Ep. 3: Drawing her | SOOK the crab

Before you can build a crab, you need to know what she looks like. So we drew her. A lot.

Lots of crabs#

We described SOOK in words and let an AI image tool draw her, again and again, changing one thing at a time.

Two of the very first pictures had what I called "beast mode": huge raised claws, a scrappy riveted shell, monster tyres, pilots tucked underneath. I loved them. The picture at the top is the beast with all four pilots on board, drawn in a studio. That was the crab I wanted, and the one we measured.

Then we read the rules#

The race has a size limit: 8 feet wide and 13 feet tall on the road. When we measured my beast, she came out at roughly 16 feet across the claws, and even more at the leg tips.

So we tried to squeeze her into 8 feet. It did not go well.

AI concept render: A tall, narrow version of the crab squeezed to 8 feet wide, with two pilots side by side and the legs hanging straight down — Squeezed to 8 feet: a box on stilts.

Squeezing only the width turned her into a box on stilts: tall, skinny, legs hanging straight down like a coffee table. My exact words at the time: "Oh man, that 8-foot limit really makes it look bad."

We tried again, longer and lower, with the pilots in a single line.

AI concept render: A long crab with the pilots in a line, two at the back and two at the front, and the crab's legs turned into straight blue poles — Single file. Her legs became blue fence posts.

My favourite bad crab. Her legs turned into blue fence posts, and she looks like she's been asked to wait in line. I was ready to save the big one for some other parade.

The twist#

Then we checked our maths, and found the mistake was ours, not hers.

Those measurements came from an AI-made 3D model, and that model had made the pilots about 34 inches wide each. Real grown-ups are about 24 inches with elbows out. So we used the people in the picture as the ruler instead: two wheels, two pilots side by side, and about a foot of gap on each side.

That puts the real crab at about 9½ feet across the wheels, not 13 or 16. Her claws and legs reach wider, but they can fold in for the road, and she stays under 13 feet tall. The monster was mostly a measuring mistake.

The one#

So on October 26 we made a rule: build the picture as drawn. Change something only when physics forces us to, one change at a time, with a side-by-side to check.

AI concept render: SOOK, the final picture: a big blue crab over four white drum wheels, with four pilots pedalling underneath — The picture we build from. Every drawing and computer model gets checked against this one.

This is her: big beefy crab, huge claws, legs splayed wide, four pilots in pairs underneath, and white drum wheels with chunky tread, like our real floating drums.

One honest bit: we're still asking the race how strictly they check the 8-foot width. If they're sticklers, SOOK has a road mode: her crab body turns sideways, her claws point forward and her legs tuck in. And if even the wheels have to fit in 8 feet, we have a backup layout ready.

Next up for the art#

Our art lead is now turning the picture into something we can build and paint, dressed like the Chesapeake: rope, buoys, crab pots, workboat paint.

Next episode: where the whole plan stands, and how big this job really is.

Josh