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Here at Tinkering School headquarters, we’re in the process of creating illustrations for the long awaited “Fifty Dangerous Things” book. The process involves figuring out what we need to show in the illustration that accompanies each topic, and then hunting through Flickr and the rest of the web to find inspiration for the actual drawing. Julie found this photo while researching carboard-tube sword fighting:
(click through, it’s worth it)
There are five really great things that can be seen in this picture. I’m not talking about the beautiful cars, or the natty clothes – I’m talking about five great creative play things.
Find yours, and read on to see mine.
1. Their game is unfolding on a couple of piles of construction materials. Piles of lumber don’t get left out on the street for kids to play on these days.
2. The piles of lumber weren’t exciting enough so they pulled out a board and moved their game up a few feet off the ground.
3. These kids know something about sword fighting. The kid on the far left has his left hand up for balance, and sword tip down, ready to sweep the attack thrust aside – and he is watching his attackers eyes, not his sword.
4. Every sword is different. The kid on the far right has a rapier-style blade, the center kid has a nearly rectangular blade, the left-most kid has a broom-stick, and the kid on the ground appears to have either a very short sword or a long dagger.
5. The cardboard hand guards are genius. Simple and effective, without any adhesive or glue.
In my mind, the parents are standing back behind the photographer, cheering the kids on.
3 Comments so far
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i was totally stoked about the sword design too, esp the hand-guards…i caught a couple of minutes of the printer deconstruction last night…if you tinker in s’pore or here in j^pan, let us know.
“good form, good form”
Comment by davej 11.02.09 @ 11:52 pmYour post get me so fired up, I love the whole concept of letting crazy, random play unlock our creativity and sense of fun. I just ordered potassium nitrate for my 12 year old. Yes, he could blow something up with it, but he wants to learn about how to make things smoke. Duh, who doesn’t????????
Comment by Kirsten 11.05.09 @ 10:13 amLeave a comment
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