Dominic Wilcox
Dominic Wilcox works between the worlds of art, design, craft and technology to create innovative, thought-provoking and surprising objects.
Dominic is also the Chief Inventor at Little Inventors!
Recent project reports
I was happy with the completed model and congratulations to James for a brilliant idea!
James's idea was ingenious! As soon as I saw it I wanted to make a model of it. How clever to think about the wings of the Angel of the North and that they could be used to generate energy from the wind.
I decided to build a model to show the wings moving, the real thing would be powered by wind but for the exhibition inside I decided to use a tiny motor to turn the wings. The first thing I needed to do was find a model of the Angel of the North that I could customise. I found a flat pack model that took a few hours to make gluing all the tiny parts together. I then cut off the wings so that I could attach them to a motor. I attached the motor to the back of the Angel and worked out how to attach that to the wings.
I found some rust coloured paint and some modelling grass for the ground.
I loved the idea of something that could stop your food floating around in space and wanted to make a prototype to show Brigitte's great idea off. I had a good chat with her on skype and got some excellent feedback on my plans for making of her idea.
After a bit of thinking about making it look like the food is floating, I bought a rotating display motor and hid it inside the box. This would great the turning movement.
I bought a food tray dome and used a laser cutter to cut a hole in the top and also create a yellow lid to match the drawing.
For the food I bought some fake buns and doughnuts but needed to work out how to make them appear to float. I bought some clear acrylic rods from a model shop and made a sort of tree structure to hold up the food. I cut holes into the food and glued them onto the clear sticks.
The whole thing needs to be transported and packed up safely so I made the food and support sticks removable by sticking a magnet on the bottom and a bit of metal onto the motor. In this way you can stand the structure up through a hole in the box to set it up.
I was very happy with the way it finished and with the food slowly rotating it gives a good effect of no gravity floating.
Brigitte's idea was excellent and I'm sure CSA will be impressed, it was a pleasure to help make her idea come to life.
