A 4-year-old boy is recovering from surgery with the help of a very special walker: his own customized AT-AT, designed by Clone Wars cartoonist Ben Dewey.
After surgery on both of his legs, Stephanie Kaloi’s son was sent home with immobilizing braces and a walker. Kaloi told Wired that the doctor said using the walker was vital to her son’s recovery, but after a painful post-op encounter, he was reluctant even to try it.
Kaloi and her husband brainstormed a solution: What if they could convince their Star Wars-loving son to pretend he was walking with the aid of an AT-AT, one of the lanky Imperial vehicles from The Empire Strikes Back? That’s when family friend Ben Dewey stepped in.
Dewey, a cartoonist at Portland's Periscope Studio, is no stranger to the Star Wars universe–he’s provided pencils for the Clone Wars comics–and he was confident he could help: “I knew I could bridge that gap [between physical therapy and play] with the right artistically-enhanced props because I remember what it was like to be four and how much more fun it was to play pretend when there was even a little bit of fuel to aid the process,” Dewey told Wired.
Dewey’s wife Lindsey Ellis got the measurements of the walker and drew a schematic to guide Ben's additions, and they set to work, cutting the pieces from a cardboard tomato flat and decorating them with gesso and sharpies.
Throughout, Dewey worked to balance the AT-AT’s physical requirements–something that wouldn’t impede use of the medical walker–with the features he knew would appeal most to a four-year-old, like “a drawing of Darth Vader (the young fellow's favorite character) on the viewscreen to he could pretend to be talking with him, and a picture of Echo Base in a firing grid that he could overlay on the living furniture or whatever happened to be in front of him.”
And, as any four-year-old knows, the most important part: “a ton of cool-looking buttons.”
With the help of his personal AT-AT, Kaloi’s son has spent the last week happily mastering his laser noises; and, more importantly, impressing his doctors with his progress. Kaloi told Wired, "He's walked for 1-2 hours each day since he's had it, and is generally more comfortable getting around then he would be otherwise. He also loves that he has a direct line to Vader, and regularly phoness him up to get advice while battling on Hoth."
Refitting medical and adaptive technology to make it less daunting to kids is nothing new, but this is a particularly cool spin for its DIY accessibility. Dewey recommends that anyone looking to make their own version start by developing a basic understanding of papercraft and seeking out resources on how to make pop-up books and manipulate paper in 3-D.
