Kids/Youth Designs

Hot Air

Matt Routley from Bethel Sarnia in Sarnia, Ontario brings us this stage design in the clouds.

This design was for their VBS, themed Sky.

They started by making clouds out of white Coroplast. They simply traced them out and cut them. They made wooden stands from 2x4s that they attached the clouds to to keep them upright.

They made the back cloud from six 4×8 sheets – 3 wide and 2 high.

They crafted the airplane from chicken wire and paper mâché.

They used normal fabric to create the hot air balloon. Matt found a template for a tissue paper hot air balloon here and use the same concept. To hang the hot air balloon he left a hole in the top and hung it up with a clothes hanger. He held the bottom open with a sewing hoop. To puff the fabric out they attached a fan to one of the openings and turned it on.

They fed the power cable from their stage, but would have preferred to feed it from the ceiling.

The lighting was done with Microh LED Par64’s aimed at the clouds.

Finally, they masked out the hot air balloon in ProPresenter so the projection wouldn’t hit the balloon.

I'll Be Box Light the World

4 responses to “Hot Air”

  1. Charlie says:

    Fun set up. Could you tell me a little bit more about your triple screen set up and projectors?

    • Matt says:

      Thanks. The screens are driven by a Mac Pro running ProPresenter and using a Matrox TripleHead2Go. We are using NEC projectors. Hope that helps!

  2. Linda Henke says:

    Can you tell us more about the fan, and how you mounted it?

  3. Matt says:

    The whole thing is mounted with wire down the middle. I have a metal clothes hanger at the top. I bent it into shape a little so you couldn’t see it. The wire attaches to the clothes hanger and goes straight down the middle to the fan. On the fan I just mounted the wire to the grill. I made a three way trapeze so it wouldn’t tip. The fan is also wired to the sewing hoop. The type of fan was important because it needed enough power to blow out the fabric. I just bought a 12″ fan from Home Depot. I could have used one more powerful tho. Another thought – it would have been better if I had fed the power cable up through the middle of the balloon – this would allow you to feed the fan power from the top. The it could hang anywhere! Let me know how your project goes. And if you need any more help. Send some pictures too.

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