Magical Moosicorns

by YuKonstruct

2.4K175

Intro: Magical Moosicorns

These magical moosicorns were built for YuKonstruct's floats in the 2016 Pride and Canada Day parades. With the two parades less than a week apart, we wanted to build something that could be easily transformed from a symbol of love and rainbows to a patriotic emblem.

Rainbow unicorns one day and Canadian moose the next, these moosicorns fit the bill!

YuKonstruct is the first makerspace in Canada's north. Our mission is to provide access to shared space, quality tools, available expertise, and a collaborative environment to help makers build anything!

STEP 1: Materials & Design

The moosicorns were constructed from the following materials:

  • Insulation foam, generously donated by local hardware stores and construction companies
  • Construction adhesive (No More Nails)
  • Wood dowels
  • Acrylic paint
  • Poster board and sparkly wrapping paper (for the unicorn horn)
  • Plastic tablecloth material (for the mane and tail)
  • ΒΌ" plywood (for the eyes)
  • Red duct tape (for wrapping the antlers)
  • Thin wire and screws for holding things in place

The concept was to have two moosicorns on either side of our float. One would be on the back of the truck pulling the trailer, and the other would be on the front of one of our makerspace members' ambulance (like a giant hood ornament).

To save time on the design, we based the moosicorns on a 3D model of a My Little Pony mare. After determining the size we needed with a SketchUp model of the float and vehicles, the pony was sliced with 123D Make into pieces that could be cut out of foam. 123D Make also lets you place dowels in the model to hold things together and properly line up the pieces.

Both SketchUp and 123D Make are free programs that get a lot of use at our makerspace.

We made a few adjustments to the sliced design in SkethUp before transferring the file to Aspire, the software we use with YuKonstruct's CNC machine.

3D Warehouse My Little Pony model:https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model.html?id=381...

STEP 2: Tracing and Cutting Foam

While you can carve and cut some insulation foam with a CNC router, the foam that was donated for this project was fairly thick and very crumbly.

Instead of cutting it with the CNC, we put a permanent marker on the machine and had it draw the cut lines onto the foam sheets.

The pieces were then cut out with a jigsaw.

STEP 3: Assembly

The foam pieces were glued together with construction adhesive.

Dowels were used to line up the pieces and help hold it together.

Clamps and weights (heavy books) were used to keep the pieces together while the glue dried.

STEP 4: Painting

The moosicorns were given a coat of white paint (leftover wall paint).

While the donated foam was already white, some of it was discoloured or marked, so the paint really helped brighten it up.

STEP 5: Unicorn Horn

The unicorn horns were made by rolling a piece of poster board into a cone and taping it together. The cones were then covered with sparkly iridescent wrapping paper.

A dowel, taped to the inside of the cone and then inserted into the moosicorn's head, held each horn in place.

STEP 6: Mane and Tail

The unicorn manes and tails were made from plastic table cloth (the kind that comes on a roll).

The mane was assembled from pompoms in each of the rainbow colours, held together by a strip of duct tape. It was attached to the moosicorn head with wire.

The tail was made from long strips, cut from each of the colours, and was also wired in place.

STEP 7: Antlers

The moose antlers were cut from the foam sheets with a jigsaw.

The antlers were then wrapped in red duct tape, as it was faster than painting (and letting the paint dry).

Dowels and screws were used to hold the antlers in place on the moosicorn heads.

STEP 8: Finishing Touches

We cut circles of thin plywood and painted them with craft paints for the moosicorns' eyes. The eyes were screwed in place and then the screw head was painted over.

The derpy quality of the big googly eyes really brought the characters to life!

We also cut hearts out of plywood and painted them pink, before fastening them to the unicorns' chests.

STEP 9: Mounting on the Vehicles

The finished moosicorns were secured to the parade vehicles with ratchet straps.

The straps were wrapped around the hood of the ambulance, and to the anchor points on the truck bed.

5 Comments

NamchapZ 7 years ago

Really this thing achieved the 1st winner of a space contest?

Now I confirm that Instructables has no logic, rather father from reality the rules for judging contests are just focused on reward likes of anonymous person that can be friends making favors and spamming every where the link for the contest, doesn't matter the effort and requirements fitted for the contest ... it's just about how good looking it is, how much cute it is and the amount of likes, ... just worse than a Instagram contest of photo liking.

I tried to enter this contest with a electronic technology for safety self developed with my effort so far more creative and complex and I got out of context cause It was no about the topic ....

Conclusion for a Space Contest electronic devices and technology is out of contest but an unicorn decoy fit well!!!

I can't even understand why this page still doing contest for judging with this criteria.

I am not judging you Magical Moosicorns ... but there is no more place for this comment. I hope you can understand how frustrating is checking how mostly of contest are won by the same criteria ... RANDOM LIKES with no control of the criteria the likes have been done.

YuKonstruct 7 years ago

This instructable didn't win any contests and it wouldn't have met the criteria for the Space Contest (the winners of that contest are some really impressive projects, you should check them out!).

The reason this instructable has a "winner" badge is because our makerspace won the 2016 Makerspace Contest and this project was randomly selected from our 262 entries. Unlikely most contests which are based on the merits of individual instructables, the prizes for the Makerspace Contest were awarded to the teams who published the most instructables (and most featured instructables) between June 1 and August 31. The merits of individual projects were not part of any judging criteria (neither were the number of likes).

If you have questions about contest judging you should contact instructables staff. The judges are usually site users and you yourself could potentially be a contest judge in the future.