Giant Articulated Protest Hands (Laser Cut)

There are plenty of people in power making terrible decisions that jeopardize the lives of many. This is a simple way to give a big visual indication for how you feel! All you need is Cardboard and Tape (laser cutter can help make many really quickly too!)

Original Designs

These giant protest hands were originally designed by Kelli Anderson https://kellianderson.com/ with mechanics based on work by Yoojinkim.com. They published a nice simple single page instruction for how to make a puppet hand out of cardboard scraps that can quickly slide into 3 different poses:

• Raised Hand ✋
• Fist ✊
• Middle Finger 🖕

Laser Cut Re-Design

I was building some hands based off Anderson's work, but i had 2 years of cardboard stored up in my lab I was trying to get rid of, and I quickly realized this was going to go far too slow to make these all by hand.

The other challenge was that if I wanted to make really big hands, I needed to start with REALLY big sheets of continuous cardboard or else the original designs wouldn't work. Unfortunately I had just a couple big-ish pieces and mostly small scraps.

So i took the original design and broke it into pieces at the articulation points so that you could cut out the pieces rapidly with Laser Cutters, Vinyl Cutters, CNC's, whatever robots you have at hand. You can also now scale these designs pretty easily to match whatever the max size sheets of cardboard you have available are. The parts are also labeled by layer and hand section in order to make assembly rapid!

All files are available publicly on the github. Feel free to remix and redesign your own versions as well!

https://github.com/Digital-Naturalism-Laboratories/Giant-Articulated-Protest-Hands

Photo Credits / Protest for Human Rights in Panama

The photos of the design and assembly process were by A. Quitmeyer, and the photos of the hands shown in action were taken by Ana Sofía Camarga https://anasofiastudioart.portfoliobox.net/ and provided for use here in this instructable. Camarga took these while documenting the Trans-Rights protest against the supermarket "El Rey" in Panama led by the group Salva El Grillo https://www.instagram.com/salvaelgrillo/ . During the Pandemic here in Panama the population has unfortunately been subjected to a binary-gender based quarantine. Besides being an absurd violation of human rights, this gendered quarantine is disgustingly discriminatory and it's shameful of Panama to be the only country enacting such a terrible policy. For months Trans and Gender-Non-conforming have not been allowed out of their houses due to fear of harassment, violence, and hefty fines since days have been divided strictly into either "Man" or "Woman" days. Supermarkets like El Rey have been some of the biggest enforces of these unjust rules, and have been preventing people who simply want to purchase the basic necessities to live.

Hopefully after getting the finger, these people will revoke their terrible, discriminatory policies and never bring them back.

.

• Cardboard (stiff preferred)
• Duct Tape (Make sure it is good and sticky, like Gorilla Tape worked great)
• Design Files:
  

  https://github.com/Digital-Naturalism-Laboratories...

(Optional)

• Yarn (if you opt to sew the hands together through the provided holes)
• Glue (for finger tips, could use tape, but this is nicer)

Check out the design files shared in the github, gather the cardboard materials you have, and figure out your approach.

You can either feed the designs into a laser cutter to cut them out, OR if you don't have that, you could use a projector to project and trace the designs onto cardboard and then cut em out by hand (or make stencils!)

You can scale the designs to whatever size you need. Our laser cutter's maximum size was 50cmx60cm so all the design files are made to fit that as the maximum dimension, but you could go bigger or smaller!

Corrugation Note:

in Kelli's original designs, it says to cut with the cardboard corrugation going horizontally, this was so you could make the bends in the fingers from a single piece of cardboard. In this version of the design, we are making the joints using the tape itself, and really we want the rest of the hand to be rigid. So you should actually try to cut the cardboard with the corrugation oriented vertically.

Laser Cutting Cardboard Note:

Cardboard cuts great in a laser cutter, BUT if you are using a wide variety of scraps (that have different thicknesses, materials, structures) be super careful when cutting, because your power settings might work great

for one piece of cardboard, but cause a big fire for a different piece. Babysit your cuts! Many cuts at high-speeds / effectively lower powers works nice.

The hands are big, and if you are making a bunch it helps to spread out and get helpers. We hosted an open lab session and got very nice volunteers from around Gamboa (like Gabi here!) to help put these hands together.

The layers are indicated by the "A" "B" "C" or "D" on the parts you cut out. Connect all parts with the same letter together in one layer.Tape the fingers so they can bend properly! (leave a little slack in the back!)

Wood or regular white glue works terrific for bonding cardboard! Use something to hold them in place while it cures for like 15 mins.

Once all the layers are assembled, and the fingers are properly attached to each other, you can finish them up!

Sandwich the fingers with the front and back sides of the hands. You can use some yarn and sew these sides together pretty nicely and strongly, or if you are short on time or materials, you can just duct tape them together too!

Note: if you want to hide the rod you use to hold the hands, you can attach it inside the cardboard palm for a cleaner look. But if your pole is too large, this might hinder the movement of the fingers.

We donated all the hands we made to a badass local activism group for LGBTQA+ rights in Panama

Check them out and help support human rights in Panama!

https://www.instagram.com/salvaelgrillo/

Note you can paint hands and make em look extra great like they do.