Over the 3 weeks of us designing props for the middle school play “Once Upon a Hutong” in stagecraft,  I’ve been working on the controller (See image below).

To create the design, Gene and I first found inspiration online for controllers that we thought would look good on set (figure 1), and Mr. Walton came up with the idea to put the actor through the controller so that they could use both hands to move the joystick and press buttons. With these in mind, I drew this model (figure 2). For the square inside the box, I based it off of myself, since it would have been better for it to be too big than too small. As for “feedback”, Ms. Northcott gave us restrictions that we didn’t know of at the start, so the color scheme and the shape of the controller needed to change. We ended with the new design (figure 3).

The major problem in the creation process was still the design since we had already started working on the original design like the antenna had already been finished by Maggie and James, so that set even more restrictions to the design. Another problem, although smaller, was that the laser cutter that we were using to cut the cardboard was malfunctioning, and kept burning the cardboard. We were still able to use it, but if you open up our controller, the insides would be black and crispy.

I didn’t learn a lot of major breakthrough ideas, just some things to use or look out for. For example, makercase.com is a great website, the only way to change the color of straps is to dye them (we didn’t) and to always check with the director on details so that precious time isn’t wasted on designs that won’t be used. Also, styrofoam balls don’t go well with spray paint.

The controller can do most of the basic needs that a model controller needs to be able to do, and we purposely didn’t glue down the joystick so that there’s at least a little mobility to show direction. The strap (as said above) wasn’t really the correct color, so we just hope that no one in the audience will notice a strap of blue across the golden robe.