Wearable cardboard karts and props based on Mario Kart.
For Halloween 2018 we decided to do a group costume at work. Our theme was Mario Kart so I designed and built cardboard karts for each of us to wear as part of our costumes.
My first step was to look at picture of karts from Mario Kart 8 and I also looked at some commercially available kart costumes. I decided to try to make something that looked similar to the Mario Kart 8 style of kart but I needed to have a simple design if I were to have any hope of making 6 karts (4 for a group costume at work plus 1 for each of my 2 kids).
My tool of choice for designing patterns is Adobe Illustrator. Unfortunately, my initial design was WAY to large at 5 feet long. A co-worker slapped some sense into me and I went through 5 more iterations until I settled on the final design. All of the designs started at 1/12 scale so that I could easily make prototypes out of paper before using up my cardboard supply. For the emblems on the front of the karts, I used a Sillouette Cameo to cut my Illustrator designs (converted to SVG) out of adhesive vinyl.
I will be bringing the karts and related props to Maker Faire Rochester on November 23, 2019. Stop by to say "hi" and ask any questions you might have. I will bringing some karts including my initial MEGA KART build.
Download some PDFs of templates that were used for props seen in the Mario Kart race video as well as a template for a mini kart.