My Little Home Craft Project

This is a little home craft project that I undertook a few years ago and successfully finished. Although it had fallen into disrepair in more recent times because of neglect, I just managed to restore it to working condition once again. Its construction first involved obtaining two good-quality photographic prints of Vincent Van Gogh's 1887 self-portrait. I obtained this image from a slide from the Art Institute of Chicago's store. Because the photographers I took the slide to were reluctant to enlarge and reproduce a slide inscribed with the Art Institute's name on it, I had to remount it in a plain white frame. I then had no trouble getting them to make me two high-quality prints of about 11 x 14 inches. I figured out that I needed at least two prints in order to assemble the necessary components for a mechanically-animated portrait.

I then figured out which portions of the image I would need to carefully cut out, which portions I would need to add a bit of painted embellishment to, and how they would overlay and interact with each other, and took care of that part of the project first.

Then came the most difficult part. I had to figure out how, mechanically and electronically, I could manage to make those cutout parts of the portrait precisely move in the necessary manner and on command. It involved getting a lot of little items from Ace Hardware and from the American Science and Surplus store. I also used the battery cases, speakers, switches, remote control, and a servo from a motorized toy car and a battery-operated Halloween toy. I realize that it's way more complicated than it would be if a real, bona-fide electrical designer or engineer would have made it, but that was because I didn't have the know-how to build my own switches and circuit boards, and had to rely on ready-made stuff from cannibalized devices originally designed for other purposes. In any case, it works, but the big downside of my amateur approach is having to use so many different kinds of batteries in the system.

But as you can see at the end of this video, the results aren't too bad. It's Vincent Van Gogh, the tortured artist with a tormented soul, expressing his anguish not only visually, but audibly.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Van Gogh
• self portrait

[7eem1]

put your fuckin project in your ass and don't forget to lock your ass after you put it

[baldevis]

@7eem1 You sound like some kind of fucking idiot who collects watches, or something.

[thelastair1]

make tutorial plz best thing ever