FLOAT 1 OF 3: I initiated this project. This was my first of three floats, in four parades. I won 3 Grand Prizes and a Crowd's Favorite. The Theme of this first parade was "It's a Classic". I used the classic "Precious Moments" motif. I designed, fabricated and produced each float with the help of many volunteers and a genius engineer from the hospital's plant engineering. I sculpted the shepherd, the lamb he's bandaging, and the rock work and hill out of massive blocks of Styrofoam. I covered it with REAL living grass and silk flowers. The yellow butterflies are mechanical. The lamb on the back was mechanical as well. I enlisted ladies from the medical center to sew the sheep together and stuff them. The trees I made out of Yucca trunks and faux branches. The float played the music of a children's choir singing "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands". It was powered via a golf cart. The judges were all smiling broadly as they surrounded the float to give it a grade. No other float came anywhere close to the depth of thought, energy, charm, and quality of this one. We markedly raised the bar for subsequent competitions of The Kettering Holiday at Home Parade. Yes, we did receive permission from Precious Moments to use their characters.
This was a televised yearly parade
I sculpted this lamb out of EPS foam and covered it with fake sheep skin.
No Coyotes and No Wolves allowed signs. I fabricated the signs, but the artwork was from somebody else.
FLOAT 3: The theme was "Remembering Life's Fabulous Firsts".
The scale model I made
Fabulous firsts seen here: The first kiss. That teddy bear waves goodbye as the float passes. I shaped the thermoforming plastic flowers in my oven. The grass is fake, the split-rail fencing is real, the tree is a metal welded frame covered in two-part urethane foam spray. The letters are cut out of foam by the hospital's sign department. I designed and produced these and worked in partnership with the hospital's genius engineer form plant engineering.
The first swing in the left background.
The dog wags his tail and moves his ears and head up and down. The cat in the dog food bag moves his head and tail. The float driver is inside the dog house running the golf cart.
The fabulous first pictured here is: The first dog.
The first connection with a bird. The bird flaps his wings and moves it's head and sings a melody. I had the humans made by a professional that makes these for a living.
The first bike. The child peddles the bike. I designed and produced this float. The hospital engineer created the infrastructure and mechanisms.
Encountering a turtle for the first time. The Turtle's head retreats when the boy advances.
Note the boy in the clubhouse above is disgusted at his friend for betraying the club by kissing a girl.
Float two: The parade theme was "Step Safely Into The Sunshine". I chose a camping motif that showed several scenarios that were potentials for disaster - anything but stepping safely.
This is a picnic gone terribly wrong! Giant ants bade from Styrofoam
The ants are carrying the picnic food away.
This is a boy going fishing, but as he pulls the rod back to cast the line, the hook gets caught in a beehive with swarming (orbiting) bees that's directly above his father who is in the hammock with a skunk beneath the hammock and a beaver felling a tree and actually rotating around that tree that the hammock is attached to. A buzzsaw sound fx is heard.
You can see the bees in motion.
