.