Minnesota-based Make: Projects community member David Howard contributed a great how-to for making your own school mascot from scratch, complete with a cooling fan in the head piece to keep your furry mascot from overheating. Maybe your maker club or hackerspace needs a mascot too? Now you’ll know how to make one. Thanks, David!
10 thoughts on “DIY school mascot, complete with cooling fan”
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DIY … school mascot … … this is a good idea for the school class of my kids. A school mascot, contributed a great how-to for making your own school mascot from scratch, complete with a cooling fan in the head piece to keep your furry mascot from overheating is exactly that what they need. I will transmit the suggestion directly.
Awesome tutorial. A built-in cooling fan would have been a huge improvement for me back in college, when I was the Towson Tiger for a year. Anyone building one of these suits should absolutely include that – otherwise they will learn, as I did, that a fur and foam suit can send you very rapidly toward heatstroke even in an air-conditioned basketball arena.
Here are some other tips I’d add:
1. You can put the view ports someplace besides the eyes if you want the mascot to be taller. The Tiger costume had white screens on the whisker pads instead of the eyes, which also provided some peripheral vision. However, I had a dead-center blind spot where the nose was. I worked around that by swaggering side-to-side whenever I walked, which people kind of expect a mascot to do anyway.
2. For more bulk, you can add football or lacrosse pads under the suit. The Tiger costume also had big foam paws to cover my shoes, but I don’t recommend that, as it limits your mobility.
3. If you’re a guy, wear a cup. Seriously. To the preschool demographic, you’re a giant stuffed animal. They’ll charge straight into you for a hug, slamming their foreheads you-know-where. A buddy of mine was the Baltimore Oriole the same year I was the Tiger, and he got a very painful injury that way. I learned from his experience and donned the armor.
4. You can add a tail to the suit, but be sure you have some wire in it as a stiffener so it doesn’t drag on the floor. Otherwise, you’ll always be tripping on it.
5. Have fun. A mascot suit is a license to make a complete ass of yourself in front of ten thousand people, with almost no accountability.
Wow, Alan! Thanks so much for sharing such valuable insider tips and tricks. If you get a chance, please add your tips to the comments section of the project in Make: Projects. I think they would be helpful to anyone wanting to do the build. Cheers!
Done, I think. I gather the original poster has to approve the addition before it appears by default, but I assume he will. I essentially just pasted my comment’s points in as “Step 13.”
Sweet–thanks Alan!