Snowball Fight

This display consists of (2) snowmen and a series of snowballs and, when animated, creates the illusion of snowball fight.  We created wood templates that have plastic fencing attached to them.  This allowed for easy wrapping of the rope light, which was used.  The pictures below show all the details.

As seen here, 1x2 spruce has been screwed together, with plywood triangles at the four corners to stabilize the frame.  Plastic chain-link fence was stapled to the frame where ropelight was later attached using nylon ties.  We opted for this method to save the hassles of dealing with steel.  It also allows greater flexibility, because at any time, the rope light can easily be re-located on the fencing.

Testing the overall operation and making decisions on proper body proportions, etc.  We decided to use ropelight throughout the display and shown here, is the "face splat".

This is the display undergoing more testing.  If you take a close look, you can see the "snowballs" scattered all over the place as we were testing the proper placement for the best effect.

A lot of tie wraps where used to fix the rope light to the fencing.

Andrew is creating the hats on the snowman.  Notice there are 2 hats.  The top hat is normally "on" when the snowmen are lit, but when the snowman gets hit in the face, the top hat goes "off", while the "falling" hat goes "on".  This gives the illusion of the hat falling back on the snowman while the "splat" is lit up on the face.

Finally complete, the display was setup outside.  The entire display spans about 20' wide and the frames are tie-wrapped to fence posts driven into the ground.  It's not the most beautiful site in the day, but certainly comes alive when dusk arrives.  We thought about painting the wood to blend in, but figured that it will eventually dull a natural grey and, therefore, willl not require re-painting in the future.

This is the channel box that powers the display.  After all that hard work, it feels like the snowmen are having their graduation announcements made when I flick the power switch on for the first time. For more info on this box, check out the "Channel boxes" section.