The Rubik's Cube isn't just a puzzle. Its six colors and its instantly recognizable shape have turned it into an icon that shows up in paintings, films, clothes and all kinds of objects. Today I'm showing you two handmade projects I love: an animated video and a pair of headphones. And I'll tell you how you could make your own.
A stop motion with Rubik's Cubes
This video was made in 2014 by students at ICEL University, on its La Villa campus (Mexico City). The stars are Rubik's Cubes that come to life thanks to the stop motion technique:
Stop motion means taking lots of photos in a row, moving the objects a little between one photo and the next. When you play them one after another very quickly, they seem to move on their own. It's the same technique used in films like Wallace and Gromit or The Nightmare Before Christmas. At about 12 photos per second the movement already looks smooth, so a one-minute video needs about 700 photos.
How to make your own stop motion
- Keep the phone still with a tripod or by resting it on something steady: if the camera moves between photos, the video will shake.
- Use a stop motion app: there are several free ones that show the previous photo as a transparent overlay, so you can see how much you've moved the cube.
- Move a little at a time: a full face turn can be spread over 3 or 4 photos.
- Watch the light: artificial light is better than light from a window, which changes while you work.
A simple idea to start with: a cube that solves itself. Start with a solved cube, scramble it taking a photo after each turn and then play the photos backwards. The cube will seem to put itself in order, even if you don't know how to solve it. And if you want to learn to do it for real, here's our Rubik's Cube solution.
Rubik's Cube headphones
In 2015, Mario from the YouTube channel Watch Me DIY It wrote to me to show me some headphones he had made himself: each earpiece is a wooden cube with the colors of the Rubik's Cube, and they work over Bluetooth. In this video he explains the whole process:
I'm not that handy at DIY, but if you're up for it, the video shows the build from start to finish. His channel has many more homemade projects.
More ideas with cubes
- Mosaics: with several cubes you can form an image, turning each one until its front face has the right colors. I tell you all about it in the world's largest Rubik's Cube mosaics.
- Patterns: without taking anything apart, you can draw a checkerboard, crosses or a cube in a cube on the cube itself. You'll find the moves in our Rubik's Cube patterns.
Have you made any crafts with Rubik's Cubes? I'd love to see them.