A spontaneous and simple idea seems to us a fish. The main point was to find something where the moving element could be easily moved. The first thing we thought of was a fish fin like that. In addition, the body could also move, e.g. upside as if the fish were swimming like waves. The surface would have rhombuses similar to the fish scales.
Afterwards we had the idea of a “fat reindeer”. If possible, we would use a 3D printer for the body.
- “fat” because on the one hand the form of the body is more regular and probably easer to print, and on the other hand more space inside.
- The mechanical part would be the neck or the tail. For the neck there are several options how it could move, like left and right, rotating or up and down. The last seemed quite nice to us, we saw reindeer grazing in Lapland and the movement seemed fitting.
- In order to better distribute the weight from the neck we have made ourselves first thoughts how to position the axis in the back of the body. Maybe it would be enaugh to make it more stable.
- To reduce the weight we would like to print the head with the horns very light, for example by printing the head as a skull and the horns with the structure of human bones.
- In order not to make the neck too thin, bone-like structures could be added for decoration, but this will be decided later, depending on the weight.
- If the shape of the reindeer allows it, one could install a ball joint for the skull as common for nodder dogs (dog figures with the head wobble which are seen sometimes in the car). This would in an ideal case keep the head in the horizontal position.
- The light sensor could be placed on the back of the animal.
We stumbled over following problems:
- weight, and how to make it stand stable
- how to assamble the LEDs
- what kind of materials to use
- how big to make the body to contain the mechanical parts