Building myself a mechanical Steemit whale was the only way to guarantee upvotes from whales on my posts.

Here's the final product. You can see me feeding Mr. Swhale, as I have affectionately named him, a little upvote. Notice how fast he metabolizes it and poops it out the other end. Let me walk you through how I made him.

I started off with a spool of wire and a needle nose pliers. I didn't really have a game plan of how to make each piece of the structure, but I just started going for it. You can see it coming along below.

I kept roughing out the shape and eventually built a bottom jaw for Mr. Swhale. I didn't need too much wire, just enough to hold the shape. I ran a wire from the back of the jaw hinge out the back of the tail. This is what ultimately allows me to move the jaw in an eating motion.

After the structure was complete, I began wrapping the wire in painters tape to start giving the puppet a little more shape. Mr. Swhale started to look a little more whale like here.

After the taping was complete, I got out my hot glue gun and some puppet felt. I went around and made sure to cover all of the surfaces with felt, but not too much. I needed enough to give the puppet texture, but not too much that I wouldn't be able to add detail.

Next it was to my makeshift shepherd's hook painting booth. I hung the whale up and gave it a nice coat of black spray paint.

After a light coating of paint, I pulled out a brush and watered down some craft paint I had laying around. I used this to brush on details and give Mr. Swhale some more whale-like features. I also used a white paint pen for some of the more obvious lines.

At this point, I realized whales have fins too, and that I should probably make those. I cut out some felt and laid down beads of hot glue to give them some rigidity. I then coated them with black paint brushed on some more detail with the paint pen.

Here is the final puppet with his handy little upvotes.

He was getting hungry, so I decided it was about time to start the feeding process.

First, you have to tug on Mr. Swhale's tail to get his mouth in the eating mood. After that, you can pick up an upvote and begin feeding. Just place it in his mouth and he starts eating and pooping. It's really a marvelous sight of nature. Now, only to get David Attenborough to narrate the process.

I had a blast creating this whale puppet, and hopefully you enjoyed seeing the process and the final product. Which whale do you think it looks most like?