Pac-Man lights

I got the ides for this after stumbling upon an image of Pac-man hanging from street lights. I knew that they would make a pretty sweet birthday present for a friend of mine and being poor crafted gifts are always best.

I got myself a few sheets of .08 tick plastic and had original planed to use a heat gun to curve strips of the plastic to make the tops of the ghosts and pac-man himself. But it was pointed out to be that would be adding way to much work for myself and to just use a large plastic bottle. After I faceplamed myself I got to work. 1 inch thick strips were cut from the bottle to make pac-man and the tops of the ghosts.

I used the top of the bottle to measure out the curve of pac-man and the ghosts on the plastic sheets. They were going to be fully encased so two side needed to be made for each model. I let myself be a bit mess on the cut of these as I knew I was going to trim down the edges once each one was fully built.

Hot glue was used to attack the sides to the base. The only problem I had with this was that the glue had a tendency to melt the bottle so I had to play a tricky game of letting the glue gun cool down enough as to not melt the bottle but still be glue-able. Once the tops where in-place I measured out and mouth pieces and sides for the ghosts from what was left of the plastic sheet.

My biggest problem with the build was the lights. I was able to find really cheep Christmas tree lights in town (pic below). A set of 40. Now I only want the string to be 15 lights long so I went about a bit of rewiring, cutting away the excess of lights and having a string of only 15. Now sadly me knowing little on the subject of electronics led to me blowing out every light on this newly rewired string and there was to much current going through for the poor lights to handle. But we live and learn.

Luckily I was able to find a second cheep set of Christmas tree lights in town. A set of 20 this time. The only problem with these was that they had little stars on each of the lights that I had to carve off. This took a while to do and four lights where damaged in the process but by the end of it they worked and I was happy.

Once the side where glued in place I made cuts in the curved tops and set up the string of lights in place. I wanted to make sure that there was no chance of them turning over so I placed the holes for the light high enough to prevent this. Once I was happy with their placement the cuts and holes where glued closed.

The last of the build was to glue in place the other face of all the ghosts and pac-man. This was a bit tricky but only when it came to gluing the curved tops to the body. Once each model was finished and set I went about dremeling away any excess plastic on the edges before painting could start.

I just normal acrylic paint for the bodies, only a two coats as I wanted the light to shine through and the spines where done in black to maximise the light coming out the faces. Once the faces were dried the eyes were added and I was finished.

And here we have them finished with the lights turned on. Granted it's not that dark so the full glowing effect can't been seen but I am happy with now this project turned out and right on schedule as well, which is always good.