Maker Fun

Eureka is an amazing place for young curious minds. We were so pleased to be asked to help deliver activities as part of their 'Made by Me' season.  In the latest Eureka blockbuster two snakes fall in love, Elsa gets her own back a throws snow balls at Olaf and two ducks dance the day away. Here are the results, animations made by you on the 23rd of August at Eureka!   Many thanks to the staff and visitors who welcomed us and supported the workshops. If you are new to making save the date and go to  Halifax Mini Maker Faire  on Saturday 30th August.  It’ll be a family-friendly festival of invention, creativity and imagination, celebrating the Maker in all of us.

Here is Part 1 of our amazing animated short created at Manchester Mini Maker Faire this Saturday. Thank you to all of our stop motion artists who created crazy characters to tell even crazier stories. Rabbit outwits the skinny fox, Pac-man makes a return and much more! Want more? See Part 2 our Sunday Film. Sven saved Elsa from a burning building but Snowman was blasted by a Creeper.   These animations were created with plasticine, using A Raspberry Pi computer and lots of imagination!  We used a bread board and buttons connected to the GPIO pins on the Pi instead of relying on a GUI interface. We made tweaks late into the night a head of the show.   

Wow, we had a fantastic time at Manchester Mini Maker Faire. The whole family came to deliver our 2 second animation challenge! kids created their own characters from plasticine and brought those stories to life using stop motion animation. We were able to show and tell lots of families about our latest Raspberry Pi project.   We captured an amazing 40 animations over two days. With an average of just two seconds per animation we are 'chaining' those animations together to create two short films for each day at the faire. Congratulations makers you created awesome animations. Check back tomorrow when we will publish the films!   

I think you will agree Robin Hood is as nimble and as swashbuckling as ever! We celebrated the final session of this series of Maker Fun with a cool a stop motion animation work shop led  by guest animator Paul Claessens .  We rebuilt and re-programmed our Raspberry Pi to create this stop motion kit.     Our  star  maker of month  was the first to try out our new Raspberry Pi set-up.  He created his first animated short; the Adventures of Robin Hood Re-told in 5 Seconds!   We had so much fun we are going to take our stop motion set to Manchester Mini Maker Faire . Pop along to the MOSI next weekend if you would take the 2 second challenge and help us create a chain animation.  

We did it! We captured the moment our Painted Ladies emerged from their chrysalides using our Butterfly Pi. There really is a Pi and Pi cam buried in that awesome Lego housing!     Why don't you put your Raspberry Pi to use this Summer and capture what nature is doing in your back garden! Don't forget to share it. #makerfun #raspberrypi It was a lovely sunny day when we released the butterflies and we couldn't believe what happened next. Our Painted Ladies crept up onto the girls fingers for a little help with their great escape.  They were in no hurry to leave and we were all fascinated by the chance to observe them before they finally flew away.  I t was a magical metamorphosis. We raised 5 very hungry caterpillars that ate so much they exploded to eight times there original size. They hung upside down and turned into Chrysalides. Check out our Caterpillar Pi video  too. Bef...

A few weeks ago the kids got a butterfly hatching kit from their favourite aunt.  Can you guess what our caterpillars got up to last night? As you can see caterpillar  number three became a chrysalis! Now we have three chrysalides and a crazy, hungry caterpillar still throwing shapes into the night. How did this happen? The caterpillar hangs in a 'j' shape and sheds their exoskeleton for one last time before hardening into a chrysalis.  We hope to capture the birth of our butterflies in a week or so time. How did we do it? We hooked up our pi with pi-camera and attached an eye- glass to shorten the focal length of the pi-camera.  We used a cold light to light up the scene into the night. Check out our lego housing. We can change the height of the camera using the gears! We modified an existing time-lapse program.  There is lots of great stuff out there:  For inspiration and to discover other great projects...

Maker Fun Summer events started this week with our crazy scurrying art bots!   We are so pleased to be back for a new series of events and have had an amazing week supporting the launch of the 2014-2015 Hannah Directory.      Kevin Fitzpatrick from Radio Manchester came to visit Maker Fun HQ, also known as our 'kitchen table' and recorded a fantastic report for the Mike Sweeny show. Mike was on great form and his show amplified the message that there are so many great things happing in communities across the North West.  The Hannah Directory goes even further and connects  50 inspi ring people and organisations from Newcastle to Gateshead, Durham, Leeds, Sheffield, Huddersfield, Manchester, Stockport, Preston, Barrow and Liverpool:  www.hannahfestival.com . It's a diverse collective combing old and traditional knowledge and a celebration of community endeavour.    We are prou...