Step 12: Behind the scenes, making of...
So at this point you might be thinking, "wow that Laser Ball is cool but so is this instructable, I wonder what it took to put this together?" So just in case you were wondering what the Instructable process was like, here's a bunch of one-liners in regards to the build and Instructable process.
Check out my blog at www.leonelabs.com
Credits:
I also just want to thank the open-source, DIY, maker community. Without you guys this wouldn't have been possible.
And a special thanks to Instructables for hosting such an awesome website and service.
Shout-outs:
- I made my first Laser Ball about four months ago.
- This Instructable was made over a two-week duration.
- There were many separate photoshoots to get all the pictures.
- I shot about 7 hours of footage (for a 5min video!...)
- The video took about 2 days to edit.
- I used a standard point and shoot camera - Canon SD780 IS
- I made a cheap and dirty photostudio box from a roll of butcher paper and a piece of foam board.
- I used a 65W spotlight and a 300W bulb mounted on tripods for illumination.
- I used a sheet of white acrylic for the build surface.
- All the annotations in the images were made in Photoshop.
- I used a combination of free video editing sotware: Pinnacle Videospin (Download), Videopad (Download), and Windows Live Movie Maker. For example I did the all the cuts in Videospin, extracted stills with Videopad, and increased the video speed of the title with WLMM.
- The "Laser Ball" title uses a public font called Lynx. (Download)
- I used the Sparkfun Delux Toolkit. (Sparkfun)
Check out my blog at www.leonelabs.com
Credits:
I also just want to thank the open-source, DIY, maker community. Without you guys this wouldn't have been possible.
And a special thanks to Instructables for hosting such an awesome website and service.
Shout-outs:
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Dude... seriously awexome instructable. It wouldn't even matter that you made something that's pure genius, because this instructable just set the standard for instructables in my book. One day in the future I will be referencing your instructable to make my own. Aces bro.
If I were you, I would start selling these as kits. If you wanna make a little cash great, but if not... think about just getting these out there to the masses. I can see a lot of people wanting to build one of these, but not wanting to go buy everything from multiple sources and taking a chance that they are buying the right stuff. If you need money up front, perhaps a kickstarter would help to source everything in mass quantities. If you are making one, a nice CNC'd white delrin ball filled with red leds for backlighting would be PIMP. Maybe Ponoko.com could make em? Maybe a two part hemisphere design with mirror image pieces that snap together at the equator? I would add a latching power circuit that is magnet / reed or hall effect switch activated. The power up circuit could also double as a switch input, if you wanted to cycle through modes without using a remote control (think.. less cost). If you need any electronics help, let me know.
BTW: What did you use for final rendering of your video? I've downloaded the programs you've listed to experiment. Currently I use WLMM, but I'm looking for more power without the price tag or complications. I'm thinking Virtualdub would also work well for slicing and image grabs... maybe more on the image grabs side.
Here's a screenshot of a one minute segment in VideoSpin... some many cuts!