Maker Faire 2025

Back to The Study

Maker Faire 2025

Fog town went to make faire last year, but I was too busy to go

I have such fond memories of running around maker faire as a loose teenager in 2016 - 19, and even exhibiting my own work for the last couple years. I knew it had gotten a lot smaller since they re-opened after the pandemic (I also remember discussions even before the shutdown of the 2020 faire being severely scaled back, sponsorship cuts) but it still felt like a wonderland to me. Being surrounded by people who love making stuff and the projects they make. From code to art to cardboard. It made kid me so excited to keep delving into all my different hobbies. It was also one of the first places that this weird little nerd felt comfortable talking to strangers, enthusiastically even, knowing we all had something in common and an easy conversation starter - what is your project?

the maker movement as a whole and the talks given by Adam savage seen both in person at the faire and on YouTube long before my first time going are what made me who I am today

So all in all, it was very exiting to be back, and exhibiting with a project I love so much!

Fog town is a sherlock adaptation which combines small-scale virtual production with live action puppetry! All our sets are digitally sculpted in blender, brought into unreal for lighting and animations, and displayed on a monitor to use as a backdrop for the 8-inch rod puppets. It’s 95% in camera, no green screen or 3D animation except for those specific 5% SFX shots that were beyond the limits of the setup.

That’s the pitch!

I recommended the team go last year, knowing that the combination of art and technology in professional but still very approachable and user-friendly form would be right up the alley of maker faire attendees. Most of the marketing focus had been on the series as a piece of media- the characters and stories took the forefront of discussion, but everyone wanted to know how the puppets worked! I suggested they focus on the techniques used as a talking point and a demonstration, and interest in the show itself would come from the footage shown and naturally progress from interest in the tech.

And I was right! They got kinda overwhelmed even, with only 2.5 people to run the booth they were swarmed. This year we had 5, and were properly set to have enough people to take breaks and enjoy the faire and not get overwhelmed.

Day 1 - travel day

Time to meet the team!

Sean - show runner, writer, the brains behind it all, led the team last year Kayla - film background, regularly seen on-set lighting setup and puppeteer, went last year Jovah - film background, spent some time on set but we hadn’t met before, extra hand and brought the nice camera Presley - spent one day on set doing one single shots and its one of the best, just as crazy about puppets as I am Me ! That’s me !

10 hours in the car not much else to say! We left Portland at 1pm and arrived at the place we were staying at 11:30

Day 2 - school day

September 26th. Friday at maker faire is a school field trip day, there’s fewer events going on and not every booth is set up yet.

We got there around 9 with an hour to setup. Luckily, we don’t have anything too large. Unluckily, only 2 of our 5 person team knew the tech setup, and in a hurry to leave the day before our cords were less than organized. so there was some holdback as we waited for instructions to get our monitors in place. But we had everything mostly set up by the gates opening at 10, and fully set up by the time people started wandering by our table 20 minutes later

(Image of the sketch here) (Any images I have of the setup, as well as some nice ones from Jovah)

Talked to the booth across from us about taking fog town to schools

We were also right across the way from the chomp saw booth, which is a special table-saw like device that uses a hole punch to efficiently cut cardboard. It’s completely safe and really efficient - I got to use one on the bug project. Unfortunately I can’t afford the 250 dollar asking price at the moment ,but for how much I work with cardboard it’s definitely on my list if I ever run my own space with that kind of a budget

We were also near the chicken booth run by a kids maker space, we checked out each other’s stuff often and I even made my own fog town pins using our promo cards

This day ended early - 3pm - so we went out to get pizza afterward and played card games back at the house

Day 3 - long day

This is the first proper day of the faire and the busiest! Now that we had experience with the setup, we were able to plan a little bit when people would be leaving to enjoy the rest of the faire

Presley was down for the count for the second half though

This was the day of the maker mixer! The faire opened at ten once again, ended at 5. The mixer started at 6 and I don’t remember when we left but maybe 9?

We packed up the booth to take things out to the car first. Who did we talk to? The guy with the cool spinning staff said he recognized me from comic cons in the Portland area and said he followed me on instagram. Which was a little wild because I haven’t posted there in years. That was cool though.

The guy who was on the trains The woman who ran the booth that I got a pin from Dalek guys - where I learned that I had seen their previous trash Dalek at previous years Guy with the spider bot They had drink tokens and free nachos and mediocre music Bug car ride!!!!!!!! Let’s goooo!!!!!

Day 4 - final day

Once again 10-5, with nothing planned for afterward Sean spent a good chunk of the day preparing a pitch for a school virtual production puppeteering setups Less busy, we even had a few minutes of down time with no one to talk to at our booth Presley and I got to properly wander around, and talked to a few people we had met the night before Waved to the Dalek guy which just felt really nice to feel like we were making friends, real friends Talked to the glow plushies woman, and the mom of a kid with a cool pipe cleaner art project (Photo of both) Went back to the spoon house. As soon as I properly met the woman working on it, she said she recognized me and I realized I recognized her too! In the pervious years, she ran the fly your freak flag high booth, a project encouraging people to make a literal freak flag and display all their freaks proudly. Understandably, I spent AGES at this booth in 2018 AND 2019, making two flags, and chatting with the owner. https://makerfaire.com/maker/entry/69524/ https://www.youtube.com/@fyffh She asked if I was the one with the cardboard lizard, I said yes! She said “you grew up and shit!” I have rarely felt more seen :) Spoon house! https://spoontheoryart.crevado.com/ This was also the day to take lots of cool pictures of everything we saw, I just want to send everything! While we walked by the stage on our way out of the dark room, we heard the singer shouting “who here identifies as trans or queer!” And of course we whooped loudly. That is something I was a little concerned / curious about maker faire this year, how queer friendly would it be? Generally, of course, these are progressive people, and I had seen plenty of your standard quirky weirdos in the past. but there’s still a tech bro ick hard to avoid with some groups. I am happy to announce that it was queer friendly as hell. I spotted plenty of alt youth and furries (where the furries are comfortable, the gays are comfortable, it’s a very strong litmus test) and any creative community project inevitably ended up covered in pride flags. (Photo of the chalk wall with the huge trans flag) I also got some right to repair stickers with a trans pride skull on them, reminding me of Natalie’s right to repair trans body horror clown piece from last year’s stage fright Im very glad that now that im old enough for it to matter to me, maker faire remind a place welcoming to not just surface level weirdos, but the queers and the trans and the furries. I was a little anxious this year with my patch and pin choices, but next year I plan to be even more out and open At the end of the day we packed up, said goodbye to our neighbors, and got Mexican food before crashing at the house and playing a fw more rounds of card games I absolutely killed it 5 for five at banangrams.

Day 5 - home again home again

A much more manageable 10 hour car ride this time. We left at 9 and made it home by 7:30 We got pretty far into Out for Blood - the podcast oral history of the carrie music flop, throughout the weekend. Ending up about 7 1/2 hours in and halfway through episode 8. I got Sean and Jonah hooked which makes me very happy