The Empire Stamps Back

Back in November, I participated as an exhibitor at the Rochester Mini Maker Faire.  This was my second year (review from 2014). This year my project was called "The Empire Stamps Back."  I had various hand carved rubber stamps that I made, and instructions on how to doodle Star Wars characters from finger and thumb prints.  Participants could use these to create a free postcard to take home. The inspiration came from the book, "Star Wars Thumb Doodles" by Klutz.  With the upcoming release of "The Force Awakens" I thought this would be the perfect year to let kids play around with the Star Wars universe.

Here are some pictures you can click through of prints I made leading up to the event, then some from the Faire itself...


The project was a big hit with the kids especially, and several adults.  The kids were willing to jump right in and take a risk.  Many of the adults seemed intimidated to make a postcard, or get inky.  It was interesting watch this psychology all day.  The children would run up to the table, and start right in, while the adults would take two steps back into a supervisory pattern to watch their offspring make something.

I didn't get a chance to circulate much around the Faire, but several adults circled back to tell me that my table was their kids favorite.

The project really helped me think about how each of these characters are made up of different shapes.  I know illustrators really start with shapes as the structure of a character, and this project helped me reverse engineer what some of the shapes were for humans and aliens alike.