The possible themes of my two ideas are Pirates, Ducks, Halloween and Goats. These lights will be still unless I figure out a way to make them look like they are moving,
Idea 1: Yard Display Piece
My first idea is to make a display piece that can be put outside a home or building for decoration. It would involve attaching lights to a wire frame. Considerations for this would be the overall strength of the art against outdoor elements. My ideas for what it will look like are, A pirate flag, A pirate ship, or a duck.
Idea 2: Window/Wall Display
My idea here is to make a sign for indoors. It will work similar to the yard display using wire and string lights (possible LED) this will be made to be hung up indoors. The sign will be hopefully be made to plug into an outlet. potential themes are stated at the top of the page.
Inspiration
I’m probably choosing the Pirate theme. My potential flag designs are inspired by the show One Piece.
Questions
1: I’d like to have the sign look like its moving, I need some ideas on how to make this happen
2: Are there any other materials that I could use instead of wire?
3: Type of lights to use other than string lights?
I like the pirate theme! Lots of flags and symbols to choose from.
For animation, you could use the same trick “animated” neon signs use: just have a different set of lights for each “frame” of the animation, and turn each one on and off in order! The trouble, of course, is automating this – if you have experience with Arduino/some other controller board, this should hopefully be straightforward. Otherwise, you might be able to order something like a power strip that does that all for you (not sure if such a thing exists, but I wouldn’t be surprised).
I second Matt on his idea for moving the lights, moving parts with motors automatically become tricky.
Instead of wire, you could use a fiberglass board and stick the string lights onto it. I’ve done that personally, it should be on my first post. I used some lights that were in a tube, they weren’t typical string lights but I don’t know what they were called since I didn’t buy the materials myself.
Good luck with the motifs!
If you choose the outdoor version of the sign, you could stick the lights to a sheet of plywood. Since (I’m assuming) the sign will be used at night, you could paint it black so it blends in with the surroundings.
In terms of using something other than wire, while still making it look like its moving, you could do a stack of acrylic sheets with LED lights shining from the edge of the piece to illuminate the design that you could etch using the laser cutter. Doing this would allow your pattern to show up on one LED strip, and then you could program it to move onto the next LED strip which would turn on the pattern for the next acrylic, and make it look like its moving. You could do several layers doing this and make the piece look like it was moving when it lit up in the sequence you create. If you have more questions about this, let me know! I work in the makerspace and prototyping lab, so can help you with the laser cutter as well.
The pirate theme is cool! Having multiple segments of LEDs which you can activate separately is a good idea to create movement. Additionally, if you have some experience with Arduino, you could use addressable LED strips which would let you make animations and change the colors of the lights whenever you wanted. This could add another layer to the movement of the designs.
I don’t have any ideas on how to make the lights look like they are moving, but in terms of what other materials you could use are wood, like perhaps mocking up a the skeleton of the piece and laser cutting it out in the Makerspace.
There are multiple ways to achieve the look of movement. You can either capitalize on the autokinetic effect or look into key frames with animation, Id suggest looking into working with adobe animate you could try different animations cycles.
To give the illusion of movement, maybe use the addressable LEDs and control their brightness as the piece “switches positions”? So instead of the harsh cuts from one to another like in your examples, there could be a more gradual process. I think a pirate ship would be amazing, but just a pirate flag would also be really fun.
Yeah like others have said, having multiple segments of LEDs that you can turn on or off is fairly straightforward, having a bunch of frames of animation instead of just 2 or 3 would also help the animation be more fluid.
I agree with folks who suggested creating a sequence with several frames of animation. There are existing sequencers that can take care of turning off/on each set of lights, which is usually referred to as chasing. Here’s a standalone kit for LEDs https://vakits.com/led-sequencerchaser-kit-1753 and here’s another option for EL-wire, which could create a nice neon effect and is quite easy to sculpt into shapes. https://thatscoolwire.com/product-category/cool-kits/sequencer-kits/
If you go with the first idea, something three-dimensional would be awesome! A light-up pirate ship that could possibly have a sequence to appear like its riding on some waves and there’s wind in its sails? That would be dope.
I also agree with the comments of having some sort of animation for the second idea. Maybe a simple scene or action in One Piece, like Luffy appearing to stretch and punch someone? (I never watched it so I don’t quite know what I’m talking about.) You can look at One Piece gifs and see if you’re particularly inspired by anything.