The weekend of April 1st, Mike and Danielle drove down to Kissimmee so that we could install our kiosk at Give Kids the World. It went very smoothly (though took longer than expected, as expected).
Concept:
Reality:
There aren’t many pictures of the process, because we were all working. Mike did set up his camera to film timelaps, so there could be video updates coming.
The most difficult part was getting the balloon onto the basket:
We had the help of some great guys from Give Kids’ facility services.
Mike admirably squeezed himself into very small spaces:
As you can see, at this point we had no Mayor Clayton, Pip, or screen covers. Those were next:
We knew our kiosk was a hit when kids didn’t even wait for us to finish building it before coming to play:
After a long day of building and tweaking code (not pictured), we called it a night…and headed to the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World for a few hours.
The next day, Caroline set up a nice “ribbon cutting” ceremony for us. As a wonderful surprise, she told us she arranged for us all to have bricks on the Avenue of the Angels.
Each one is personally signed by Henri Landwirth.
So there you have it! A very successful trip.
PS:
Do these look familiar? If not, scroll down further to the Kiosk Designs post!
As you can probably guess from the fact that our kiosk hasn’t been installed yet, we didn’t make our January installation date. However, this is because we really wanted to do the project right. We’re almost there – it will be installed for sure sometime in the next month and a half.
In the meantime, check out where we are today, and some pictures of the process of building.
Today:
And some pictures of the way there:
We made eight fiberglass panels to create the balloon
First we would lay down a sheet of fiberglass cloth.
Then we would pour on resin and use the rollers to smooth out any air bubbles.
Even though the resin looks blue, it dried clear. At one point we thought we might put lights inside the balloon, so we didn’t want it to be a solid color.
We worked on other things at the same time as getting about a panel done a day, for example painting and resining the laundry hampers we got to make the balloon basket:
Also, a friend of Andy’s built our steel frame:
The top ring and the four poles are all separate pieces and can come apart.
We also had to carve the clouds for the bottom of the balloon.
First Danielle glued the Styrofoam to be three pieces thick.
Then Danielle, Mike, and Mike’s brother Joe carved out the clouds.
Also carving was Andy, making Pip and Mayor Clayton out of clay:
We then made a master mold out off the clay sculptures, then cast the actual Pip and Clayton for the kiosk out of more durable materials.
Here is Mike and Joe’s mom, who also made the awesome fabric envelope for the balloon that you saw on the images above, holding up the master mold for pip:
You can see the plywood panels we put behind the basket to help help protect the equipment inside and to keep people from seeing inside the basket space.
Here’s Danielle about a week later holding the final Pip, with the baskets on the frame and the poles decorated as ropes:
Finally I get to the most difficult part, putting the balloon together and hanging it. We first taped the balloon panels together into halves, then replaced the tape with strips of fiberglass and resin.
As you can see, the balloon is about as tall as me and Mike – I believe it is about 5’5″.
Then we had to hold the balloon half up and tape it in place at the right angle.
Mike made a very good Atlas, holding our balloon up while we evaluated the look.
Next Andy put in wooden blocks to connect the balloon and the metal ring, then coated the whole thing in a mixture of fiberglass and plastic.
For a while, our balloon had legs!
But finally we got both halves up, and as you can see, it looked great:
This is about as far as we were by the end of winter break, with the balloon hung above it:
After that, Rachel, Ford, and I (Amy) had to leave Pittsburgh for projects and co-ops. We are incredibly grateful to Mike and Danielle for pushing on without us, and for Andy who continues to do an amazing job on the kiosk. Which takes us back to the pictures at the start.
After Pip’s adventure flying in The Big Surprise, he decided to make a bigger hot air balloon so that everyone in the Village could experience the thrill of going up in the air. Today Mayor Clayton and Pip are going to go on the inaugural flight, and guests are signing up at the kiosk to join them for an afternoon of adventure!
We decided to give the characters aviation themes in our balloon.
Here’s our first concept of Aviator Mayor Clayton:
We sent it to Give Kids the World, and their communications people gave us this image to work with:
Our final design will likely be between the two, but positioned more like this sketch:
We also took Pip, from the big surprise:
and we remodeled him to make him more fabrication friendly:
And in the kiosk, he will also follow the ’40s aviator look:
We hope you enjoyed this update into our design process!
As we prepare for our half semester presentation tomorrow, we wanted to share our updated designs with anyone reading this blog.
We’ve gone through several iterations on our hot air balloon design. Gone is the acrylic half-orb, now the balloon will be a mesh cage with cushioning and cloth covering. We’ve also added the character of Pip into our scene instead of just Mayor Clayton.
Our first design was:
General feedback was that it was too static and boring, and we should make it more exciting. We then updated the design to:
This was more dynamic and exciting, but didn’t push it far enough. In our next design we made the arc of the balloon even more extreme, going further out into the room. We also added some asymmetry into the design in the balloons at the bottom of the screen, which also will house the computers and serve as blocks to keep children from running behind the kiosk:
The arc is more extreme, and it’s more dynamic and fun. Here is how it will look in the room: The view from the front desk
The view looking across the room towards the resort
We made a number of concept images of what the kiosk could look like for our client. They decided they liked the hot air balloon concept, but we thought we’d share the others that didn’t quite make the cut. All artwork by Te “Ford” Hu.
(Single large hot air balloon)
(A hot air balloon made of multiple balloons)
The other initial concepts:
(Clouds in the sky. This was one of our original concepts, then we added the balloon after they liked that concept best.)
(The Castle of Miracles, a building at the resort)
(Mushrooms, playing off the giant mushroom of the Castle of Miracles and others found at the resort)
(Mayor Clayton holding the screen)
(The “default kiosk” – large and boring)
During the discussion of the above concepts, our contacts at Give Kids told us the building is circus themed. We made three new concepts for them to look at:
This semester we are creating a themed kiosk for the Give Kids the World Resort. Give Kids hosts several events at the resort that require reservations, such as Kids Night Out, where kids get a night out and parents get a night off, and Tuck Ins, where Mayor Clayton or Ms. Merry will come to the guest’s villa and tuck in their children. The kiosk will be located in the House of Hearts, the welcome center of the resort, near the check-in desk.
Over the summer, a project team developed a management tool in the Flex language to automate the reservation system. Guests can come up to the front desk or call in to make a reservation with a member of the staff.
This semester, we are creating a complementary system in Flash, using the back end developed by the summer team, where guests can make their own reservations. We will also develop an interactive map and games that can be played while guests wait for shuttles or check-ins.
Hi, welcome to Kissimmee Interactive’s blog. Stay tuned for photos, videos and musings as we build Give Kids the World the best event reservation system ever!
