Lighting and Fabrication

At the University of Texas, my fraternity, Sigma Alpha Mu, has a fun tradition of designing and constructing large scale installations for a party. I managed a team of 7 other members who assisted with the entire process, and my groups' theme for the party was "Cartoons."

Sketched a design for building the structure out of wood and determined out how much wood was needed. This sketch was adjusted and approved by the board of the fraternity before purchasing the materials.

The base of the ship was designed to hold the ship above the crowd at the party. It was built using 2x4's with the purpose of supporting weight. It was then painted and waited for its other half.

Instead of struggling to make a circular ship with wood, I simplified the actual cartoon ship into an octagon. Build with 3 separate octagons paneled to create a UFO shape. Then it was painted.

We lifted the UFO onto the base and installed it at an angle leaning downwards.  A cloud feature was added beneath the ship with LEDs hidden to make it glow and feel like its floating. We brought the ship to life with LEDs and added some more details to reflect Rick's ship in the cartoon.

For the final product, we added a fog machine, bright headlights, and a painting of Rick and Morty sitting in the cockpit. During the party the lights all reacted the music using built in audio input, It was a highlight of the party and people even climbed up to stand on top and dance!