Author Spotlight: Hiyadudez

Matthew, also known as Hiyadudez, has been a part of the Instructables community for a long time! He started back in 2007 making all kinds of K'Nex creations ranging from guns to toilet paper holders, but he's recently moved on to other things. As of right now he's mostly creating pranks! I recently got to ask him a few questions about his K'Nex career and who he tests his pranks on. :D

How did you first find instructables and what inspired you to post your first project?

I found Instructables around 5 years ago, when I was searching online for some things to build out of K'Nex, I'd looked at a couple of ball machine Instructables and instantly loved the thought of making them! So I began browsing the site more and more and after a while I realised just how many awesome Instructables were on here; there were thousands of them! Around a week later I made an account and posted up my first Instructable. My first Instructable was not so good though, as I was just getting a feel for how publishing worked and was just testing it out, though when I realised how easy it was I began posting better quality Instructables over time.

You started out only doing K'Nex projects but have really changed it up over the past couple of years. Any chance of you going back to K'Nex?

Well sadly, around a year ago, I began slowly began losing motivation to build things out of K'Nex. Also, high school was taking up a lot of my time, and the little spare time I had was spent usually watching TV or going on the computer. Over time, I began building with K'Nex less and less, and finally decided it was time to sell it all. I have thought multiple times since then about whether I should maybe try and buy some more and try it out again, but at the moment I don't see much chance in me getting back into it.

If you could give one piece of advice to all of the other authors on Instructables, what would it be?

To try and never lose motivation. Don't begin making something for an Instructable and think to yourself, 'Oh, this will never be popular' or 'This isn't good enough', because you never know what people will think. It may not be very popular, but over time you will gain views, ratings, and subscribers. I mean, heck, we all started somewhere.

Which of your K'Nex projects are you the proudest of?

This is a tough one! A lot of my K'Nex Instructables were small, simple, yet practical items, whereas only 1 or 2 bigger projects which months of time were spent. However I would have to say my proudest K'Nex project was my collaboration project with Shadowman39, which was an Automatic Card Shuffler. We spent a couple of months building small parts, recording and taking pictures of it, before sending them to the other person, then they improve on your design, and vice versa. The results were pretty good and I was pretty proud of what we had both accomplished.

And of all the projects you've posted, what is your favorite?

Like I said in the previous question, I have many simple projects which are not fantastically huge and amazing. However, I'd have to tie it between my K'Nex Binder and my K'Nex Desk Tidy. While these were very basic models, I loved them because of the sheer simplicity of them. (And also because the binder won me my first very contest prize in the Back To School contest!)

Any big projects in the works right now?

Actually, yes! I have recently been converting my messy old garage into an awesome custom workshop. I am taking pictures as often as possible during construction and planning. It will be a workshop which when finished, will hopefully also bring a healthy flow of Instructables with it. Ranging from basic wooden machines and contraptions to much more complicated things like electronic robot and other crazy contraptions. (Well, complicated for me anyway!)

Who do you test your many prank instructables on? Any good stories?

Well its usually my dad. My mum doesn't really take jokes/pranks very well, as I found out from my Gravy Tea Bags prank. But I sometimes play them on my friends or my brother, just to get a good kick out of watching them get angry. Although one time I did play the cement bag prank on my brother (Search it on Youtube), to which he kindly responded with quite a few curses and profanities XD