Along Disneyland’s Main Street (yes, yet another reference to the recent Disney trip with @ChristineRose) are little window displays. Each references some film, whether recent or past. (Marketing!) All have at least some basic mechanical animation, with a few being much more elaborate. One recent display was a Toy Story bank heist.
There wasn’t much going on in there, but the design of the cardboard jail tickled me. With a young cat that loves playing in boxes and often gets in trouble, I thought this would be a fun design to duplicate when I returned home. I have a mountain of boxes from Blue Apron and Amazon that I’m often using as prototyping material in the laser cutter. Why not use an entire box?
I started with a fancy, yet old-western-looking font (Old Glory) and made the lettering with the vinyl cutter. After some basic measurements, I could start cutting the bars. The box doesn’t fit in my laser cutter, so I had to use a knife and straightedge like some kind of barbarian. How did people even survive back in the past?
Ultimately, it turned out pretty well. Were I to do it again, I might have put down a coat of paint or contact paper to mask out the original printing on the box.
Another design tweak I might make would be to reorient it sideways. Cornelius loves the flap pointed down so that he can, at a sprint, dive into the gap in the box or spring out and pounce on your feet (or on other cats). But overall, this was a fun, quick build.
