About 15 years ago, I decided to produce a CrankyFest here in San Francisco. I felt then that this not-well-known storytelling device needed more spotlight. As part of the fun, I put together a DIY Shoebox Crankie design and encouraged participants to make their own during the event.
The 2005 “Make a Shoebox Crankie” how-to remains the most popular page on my website.
As people continue to click the DIY page, which makes me happy, I thought I’d give the Crankie pages another mention after all these years.
A simple search online shows that Sue Truman’s The Crankie Factory is still getting updated and has amazing links, history, and how-tos. Her website goes deep and is a great resource! Good to see that NW Puppet Center in Seattle is still hosting Crankie Festivals. Before she discovered my site in 2012, I had created a few pages to try to flesh out some Crankie history and mechanical details.
To give this all a bump for 2019 (it has been a while since I’ve posted crankie content), here are most of the older HappyFeet links all in one list. Please note that some of the external links in these older posts may not work anymore.
- Make a Shoebox Crankie
- A History of the Crankie (with R. G. Davis)
- The Crankie Archives (with some photo examples)
- Crankie Device Photos
- Big Tadoo’s Velo-Powered Crankie
- A few more photos of Big Tadoo’s big crankie
- Big Tadoo’s k’nex mock up of their big crankie
