Burning Man 2011
This project turned out to be a winner! After all the hard work we were so grateful to have everyone tell us how much they loved our serpents!
A really big thanks to my crew and family who hung with me to the end.
Thanks to Burning Man, our friends and to the burners who bought shade, for your financial support.
These beast are so fun to drive. We slithered back and forth looking for prey to cull out of the crowd and surround with our 50ft long bodies. The horror on their face that quickly melted into a giant grin made my week night after night. Kisses to you all and sorry if I ran over your toes!
Zolie at her 5th burn. She kept the tongue and diamond clean all day.
beautifully lit serpents
the tail built with the help of Because We Can
A wonderful picture by Arin Fishkin of the Serpents and the Electrobite
The Serpents are growing and taking shape everyday. Lots of wonderful friends and new faces showed up to help Sunday and lots got done. Still needing skilled volunteers. Contact me if you have skills in metal fabrication, general fabrication, LED knowledge, soldering, Flash animation of LEDs. car stereo installation, sewing. For people with no workshop skills – be a gopher for hardware or food runs, help us organize and mail out rewards from our sure-to-be-successful kickstarter so we can keep moving forward… I’m sure I can think of more!
The kickstarter fundraiser is going well but we still need more than $4000 to get our funding! Please tell your friends, spam the world, pitch in a $25. Less than a week left and if we don’t fully fund we lose the $6000 we have already raised!
The head begins to take shape. It looks incredible and I can’t wait to see it filled in with sheet metal.
Tansy and Kyrsten have been working hard to get the fins cut.
Me laying out the head on cardboard.
The build of the Serpent Twins is in full production now. Nice to see the shop so busy and the pile of unfinished work giving way to the finished one. This is going to be a really cool project and I’m excited about performing with our new 50 ft long 24 volt puppets!
Support our project here
Picture updates of the build
We are done framing the wing and now the start of the lower Jaw. After the framing is done all this will get filled in with sheet metal.
Discovery channel Canada came by for a day shoot to see what we are up to this year.
Lauren soldering 1000’s of LEDs for the body of the white Serpent
Tansy painting the wheels black.
I’ve been working on fins with the help of Because We Can‘s custom made plasma cutting jigs.
It stopped raining long enough for me to test out the trailers. They work great, tracks, turns tight and looks like a 50′ serpent! Very happy overall.
The head of the Black Serpent gets it’s wings
The LED mounting tubes that go inside of each white barrel. Christine drilled 300 holes in each one! Now we have to push 300 of Cool Neon’s lights into each one
Fritz & Mort layout the barrels for the Black serpent.
Prototyping on the Serpent Twins is done and now the real work begins. The fist wing went on yesterday and the white serpent trailers will be done by the end of the week. Feels good to finally start welding stuff. Excited to see the head take shape. More updates to follow as we progress over these next few weeks.
Hoop for the wing. New wide tires.
Trailer with Battery tray and the 300 LED array that will cover them. over that will be the 55gal white drum. Video!
Benny from Cool Neon is helping us with the LEDs and a driver that will be able to play video.
Fellow builder Greg Barron from Rideable Bicycle Replicas is getting ready to build a half scale size Frigate or Brigantine, a fully functional square rigged sailing vessel for next year and needs to clear out his present creation to make room and raise some money. Greg wanted to see if he could make an art car sail since the La Contessa didn’t, nice concept but no functionality as a sailing vessel. It irritated him. The canoe concept was pretty basic and easy and it does sail under wind power alone, quite well in fact. The Can-you hit 16 mph this year up at the BR Yacht Club in a stiff breeze. New speed record and 9 people on deck too. Go sail a reach in silence and then bring it about, fire up the engine and motor back upwind. Repeat. Plus it’s nice to take on a sunset sail. Can’t wait to see his new vessel and take a ride.
Contact Greg for more information if your interesting in buying the Royal Can-you
gbarron@hiwheel.com
Dust free just out of the truck.
People would walk up and ask if it was remote controlled. When I pointed out the leather seat and the joy stick they couldn’t believe you could drive it. Lots of smiling faces when we let them try it out.
related links to the building of this creature
Kyrsten on her new Electrobite car. This was a huge hit.
What a rocket! the inside was just as nice and the fireworks we saw were over the top Zack!
Day before opening and they are still putting on the finishing touches. Zolie noticed the Monkey’s head didn’t work and impressed most people who didn’t even notice the monkey in the mans tummy.
The porch! We rolled with them most of the week and put on the 1st Steam punk rave Friday night after the rocket.
Pictures of the Steampunk Rave
Electrobite, Snail and the porch
Kids-ville with fresh cookies from the porch
Perez and Sarriugarte Family outing
Houston we have a problem!
DPW parade with a live band on top! We got 19 people in the snail at the end!
Quite the show. I really liked the scale of the Man this year. I hope it keeps getting smaller.
Camp Mates jump for Joy!
Snail Crew stops to enjoy the moon.
Oilpunk Rave with the Hobo Goblins, the Porch and us. John hooked us up with a wireless mic and the snail became the PA for the porch most the week. Thats our spot light as well.
Amy’s seat, Kyrsten’s lights, lots of sleeplittle nights and we are done! Off to BM to show it off tonight. I posted more picture to my flickr site. Looking forward to sitting in a chair and drinking beer for a week.
Patina is done and boy does it look great! We always have to pray to the patina gods before , but the problem this time was me grabbing the wrong chemical bottle. Little too brown for Kyrsten’s taste, but beautiful none the less.
Mike came by to wire up the lights last night, and Amy brought by the finnished seat… wow! I’m looking forward to seeing all the parts: eyes, seat, and lights together on the car at once.
Up till 6am and all the fabrication work is done! Now for the patina, paint and lights.
Kyrsten’s rivets look great! All the forged textures and hand hammered sheet metal look great together. As I make something this complex it’s some times hard to see ahead to make sure it’s all going to work together. Today was one of those days that I felt it did. Might feel different once I turn it over and start on the tail but today the head worked for me. Kyrsten started on the lighting by building the battery box for the cutest little 12v 7amp hr gel cell. All it’s going to do is run LED so it should last the entire week for Burning Man. Had a minor time set back today when I had to visit the ER to have some metal removed from my eye. It was quiet there and we were back by lunch. Still a bit painful, but eyes heal fast.
sheet metal wood and a hammer
Can’t wait to see Tansy’s eyes in place and Amy’s leather seat!
